ACT - Setting Up

Today was fairly stressful as I needed to help with the ACT show and also finish setting up my personal portfolio. We decided that we needed to collate our fireworks into one movie file and then project them as this would look really interesting.

ACT - Financing

Today me, Sally and Allister started working out the materials that we would need for the degree show. We worked out which materials we would need for everybody and went into town to start collating the prices from different shops. We then returned to University and went through the finance system to get the money to buy the materials with.

ACT Meeting - Floor Plan

At today's ACT meeting, a floor plan was decided upon. It is a lot more easier to picture how everything will be now that there is a visual aid. It's been decided that the room will be split down the middle, half of it will be an abstract casino and half will be room for out portfolios. This is a good idea as now we don't need to think about how to lead the visitors into the back room, where we originally planned to have our personal portfolios.

ACT MSN Meeting

Today I received an email from Tom, requesting that we have a short meeting via MSN because he was unsure that his fireworks would fit in. Me, Sally and Tom discussed everybody's fireworks online and felt that they did all work together as it showed different types of originality.

Fluffy Logic Games Company

Today we had a talk from a company called Fluffy Logic based in Bristol. It was incredibly useful for me. There was lot of general talk about how people worked in the field which I already knew. However, I found the talk about future projects that they were doing and advice on how to get into the industry really useful.

The tips on getting into the industry are:
Play the companies games and understand how they work.
Don't rely on a degree to get into the job. There is too much competition.
Develop some original and popular Flash games to prove that you have talent.
Know about a lot of different games, even obscure free PC games.

He talked a lot about how to develop computer games. The essence is to have a simple core idea that is easy to explain but can be expanded upon.

To further my chances of getting a job in the industry, I need to do the following:
Keep up to date with the latest games.
Play the games of companies that I have interviews with.
Create some Flash games and open them up to the public using a medium like Newgrounds.com to gain popularity.
Research new and emerging interesting PC games.

Degree Show Confusion

Today I received an email suggesting that lecturers at the University weren't happy with the way we had taken the theme for the degree show and wanted us to follow the other group's theme. This was very worrying and caused a lot of panic as many people had already started projects for it.
In the morning, we discussed this with the lecturers and they seemed to know nothing about this. It seemed that there was either some confusion or a breakdown in communication with the staff. Either way, we were given the go-ahead to continue our projects so nothing has actually changed which is a big relief.

My First Stop Motion

Today myself, Sally and Allister started putting together everything on a project we were doing, Making Time, a stop motion animation. None of us had made a stop motion animation before. Even though it is approaching the end of the year, it is still important to learn as many new skills as I can so I find this project especially exciting. We were learning about many things such as skeletons, animation styles. lighting, camera, sound and stage making. We designed a stage and had it made for us in the woodwork department. I always enjoy using the other departments to further digital projects. We have come across all sorts of new problems and new solutions as you would expect when somebody is working in a new medium. We have also learnt some new software, iStopMotion, which is basic but it is useful to learn as many different types of software as possible.