New Year... OF AWESOMENESS

So as you guys probably know by now, I'm probably not going to be posting artwork anytime soon, I'm focusing on being a producer. To be honest, I just prefer managing people than doing the actual art. It's really fulfilling to be able to get a group of people together to create something way more awesome together than we could have separately. So let me update you guys on the various projects I'm managing.

Augmented Reality Golf

http://doji.cs.rit.edu/golf/

We've got a RIT developer interested in our project. We need to revamp the website and create an alpha by the end of the quarter, but if we do that he'll try to get sponsors for us and drum up some cash. I think this game has a good chance of being sold, not to a wide market, but sold none-the less.

Everything is running according to schedule, except texturing. That is our biggest slow down, and I had to pull one of the fastest texture artists to do graphic design work for the website. I reorganized the structure though, and we might have a returning artist to the team who's willing to do texture work. The only issue with him is that he'll have to work remotely until next quarter.

In other news I'm going to GDC! Yup, because the golf project is going to be apart of the RIT booth on the exhibition floor, and I'm going to help exhibit. If you guys are planning on going let me know! I'm really excited, and I really want to see how well I mesh in with that crowd. It'll help me make my decision on what Industry I want to go into.

Amplyopia Project

Using UT to treat lazy eye

That project is coming along. I'm on co-op this quarter doing 30 hours a week for Professor Bayliss. 20 of those 30 hours are dedicated to this project, while the rest is setting up projects for her and improving relations between the programming and art departments. I'm trying to set up a small team of artists to work on the project for credit. Goodness knows I can't do all this art myself (nor do I want to), but it's way to expensive to pay as many artists as we'd need. Only time will tell how well I do that though.

Special Effects Project

With advisor from mystery studio

I have a production internship possibility with an animation studio I respect. When I met with the recruiter, he told me that if I set up a multidisciplinary Special Effects project, we could get an Advisor from the company, who would have video conferences with us and actually visit our campus. I've set up the team, and I'm set to be the producer.

We're going to do procedural destructible, as well with other special effects. The animation is going to be a bull in a china shop. I'm really excited. We're going to have programmers write a plugin for maya, a sound fx artist, animators and 3d artists doing stuff like particles cloth and rigging. My plan is to help the dev lead by managing the project and keeping records using MS Project, and to keep in contact with the studio.

RITgraph.

We're STILL working on our charter. It's being way more annoying than I thought. We're going to have 4 weeks of workshops though, and we're still going strong. I changed the time for this quarter however, and it REALLY hurt attendance because there was a lot of confusion. I'm working to change that though, with better advertising and organizing. This is DEFINETLY a learning experience.

Thats it for my projects.

Stay Awesome Guys!

-Rachel

Woa Crazy

Alright, time to update people on my life WOO. Stuff here has been a bit nuts, in good and bad ways. I spend a lot of my time managing my Augmented golf project, so I haven't been modeling as much as I used to. I actually like it better. Our team is really strong, all of the weak members have left or are leaving, and I've been able to recruit some of the best talent in my major.

The most exciting news about this project is that we might actually sell a version of this game. Super stoked about that. A local company might want to buy a version of the game to be put into production with their products. I don't want to say to much about it, because we are still working on a deal, but I'm on my way to producing a real, ready for market game. SOOO stoked.

I've also been elected President of RITgraph, the student chapter of Siggraph at RIT. It's been keeping me busy. The club has been going well though, we regularly have about 30 people attend the meetings, and we are getting some attention from some of the faculty. We still need to get the paper work done to be offical, but we're getting there. I might not be a student Volunteer next year, because as president, I get to go to the conference for free (total score). But I might do it anyway, because hell, it was so much fun.

My game project is going slowly. I'm getting work done, but since I can only put in 8 hours of work a week, it's really hard to keep things moving. Plus I don't get that much direction from my boss, so I'm not always sure how well I'm doing. But I like the work, and I've found a volunteer to work on the project, one of my new recruits from Golf. He's a very talented level designer, so I'm hoping that I can get him in the editor at some point to create levels. so much goes into creating assets though, and I feel like trying to learn everything that goes into making them on my own stretches me thin sometimes. I'm learning so much about texturing.

My Senior thesis is slow going as well. All of my other projects seem to eat into my thesis time, which is becoming a problem. I've also stopped giving up my weekends for homework, and have spent more time partying this quarter. It's surprisingly useful. I've been able to make connections with other club presidents, get to know people from different societies on campus, and It helped me recruit probably the most talented sophmore onto my team. Great poach. It's also made my love life fun and interesting but I won't get to much into that here. Still no boyfriend, and I still really don't care all that much. I have my Gay boyfriend, and the rest of the guys I meet, just gravy.

I'll stop here, I miss you guys!