Extra Wow!

I’m pretty sure I wrote too early to talk about this last time, but I found out last week that I got accepted as a CA at GDC.  So that was exciting enough, and plenty to keep my week good and my first two months impossibly jam-packed, but apparently good things are determined to keep bashing down my doorstep, because today I found out the game I submitted to SxSW’s Screenburn competition is a semifinalist!  Whoohoo!

What does that mean?  Well, put simply, it means that I’m one of ten semifinalists who get to create a five-minute powerpoint pitch for their game, out of which four will be selected to actually be presented by their owners.  So mine needs to be awesome!  To that end, it also means that on top of the usual homework from five classes, approximately 100 models (best case scenario- worst case 50), work, and my internship stuff, I have to have said Awesome Powerpoint done by Monday.  Needless to say, I’m excited, and panic-stricken, and lots of other good things like that.:)

Thankfully I already had most of the design doc for the game I submitted done, but this is a nice push to me to a) get my ass in gear and quit sleeping in, and b) keep working on this game.  Yeah, the presentation has to be shipped off on Monday, but I’d like to spend the next month or so developing it up to the point of a demo/prototype if I can.  Tall order, especially on top of the other billion effing things I’m doing, but right now I’m a bit too psyched about it to care.

Next time: a character a day and those 100 models in a week.  Ew!:D

New Year Resolutions

I completely forgot about this when I was deliriously typing the other evening, but being as most of my resolutions this year relate directly to games, here we are:

1.  Get an industry job. Fair enough, we’ll see how it goes.  I’m graduating in December, so I’d better meet this one or else I’m just a failure.:P

2.  Get an onground internship. I know I touched on this quite a bit yesterday, but so both of my internships, as well as almost all of my collaborative projects other than those, have been run entirely online.  Not that I have much against this and I certainly appreciate its merits (hello 5pm-2am workblock), but being as the majority of studios are onground and I suspect this is profoundly different in some ways than an online studio, well, I’d like to work at one.  Preferably before #1.

3.  Play at least two new games a month. I know this sounds really, really retarded, but it’s something I don’t do nearly often enough.  I get so wrapped up in making games that for a long time I quit playing them, and only recently (with considerable pushing from a few friends) really started making an effort to change this.  Somehow I don’t think this resolution will be too hard to keep though…  And a learning experience to boot.:)

4.  Finish two personal projects per month. Scenes, tiny games, one kick-ass model, whatever.  Just something to keep me working.

There were three others, but those are the game ones.  The only other one that probably merits mention here is that I am bound and determined to become a Cupcake Mastah.  Which sort of relates, because I hear cupcakes make resumes 78% more effective.

Of course that also means I have to beat out these jerkwads.

Wow

There are two possible reasons as to why it has been three freaking months since I last posted anything remotely interesting. Possibility one is that I have been absurdly busy for that whole entire time. Possibility two is that I am profoundly disorganized and this is at the very bottom of my priority list. The answer, of course, is both.

“But what have you been doing that keeps you so absurdly busy?” a convenient, imaginary passerby (to my bedroom, at 10:30pm. Slightly creepy.) cries out. Funny you should ask, Imaginary Passerby, I was just about to inflict that information on these poor readers without any segue at all. Thanks for that.

I’ve mostly been working. Last quarter was a light one of only three classes, none of them, unfortunately, requiring me to model. (Although one was concept art, so I got to sit down and do a lot of drawing, which is always a good thing.) I also have a new internship and have for two months now, which requires me to model a pretty decent amount.

I mostly want to talk about the internship, because it’s way more interesting/relevant than ancient art history (no offense art historians). I’m working as a 3D artist for a startup called Sudoscape, which is working on a yet-unannounced MMO. It’s been very interesting/learningful so far, initially because I’m doing entirely character work (costumes, monsters and creatures in order of how often I model them) and we had a very cool texturing method (had; it got changed.:(). Now my experience leans more towards the former, as this is my first time working in an official “studio”. It’s definitely different from what I imagine a regular studio works like, as we run entirely online, which greatly lengthens the time between when we complete a stage of something and when we get feedback, but I find it very interesting to see the problems that crop up that I imagine are inherent to online and/or startup studios, and how they’re dealt with. Although some are issues that I saw at my last internship as well, there are a lot of new things I’m learning regarding pipelines, deadlines, and all sorts of other lines (good news: I’ve yet to cross any), as well as organization and production in general.

Our demo goes live soon I believe (hope) and the full release in the next few months, and I’m very excited about that. Shipped game yes please!

That’s about all that happened over this last quarter/break. This upcoming quarter I decided to change things up by taking six (SIX!) classes, in addition to the internship, job/internship hunting, GDC, and portfolio building and side projects for those last two. It’s all going to be very, very, very hectic. So ummm… Expect another hiatus from posts. I hope you’re all as excited as I am.:)

But good things to come, I promise! Occasionally, at 2am and through tear-streaked, red-eyes stares, I might upload some of my workings here for you all to see. It will certainly be on the website.

Happy new year dears!