Alec Albright – Looking Outwards – 01

SICKTRICKS is an interactive video game for the sport of tricking, which is an aesthetic blend of martial arts, gymnastics, and break-dancing. It was a project created nearly three years ago by CMU student Bo Tembunkiart. Though this project was created from scratch, it did utilize the Autodesk Maya application for 3-D interactivity in order to allow for more realistic movements and responses by the avatar.

The project was not as inspired by one particular work as it was inspired by the lack thereof. As tricking is a somewhat new, relatively small sport, the creator wished to create a video game for the tricking community, entering a space that has not been widely explored before. In this way, it offers a new area of potential study for the video game world, expanding the awareness of tricking at the same time.

I admire this project because not only does it explore a new realm of video games, but it also is wildly impressive to me that such a game was able to be created from scratch in just one semester. It is exciting for me to see that you can create new content even if there is no template, so long as you’re willing to work hard enough for it. This project was certainly outside the box, and that to me is definitely inspiring.