Wednesday, December 20, 2006

An unexpected perspective (Aka Nerd Heaven)

I just finished my first semester at FIEA and I thought that after all the lack of sleep and hard work, I wouldn’t want to touch my computer for the rest of December. And I didn’t for about two days. Those first two days were amazing, I slept excessively and ate a lot, and that was about it. But since then, I’ve been itching to get back to work. Lucky for me, we were already assigned the group projects we’ll be working on for the next two semesters and my group is just as eager as I am to get to work. We’ve already had a 3 hour brainstorming session and the artists were assigned a series of seven two-hour tutorials to do over the winter break. I’m already halfway through them and I feel like such a nerd because I’m really excited about some of the stuff I’ve learned. I love animation, so learning about set driven keys and expressions is like early Christmas! :) I’m home visiting my family and I think they’re getting pretty sick of me going on and on about it. They have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m so excited that I can’t help telling them about it anyways.

I’m glad to see that I’m not alone when it comes to working over the break. I might feel like kind of a loser if I was the only one. That’s what I really like about FIEA; all my classmates are really nice and are a lot like me. This past Friday night, instead of hanging out downtown or going to the movies, I hung out with two of my classmates and worked on Maya tutorials and projects. We were all laughing about how nerdy we were. But I guess it’s not really that nerdy, it’s pretty cool to have friends who are so driven and love what they do. It keeps me on my toes. I’m really excited to be working with a large group for the next two semesters, with all these talented people our game is going to be amaaaaazing!

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Sleepy December

I slept in this morning for the fifth straight day in a row. Excessive? Maybe, but I needed it, and I'd like to think that I deserved it. After a solid week of all-nighters, including one 35-hour stretch of nonstop action, our eight-month game is done and in the packaging. We gave our final presentations on our games last Friday evening at the Downtown UCF auditorium here in Orlando.

My group's presentation of our game, Danger Zone, was bookended by the other game that just wrapped up production, Opera Slinger, and the final presentation of The Blob, whose creators graduated this week to a great deal of fanfare. I couldn't believe how well my presentation went off -- I'd been sweating bullets about it for about a week leading up to it. But the audience laughed and clapped and cheered, so I'll count that as a win. The party that FIEA threw for everyone afterwards was a real gala event -- it was just what we needed after a hugely busy semester.

And then the sleep -- the blessed, badly-needed sleep. I spent about a full day snoozing after the party. When I finally awoke, I marathoned a game, which I haven't done in a while. This time it was Ico, which had I picked up after loving everything about the game's spiritual successor, Shadow of the Colossus. Ico was a pretty different game -- shorter and a great deal easier -- but still pretty enjoyable and not a bad pickup off of the used rack at Gamestop.

A few more days were spent in the company of friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. We fraternized and hung out and -- what else -- played video games. (This time it was Destroy All Humans! 2. Fantastic game.)

All the while, I was checking my e-mail every ten minutes, looking for a confirmation from EA Tiburon that they'd want to have a second interview with me for a production internship. I was positive I'd be getting the interview but my brain hungered for certainty. Having to wait the entirety of winter break before getting a thumbs-up would've been a little much to bear. Fortunately, as soon as I checked my inbox this afternoon, I found the e-mail that I'd been waiting a month for -- I've got my interview.

Now I've got three weeks to do stuff with. I'm determined to find something to do over the course of the break rather than simply stagnate. When summer break rolled around I indulged in an awful lot of World of Warcraft. Don't get me wrong, it was the best summer break ever. But I didn't spend time on a single thing besides Warcraft. This time around, I want to have something to show for all the free time that I've got available. Unless Azeroth or more pillow proves too powerful a seduction, I should have something to show for it next post.