Month: September 2006

Categories
Animation Computer Games

The London Games Festival

Well, I’m off on Sunday to London for the London Games Festival, well, specifically the Career Fair, so I’ve my bags packed (well, almost), my CV printed, my showreel burned and a couple of interviews lined up. I’ll have a day and a half in London to do some touristy stuff before the fair while Matt holds the fort, and the toddler, back here. I’m hoping we’ll have no outbreaks of chicken pox this time.

The games world is a pretty small one so I’m counting on seeing some familiar faces otherwise I’ll be wandering around the fair trying to pluck up the courage to go and talk to recruiters. I just never know what to say in those situations…everything I think of sounds like a bad chat up line.

Categories
Animation Computer Games

Portfolio

A little over a year ago when I started this blog, my intention was always to use it as a way to learn a bit about webpages so that I could get my portfolio online. Well, I got a bit sidetracked when I realised just how fun (and time-consuming) blogging is but I finally sat myself down and got my portfolio done. That’s what a looming deadline will do for you.

You can find it here, or by following the button on the sidebar, and I’d appreciate any feeback, particularly if you find something is broken or I’ve forgotten to link all the dots. It’s sure to need some tweaking and I’m still getting my head around compression of movie files. It includes some animation from the game I was working on for the past year since it was released last week, as well as animation and artwork from older projects.

If you know anything about webpage design and you peek under the site’s skirts…yes, I hang my head in shame…the code shows I’m winging it I’m afraid. Still, if it works until I can figure out the enigma that is Dreamweaver, that’s all I ask for now.

Categories
Animation

Animation Exercise

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A few weeks ago I signed up for the Animation Personal Mentor course being run by Keith Lango. I’m in the middle of a break in my work right now and thought it would be a great opportunity to go back to my animation and really try to break through to a higher level with it. Game animation, being quite fast-paced, can be a little limited in that you only get to push it so far before you run out of time. This can mean you lose your eye (as Keith has so aptly put it) and get into the habit of settling for something far short of a finished, polished performance.

Keith’s course is an 8 week programme tailored to each individual animator which well help them work on the areas they feel they need the most help in. So far I’m loving it and I’ve already learned enough to make it money well spent. Things that I never would have picked up working away here on my own. Keith is a great teacher and just a nice guy to work with and if you are an animator considering taking his course in the future…do it.

I’m going to be putting up some animation exercises that I’m doing as part of the course to show people what I’m doing and also to keep a record of how I’m progressing. The film above (which I hope shows up because I’ve never posted a movie to my site before…please let me know if it doesn’t work) is a blocked-out version of one of my exercises. Nothing fancy or complicated but I’m treating it as an exercise in taking an animation beyond what I would normally do for a game…to a higher level of polish.

The reason it’s jerky is because it’s still in an early form…hopefully as I show my progress with it it will start to look a lot smoother and more natural.

Categories
Blogging

The 2996 Project

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I was trying to remember how it was when the World Trade Centre towers were hit five years ago; before we had the terms like “9/11” or “the War on Terror” in our vocabulary, when my co-workers and I stood in the canteen at work and watched the little tv in the corner not really understanding what we were seeing. On the day that it happened it was more about who it was happening to. Since then it has slowly become about who was behind it and the response and the blame and the war. In my random searching I found The 2996 Project.

It was set up by blogger DC Roe and his idea was to assign each of the 2996 victims who died during the attacks, either on the planes or at the towers, to different bloggers who would find out all they could about their assigned person and write a memorial for them. More than 3ooo bloggers have signed up and a list of the participants with links to their posts can be found here. The instructions were for the bloggers to stay away from talking about the terrorists or the reasons behind the attacks and mostly they do. There’s a huge diversity of information, some people were easy to eulogise while others had little more than a photo and a job description to remember them by. There’s a lot of talk of them being heroes who died for their country but I’m struck more by how ordinary they all were.

Note: It seems that the blog has been swamped…if you’re having trouble loading it or it’s down, try again a little later.

Categories
Blogging

Gingerpixel: One Year Old

One year ago today I started this blog. I was seriously sleep-deprived and was trying to juggle returning to work with breastfeeding and sleep-training a ten-month-old. I didn’t get out much and my only sanity some days would come from reading other bloggers who were going through similar things. So I decided to try and start one of my own, never thinking anyone would read it. At best I hoped I could use it to keep in touch with old friends and teach myself a little bit about having a webpage.

A year on and I’m still here. I’m even managing to post regularly sometimes. I’ve met loads of fellow bloggers, written over one hundred posts, been interviewed on the radio and even been nominated for a blog award! All from this little page.

So Happy Birthday blog 🙂