Well as I've suggestively indicated, Siggraph was amazing! Got to see the amazing town of N'Awlins to begin with but on top of that, the conference itself was simply mind blowing. I think one of the most prominent events that transpired for me was the Gamejam! competition, a 24 hour video game asset creation challenge, and challenging was an understatement. This was the first year running of this event, so it had it's bumps in the road, but I'm grateful to have been a part of it, completed it and have a Siggraph themed video game to show for it. Specifically, the challenger was to design, model, texture, rig and animate a character with an idle, walk, jump and Special cycle. I created whom I have dubbed Zorgath, a Pikachu-esque slug creature with unknown backstory (little time to develop one) that uses his clawes and "slugness" to crawl up walls. If I do this challenge again next year, I'll be sure to avoid a special power that involves interaction with the environment, this proved to be an extra added difficulty on top of an already packed and complex itinerary. Anyways, there were some drastic rule changes throughout the contest, but as I said, basically bugs being ironed out. If you, the reader, has any inkling to waste endless hours playing this groundbreaking sidescrolling machinima you can download it at this link
http://www.megaftp.com/92122 (PC only, sry).Recently, AM came out with these wonderful badges to show our school pride. I am in full endorsement of this, as I've made obvious numerous times this school's one of the most exciting and amazing communities I've been fortunate to be involved with, and the learning is unparalleled. I'll figure out how to properly append this onto my website shortly but in the meantime it's here for all to see. A bit behind the ball on this one, they came out with the badges about a day after my last post.
And speaking of school, shortfilm preproduction is well under way. 2D storyboard finalized and 3D layout beginning as we speak. I'm trying to get ahead of the curve here, as my story is getting longer than I intended, but necessary to be sure. I think I'm running at about 43 seconds right now and it will be a wee longer, tho most of that is just to let the acting breathe. Very exciting stuff, I forgot how nerve wracking working on a short film could be, as it's all form the inner depths of my mind. And with that, I decided to go bizarre and hopefully not offensive in the religious context. A light hearted story of God babysitting Satan's child. I've heard someone say that I am not held responsible for what my mind comes up with; at a glance that seems totally false, but I'm inclined to believe it :D With that said, here's the 2D animatic in all it's embarassing glory (no sound yet).
