Welcome to the present
03/12/10 00:19 Filed in: SkyVu
While having a blog on a website really has no professional value I feel, having one that isn’t updated probably is a huge demerit to me as an individual.
My boss, coworker and myself are signed up for GDC11 which is only now a few months away. So many great ideas and insights came to us last year I am pretty excited to see where our company can go from there! Other then that, this is just a ping... I am not going to promise more game assets or anything because i know i won’t get around to it for quite some time!
Upgrading my website authoring tool to RapidWeaver 5 compelled this article, now back to the fiddling!
My boss, coworker and myself are signed up for GDC11 which is only now a few months away. So many great ideas and insights came to us last year I am pretty excited to see where our company can go from there! Other then that, this is just a ping... I am not going to promise more game assets or anything because i know i won’t get around to it for quite some time!
Upgrading my website authoring tool to RapidWeaver 5 compelled this article, now back to the fiddling!
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SkyVu Pictures
19/09/09 18:50 Filed in: SkyVu
Just to make sure that i have a bi-yearly update that can be forever logged away for historical purposes its time for another entry!
SkyVu has been awesome, I am developing more then I ever thought I could in such a short time, and even more so, am learning huge amounts of information. Between the work that goes into pitching a movie, to writing up game design documents and creating game assets I am stupefyingly blessed.
Our game “Battle Bears” (www.battlebears.com) did better then I ever could have hoped and if it wasn’t for Madden would have been the number one selling iPhone game! We were in the top 3 paid application ranking for a good two days on the iTunes store and are (at this time) still the number 1 paid game in both the action and adventure categories!
We are now hard at work getting a large update out the door for it, and we are still as a company switching gears from film over to games. Its a crazy path to take, but I am loving every minute of it!
Personal work has suffered more then I could have imagined, but maybe sometime soon I will get back into creating art that I will be able to show!
Until next time...
SkyVu has been awesome, I am developing more then I ever thought I could in such a short time, and even more so, am learning huge amounts of information. Between the work that goes into pitching a movie, to writing up game design documents and creating game assets I am stupefyingly blessed.
Our game “Battle Bears” (www.battlebears.com) did better then I ever could have hoped and if it wasn’t for Madden would have been the number one selling iPhone game! We were in the top 3 paid application ranking for a good two days on the iTunes store and are (at this time) still the number 1 paid game in both the action and adventure categories!
We are now hard at work getting a large update out the door for it, and we are still as a company switching gears from film over to games. Its a crazy path to take, but I am loving every minute of it!
Personal work has suffered more then I could have imagined, but maybe sometime soon I will get back into creating art that I will be able to show!
Until next time...
There and Back Again
19/04/09 17:50
NOTE: due to the extreme amount of content in this journal, I have broken it up for you mix and matching pleasure!
EMPLOYMENT:
Two months ago, a friend of mine informed me that an animation studio was opening up in Omaha Nebraska (where I live) and that the guy starting it was one of the previs artists on the movie Coroline. He was to speak after the premier of the film in town and to an animation class at the school I graduated from a year prior. I went to his talk, knowing I wasn’t qualified for the position, but wanting to get some perspective and insight as GDC was a month away. I talked to him briefly, went home and typed up 3 pages of my life story in an email and sent it away. The following day I got a text asking if I could meet up with him and it just spiraled into employment from there.
Knowing full well that I was planning on trying to get a job at GDC, he offered to pay me for 4 weeks to come in part time around my other job and learn the few things I wasn’t strong in, all the while dealing with the companie’s investors, trying to secure me a full time position. Those 4 weeks were insane. I was working 12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, all the while preparing for GDC. It literally came down to 13 hours before I left for San Francisco that I found out I had the job. As of today I have worked two full weeks at Skyvu pictures and it is amazing. Most of what I do there I can’t show, but I hope and pray that one day you can see all the cool stuff we’re working on. I also hope that I will hone my talent there. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever be able to use a regular tablet again. At home im already using a Cintiq 12wx but at work… at work I have a Cintiq 21ux
It truly is something you should experience o______o
GDC 2009:
Knowing that employment was secure, I left for what was now essentially a vacation. A vacation with the ability to network with amazing people. I left with my friend Case and flew up (over?) to San Francisco to stay with a mutual, yet equally fake friend Bryan.
He turned out to not only incredibly light but also normal, and although he had classes and boring stuff, his roommate gave Case and I the guided tour of the town.
It was there that I also met up with and hung out with Kai Lim (of Imaginary Friends) and while he had important art rock star stuff to do on most of the expo days, I still had him long enough to lure into a seedy looking mexican restaurant and get him food poisoning. (those are lies)
The expo itself was pretty fun, and I did set aside a day for the career pavilion which I will sum up in greater detail then the regular show floor.
GDC / SHOW FLOOR:
It was pretty fun.
GDC / CAREER PAVILION:
This was what I was banking my future on before I got the job at Skyvu. And in retrospect I was pretty stupid. If you didn’t have industry experience, your business card went into the trash, or more tellingly, they told you flat out that they didn’t take physical media and to apply online. I assume that If I were to pass a certain threshold of awesome, that I would be asked for such things, but I am not so I wasn’t.
There were a few exceptions that I would like to point out in case somebody gets a google trackback to this page and that is the Insomniac booth, and the Ubisoft booth.
At insomniac I spent 1-2 hours standing in line just to mob one of the two artists there who were actively taking portfolios and critiquing them. These guys should be up for some sort of award. Not only did they have no life that entire day as far as I could tell, but they offered the most sincere and helpful critique somebody could ask for. 99% of the people in line were aspiring 3d artists, but I still learned a great deal
As for ubisoft, the booth was fairly big, but I did talk to a equally helpful man who was over all just a huge encouragement to me.
The rest of the booths for the most part were fairly daunting and impersonal, but you can’t hold that against anybody, and it mainly went to confirm my feelings of inadequacy
THE BACON CHEESE PIZZA BURGER:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGCCWInBfRM
This is how we closed off our time at GDC
MOVING OUT:
I am typing this up from my newly settled one bedroom apartment. I’ve been moving over the course of the past week and finally got situated today. It is my hope that the migration to normal life will begin from this point on. Im not sure how drawing all day will effect my desire to draw at home, but we will see. I suspect I’ll still go in my normal cycle.
Again, sorry for how long this took to get out. I wish all of you the best, and if you have any further questions please ask me!
EMPLOYMENT:
Two months ago, a friend of mine informed me that an animation studio was opening up in Omaha Nebraska (where I live) and that the guy starting it was one of the previs artists on the movie Coroline. He was to speak after the premier of the film in town and to an animation class at the school I graduated from a year prior. I went to his talk, knowing I wasn’t qualified for the position, but wanting to get some perspective and insight as GDC was a month away. I talked to him briefly, went home and typed up 3 pages of my life story in an email and sent it away. The following day I got a text asking if I could meet up with him and it just spiraled into employment from there.
Knowing full well that I was planning on trying to get a job at GDC, he offered to pay me for 4 weeks to come in part time around my other job and learn the few things I wasn’t strong in, all the while dealing with the companie’s investors, trying to secure me a full time position. Those 4 weeks were insane. I was working 12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, all the while preparing for GDC. It literally came down to 13 hours before I left for San Francisco that I found out I had the job. As of today I have worked two full weeks at Skyvu pictures and it is amazing. Most of what I do there I can’t show, but I hope and pray that one day you can see all the cool stuff we’re working on. I also hope that I will hone my talent there. Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever be able to use a regular tablet again. At home im already using a Cintiq 12wx but at work… at work I have a Cintiq 21ux
It truly is something you should experience o______o
GDC 2009:
Knowing that employment was secure, I left for what was now essentially a vacation. A vacation with the ability to network with amazing people. I left with my friend Case and flew up (over?) to San Francisco to stay with a mutual, yet equally fake friend Bryan.
He turned out to not only incredibly light but also normal, and although he had classes and boring stuff, his roommate gave Case and I the guided tour of the town.
It was there that I also met up with and hung out with Kai Lim (of Imaginary Friends) and while he had important art rock star stuff to do on most of the expo days, I still had him long enough to lure into a seedy looking mexican restaurant and get him food poisoning. (those are lies)
The expo itself was pretty fun, and I did set aside a day for the career pavilion which I will sum up in greater detail then the regular show floor.
GDC / SHOW FLOOR:
It was pretty fun.
GDC / CAREER PAVILION:
This was what I was banking my future on before I got the job at Skyvu. And in retrospect I was pretty stupid. If you didn’t have industry experience, your business card went into the trash, or more tellingly, they told you flat out that they didn’t take physical media and to apply online. I assume that If I were to pass a certain threshold of awesome, that I would be asked for such things, but I am not so I wasn’t.
There were a few exceptions that I would like to point out in case somebody gets a google trackback to this page and that is the Insomniac booth, and the Ubisoft booth.
At insomniac I spent 1-2 hours standing in line just to mob one of the two artists there who were actively taking portfolios and critiquing them. These guys should be up for some sort of award. Not only did they have no life that entire day as far as I could tell, but they offered the most sincere and helpful critique somebody could ask for. 99% of the people in line were aspiring 3d artists, but I still learned a great deal
As for ubisoft, the booth was fairly big, but I did talk to a equally helpful man who was over all just a huge encouragement to me.
The rest of the booths for the most part were fairly daunting and impersonal, but you can’t hold that against anybody, and it mainly went to confirm my feelings of inadequacy
THE BACON CHEESE PIZZA BURGER:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGCCWInBfRM
This is how we closed off our time at GDC
MOVING OUT:
I am typing this up from my newly settled one bedroom apartment. I’ve been moving over the course of the past week and finally got situated today. It is my hope that the migration to normal life will begin from this point on. Im not sure how drawing all day will effect my desire to draw at home, but we will see. I suspect I’ll still go in my normal cycle.
Again, sorry for how long this took to get out. I wish all of you the best, and if you have any further questions please ask me!
Pre-GDC
21/03/09 23:52 Filed in: GDC
One last blog before GDC! Chances are if you're reading this its because you got spammed with my card or you collect garbage. I hope to have a full recap afterwards in some sort of form, but I don’t expect to update this during the thick of things! If you want to get together just let me know, my phone is always on!
So begins the New Year
I guess updating my blog as the year transitions from 08 to 09 is a pretty lame thing to do, but i have no excuses. A huge portion of my life’s direction could easily be conjured within the next few months and that gets you thinking. In the mean time, before GDC now is the time to scrounge up business card designs, settle on what style of portfolio I will bring with me and hopefully produce a few more things of artistic quality in the mean time.
Hopefully i’ll get a last minute entry in before i head out to San Francisco in regards to my plans and schedule at GDC.
Hopefully i’ll get a last minute entry in before i head out to San Francisco in regards to my plans and schedule at GDC.