a fan's video tribute to Uncharted

This was pretty funny. It was created by an Uncharted fan as a tribute to the game.

GAME HUNTER: Drakes Fortune


I've been "booked"...




Well, published in a book. :)



A few of us at Naughty Dog were interviewed for the Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Official Strategy Guide and each ended up with our own page. I answered questions like, "what keeps you in the games industry," "what's your current gaming obsession, etc."

The guide book was done very well and takes you in detail through the story, backstory, levels, and concept art of the game.



Jaelin & Jadden Chase December 2007 Photos


Nap time...one down, another to go.





Jaelin LOVES to help with the feedings. She screams, "I wanna help! I wanna help!" as she dashes madly to the scene of a hungry little man.




Need I say more? Yes, that is my hubby in all his smackin' glory.

Look at the way Chase is looking at the Lady. He loves looking at her, and she loves being looked at by him. "The baby is looking at me, Mommy!"





Jaelin reading to her baby brother.
No one asked her. No one suggested this idea to her.
The act was self-initiated, spontaneous, beautiful & perfect.
So ecstatic Jeremy caught the moment with his camera.




Decorating the tree...(that we forgot to water, so it is already wilting & browning).


Dancing to her own beat.
Love the way she hears the sounds of life.



-Judy Lai-Yates













Here are more photos from Noah's shoot...



































Life is unpredictable - as are boys...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing a photo shoot with an awesome family and their 2 year old boy at a local park. My style of children's portraiture is very 'play' based. I basically follow them around with a long lens and capture them being themselves and creating real expressions. Children are both magical and unpredictable. Their expressions change from moment to moment with each click of the shutter.

About a third of the way through the shoot, while Noah was playing in a sandbox with his bright yellow truck, something caught his eye and he got up and started running as fast as his little legs would carry him toward the lake. We all stared at each other for a few moments of perplextion when we realized that he wasn't going to stop. Jason (father) started running as fast as he could after Noah. But it was moments too late. Noah had ended up ankle deep in vial, black, mud surrounding the lake. Jason, whose momentum was no match for the extremely slippery mud, did an amazing home plate slide to his sons rescue. It actually looked quite heroic if was actually purposeful. Unnecessary, but heroic all the same. They were both covered in mud. Becky (mom) was holding back tears thinking the whole shoot would be ruined. Luckily she had an alternate outfit for him so we kept going. The rest of the day came out great, with over 300 great shots to pick from and they'll get an unforgettable story to go with it.

More pictures from the shoot to come soon!

-Jeremy

The Gray

It is so easy to judge and blame others for what appears to be their "mistakes." They didn't make the right choices. They were stupid enough not to think this through. How could they not see this coming? But the truth is even when we try our best to make every move calculated, smart decisions, our lives come crumbling down around us uncontrollably at times. All too often and far too quickly, we find ourselves in a heap of emotional entanglement, a freakin' mess. We wonder How could this have happened? How did things get so bad? While we are not victims of our circumstances, life does happen even to the best of us. We all need grace to buffer the rain, forgiveness as we struggle through the gray shades of life.

-Judy Lai-Yates

One fine day in Geekdom


Today I spent some time shopping at 'Geek Mecca' (aka Fry's Electronics to Westerners). Ah... those isles and isles of goodness. While checking out the Playstation 3 display, I ran into one of the other animators on Uncharted. He and I proceeded to find all the copies of the game and spread them out on top of all the other titles. That's right. We play dirty.



I also saw that we got the cover of Play magazine. They gave us a great review! 10 out of 10!!! They also had an article where they interviewed a few of us on our experience making the game.


On another geeky note - the actual reason for my trip to Fry's was I added another hard drive to my home PC, bumping me up well past the Terabyte mark. Holy crap. I remember the day when a gigabyte was huge. For that matter, a Zip disk. My next upgrade will be bumping up my power supply up to 1.21 jiga-watts.

Oh, what a fine day in Geekdom.

-Jeremy

Jadden Chase - All BOY












Jadden Chase is all boy. He communicates via grunting. He slurps loudly while he eats. He pees on walls and even his own face. His entire existence is defined by massive explosions of gaseous substances from multiple outputs. He is simple. There is no confusion to him, no complicated processing. When he is hungry he eats. When he is tired he sleeps. He is pleasant, courageous, easy going and pure sweetness. It does not take much to make him smile. And it does not take much for us to smile in return. It is a taste of heaven to have a boy like him.

-Judy Lai-Yates