Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

All things must come to an end

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Well, they say all things must come to an end, and so it was with my time at Technicolor.  To be honest, I expected it – they’ve been laying people off in ones and twos for the last few weeks.  This time it was 6, including me.  So there was that, plus the latest game I was working on, Saboteur, was wrapping up and the fact there wasn’t anything lined up pretty much pointed to staff reduction.

There’s a project that the studio is very close to landing…and in that case, they’ll bring a bunch of us back, but it could be 2-3 weeks, so I’m not going to wait around to find out what the deal is.

So, for now, I’m jobless, but that could actually be a good thing.  I should get some more time to work on some of my own projects, which would be nice, because I was usually too burned out after the long weeks (commute plus hours in studio added up to being gone from 7am to 10pm every day).  Plus, I should have a lot more time to actually post to this blog.  It’s been sorely neglected – I’m usually just too darn tired, or too involved in TF2 to care to update it.

By the way – Valve is offering a free weekend for Team Fortress 2 (August 22 – 24).  If you’re not already playing, you should be.  It’s got a great visual style, it’s a lot of fun, and 4 out of 5 doctors recommend it*

For your viewing enjoyment, I present here the animated segments that Valve has produced to introduce some of the various character classes that a player can be in the game…

Meet the Demoman

Meet the Engineer

Meet the Heavy

Meet the Sandvich

Meet the Scout

Meet the Sniper

Meet the Soldier

*not really.  I’d be surprised if ANY doctor recommended playing this game – it’s too easy to sit around on your butt for 5 or 6 hours and not realize any time has passed

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One week down

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

wow.  So that was the end of my first week as an animator.

The job has been very cool – the people are super cool, the training is going well, the project seems like it will be a lot of fun.  And the company has been really cool to us – even a new guy like me.  Earlier in the week, one of the execs came in with a stack of tickets to AMC theaters and basically handed them out to everyone, telling us that things were going to be kind of crazy – the project I’m on has a quick turnaround time from what I’m told – and that the company wanted to not only send us all to the movies, but that we HAD to go on company time.  How awesome is that!?

So there’s a couple of us going to save our tickets until something like Indiana Jones comes out in a few weeks and go then.  Of course, we’ll all probably have like 5 shots hanging over our heads by then…

Anyway, now the second week is teed up and I can’t wait to get started.  If I’m right, they’ll assign me my first shot this week, and I can’t wait to dig into it.  I’ve been working on a little training scene they put together, and it’s cool and a challenge to work on, but I really want to get something from our project.  I’ve seen some of the other new animators who hired on before I did, and the stuff they’re doing looks like a lot of fun.

Hopefully, this gig will go past June 30.  I know the company is really getting busy and they have a number of projects lined up.  I’ve seen some stuff written up here and there, and the upcoming stuff looks like they could be a lot of fun.  It’d be awesome if this turned into a job that went for a while.

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Randomness

Monday, April 28th, 2008

Couple rather random thoughts:

1. Last Exile – I’m not a huge anime fan.  I mean, I like a few things I’ve seen, mainly movies, but I had yet to find a series that I really found interesting.  Well, I take that back a bit – when I was younger I was really into Robotech – LA’s channel 13 showed the Macross Saga – one episode per day every day of the week…Anyway, I found Last Exile due to Netflix’s Watch Now feature and figured, “What the heck, I’ll take a look,” and I’m glad I did.  It’s got a crazy steampunk vibe to it – giant airships that look like they came out of the 1920’s, smaller personal airships (called Vanships) that fly one some water-based technology.  I’m not even sure I could explain the plot, but for whatever reason, it has managed to suck me in for now.  The animation isn’t always great, and some of the dialog is pretty atrocious, but it keeps me coming back for more.  That can’t be all bad, right?

2. My final week at work – I’m down to my last week at work before I start my first animation job.  Now that I’ve made it through Monday, I’m down to my last 4 days.  4 days isn’t so bad, right?  RIGHT?

3. Roxanne – back to work now on my Roxanne shot.  I really need to get this thing wrapped up and taken care of so that I have some new material to put on my reel.  I imagine I’ll wind up with some good stuff from my job, but I have no idea when it will become available to me.  I know in at least one case, the actual game isn’t scheduled to be released until nearly the end of the year, so if I’m given any shots from that game, I probably won’t have them accessible to me for a while…So I need to get this Roxanne shot finished up, and hopefully one more as well.

4. Mafia 2 – I just found out about this game today.  Mafia was one of my all-time favorite PC games.  It was a GTA-style, “sandbox” game that took place in the 1930’s and follows the story of taxi driver Tommy Angelo who, through a twist of fate, gets caught up in Don Salieri’s organization, one of two warring mafia families in the city of Lost Heaven.  Tommy finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the family, initially acting as a driver, then moving up the ranks while completing jobs involving extortion, bootlegging, assassination, arson…you know, all the good wholesome aspects of gaming.

Anyway, a few years back I had heard rumors that Mafia 2 was going to be in the works, but nothing ever seemed to come of it.  Then today I was just browsing through Wikipedia, happened upon the entry for Mafia, and saw that Mafia 2 had been announced – Happy Day!  This time around the action takes place in the 40s and 50s in Empire City and the player must take control of another young man involved in organized crime.  To say I’m looking forward to this is an understatement.  I’ll post updates as I find out more.

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