Production Pipeline 1

RIT Special Effects Project

Week 1

Co-ordinate with Talent, Kuk Sool Won Black Belts. Co-ordinate meeting session between creative and talent to gather reference materials and do initial choreography.

Week 2

Search for video editor. Found a martial arts choreographer, got him to attend shoot. Research and draft talent release form. Co-ordinate talent for shoot. Supervise and aid shoot.

Week 3

Researched film festivals and competitions we could submit the final film too. Unfortunetly the only fit we had was Siggraph.

Week 4

Looked into the form for Imagine RIT. The proposal was lengthy, and talking to kirk the team did not seem terribly interested at presenting anything. After I had a established this I had looked further into the form and we where much further past the deadline than we thought. Read through this years Siggraph to establish what we information we needed to collect the form

Week 5

I created a copy of this years siggraph festival form so we could pre emtively fill it out for next year.

I researched what documents should be created at the end of a project. The most useful one that I could find was a Technical document. We could use that template to create a nice record of the project.

Week 6

Mostly Spent trying to help Kirk track down MIA Sound Artist

Week 7

Started search for new sound artist. Alerted the professors in charge that she hadn't responded to us in 4 weeks and we hadn't seen any work from her yet (yes ironic I know). Worked on finding new sound artist. Currently working on contacting the recommended color correctionist from the Film Director.

Week 8

Current plan, Finish up documentation, start gathering all materials, finish them

Week 9,

Not entirely sure what work is left

Amblyopia Trailer

So I have Finally finished (mostly) the Amblyopia trailer for work. My boss wanted t for GDC. It's nothing fancy, and it was my first time really getting into Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I Learned so much from this project, and while video editing is not what I enjoy, I really like that I've started developing a new skill. I'm sure understanding the basics of these programs will come in handy.

check it out here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA4C0tvUIaQ

I think this would have taken me much longer if I hadn't used tutorials from Lynda.com. They didn't have everything I needed, but it helped me get started. Definitely worth the money. I've been teaching myself Microsoft Project as well. I'm going to keep the subscription for most of next quarter. I want to learn the ins and outs of Excel, Power Point, Project, Word, and any program involved in project management really. Haha maybe I'll just go crazy using the programs, making myself flowcharts for laundry, org charts for my family and roommates, and gantt charts for cooking. Actually I could see making a gantt chart for some of my recipes to be useful. I wonder if i can get Project to switch from days to minutes?

Either way now that the video is done I can breath a little. Hopefully in the next few days I'll write a post with everything that has changed with my projects. They are getting pretty exciting. If all else fails, I'll write more while I'm on the plane. Keep an eye on my website! I'm going to be added more content soon! I want to make a section for my traditional art and update my 3d section.

Anyway thanks for reading my frazzled tired post.

-Rachel

ARGolf Website

The Website recently got a makeover. The content is still a work in progress, but it looks so much better! Check it out!

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

GDC Prep

So we're getting ready for this big event of the quarter, GDC! Thankfully it's over spring break, but there is so much to do.

Personally I've been working on updating my website, rachelorosz.webs.com. It's still a work in progress, but much better than before. I've also been pushing through with my resume and cover letter. I should actually be finished with all these things this weekend, and they should be ready to send off to companies.

Here are the project updates

Augmented Reality Golf Project

The Team and I created a fly through of our first level for GDC. It looks great, though the smaller assets didn't make it it. It's going to be shown at RIT's booth at GDC.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RITargolf#p/a/u/0/YadM3wE6dnM

This is hosted on the official Augmented Reality Golf Youtube channel, which is where we'll post all official videos. Next quarter look out for the new trailer and some actual game play! I'm really glad it turned out so well.

The new version of the website should hopefully be up by friday, at the very least monday. Kyle has been great about getting it working, it's such a pain. The team really needs someone dedicated to it who has knowledge of how it all works.

After GDC I'm officially leaving the project however. Unofficially I'll be helping Maddy, my replacement, when she needs it, but I really have over stretched myself, and I need to focus on graduation. Thankfully I've been training her all year, so it'll be left in capable hands.

Amplyopia Project

I've been working on a trailer for the game. Have I ever mentioned I'm NOT a video person? I've run into alot of problems, starting with Xfire. I will never again use that program to record footage. It crashed after effects every time, and the only solution I had to get usable footage was to really compromise the quality. I want this done by monday, so you guys can guess what my weekend is going to look like.

By the way guys, if you ever need to learn any kind of software, I recommend lynda.com. I've been using it to teach myself aftereffects and premier pro. Worth the money, has everything you need to get started. I'm going to be using this to teach myself so much. Weekends off? Who needs that! Optional training? HECK YA! Spring break I'll have a little bit of non work fun... I promise....

Side note
Isn't it great when you enjoy your work? It might be hard to tear youself away but man, it makes life a lot better!

RITgraph

Still going, still chugging. Last week I did a info session on being an Student Volunteer. I'm always surprised how much my members like that talk. I did another one at the start of the quarter, but the attendance was low (first week back of winter quarter, it was inevitable). Those who attended enjoyed it though, and so we did another one (a little closer to the SV deadline).

Kirk Lansman, our events chair organized our 4 week workshop series, which I think have been moderately successful. I'm hoping next quarter to have him set up more of these to help get attendance up. Winter Quarter is just impossible for clubs. We're VERY close to having our charter though, we just need information from our faculty adviser.

Special Effects Project

We're in contact with the studio. They're recommended changes to our project, and we're working on a proposal so we can get an official adviser. More info later


Anyway, those are the important updates for now.

Till next time,

Rachel

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!