Birthdayness

Wow its been awhile since I updated. I know, when I first started this, blog thing, I was honestly wondering how long I'd be able to keep it up. Turns out the answer to that is less than a year! There's a bunch of stuff to update this thing on and I'll try to hammer them out one by one.

1) Jade Empire. Yes, I downloaded the game just to see what it was all about. Cost a bit of money - my guess is 14 bucks or so, but I really don't know since Microsoft uses those stupid points that you have to buy to put towards a game. I thought initially those points was something you earned in game, not that you actually have to pay real money for it. Anyway, Jade Empire is awesome - an RPG similar to Mass Effect as far as building your character is concerned. The fight system is nothing I've seen before, letting the user chain attacks from different fighting styles into one combo.

2) Work - I've been transferred to work on Skate2 - a game that needs some help right about now. It's coming together, but with final submission in about 2 weeks, there's still a long way to go. And the team has been pulling 12 hour week days and 8 hour weekends for some time now. It's an ambitious game I will say, and the more ambitious the vision, the bigger the QA team. There's about 40ish people on the team right now, half online half single player mode. Each team is split up into minor teams taking care of individual parts of the game like challenges, modes, interface, etc. I'm for online interface (offline interface is someone else). I've been intending to save up for a laptop and working as much overtime as my body will allow and made some decent money as a result. Saved about half the money i need for my laptop sofar. But I'm starting to wonder whether i want one anymore considering I can't get XP for it.

Just got my contract extended last ... Thursday was it? Or last Friday, one of the two. Anyway, it got extended all the way till Apirl 14th. Talked to Ding about it and he checked the schedule for Wii Tennis and lo and behold, that was the end date for Wii Tennis as well. Which means I'm not sure if they're planning on firing me after that or what, but I hope to be able to climb the QA ladder, as a backup if in case I don't make it as an artist as I work on improving my artistic abilities.

Sara also got let go and this was our first week without her. Damn, I miss Sara and her sass already. And midway through the week, we find out that Jeff got moved over to the Vancouver location so there's hardly anybody left anymore. Trish is still trying to decide whether she moves back to Ontario or stays here since her contract was extended too.

I also told Nate I was gonna get some more logos done for him for his Tshirt business venture but I haven't yet as of this writing ... oops. As a reward for last time, he got me Army of Two , cause I chose it. Got home and played it a couple times but I've reached the conclusion now that it's really not that great of a game. Cody even msged me and told me it was bad just as I was getting into it. I'm not sure if its opinion that tainted mine of if it's legitimately bad game but as of right now, it's not my favourite. Mind you it's not that bad either. Still waiting for my free copy of Dead Space which comes in 2 weeks according to Yavar.

Yes, and that copy of Dead Space comes as a result of our work on FaceBreaker Wii which got a 1st time pass on 3 different levels of QA!! This is a big deal for me because a) it's my first QA project ever and b) I was one of two responsible for compliance issues on the core team which made it past Nintendo no problem and Nintendo is supposedly really anal about their compliance issues and c) this is a new title that EA was taking a real gamble on. So at least on the quality part, I did my job! So Mike Richardson (the lead QA guy of the entire place, i think that's his name anyway) threw a first time pass party for the team and everyone involved in the QA process was there from the QA label team, the core team, the Shared Services team who worked on the game, even Yavar, Mathieu, Sanaz and Stacey were there for hiring us in the first place, lol. They were making a pretty big happy deal out of it all. The champagne they brought, Mike said it was "non-alcoholic" but he seemed to have gotten it mixed up. Cause after a few small cups of champagne, I was starting to feel a bit woozy, and then realized after the bottle I gotten mine from said "12%" alcohol.

Also on Friday, to congratulate the skate2 team for finding x amount of bugs in the last 2 weeks, matt decided to throw a forget it friday event specifically for our team. Had like 2 beers and practically conked out for overtime that night. But I think I worked well drunk because first of all, I hid it quite well. Found about 4-5 bugs in 2 hours. But in the last hour of overtime i couldn't work anymore, too tired so I jsut sat there and free tested the game until it was time go to home.

3) Becoming a Professional Artist - Just last Friday i was browsing the forums at work and there was a posting that someone wanted a concept artist for some new IP they were working on, but they didn't say anything about whether it was for an in-company thing or a project on the side. They had posted the message about ten days before and I'm regretting not having replied until now. Not that I can be considered good enough for the job in the first place but i rather do it and say that i tried than not doing a thing about it at all. Emailed Brandon with my basketball player and bust models but he had pretty much the same thing to say "draw draw draw and learn the basics" so that's what I've been doing for the last little while, whenever work allows some time for it.

No More NFS ...

Starting to get the feeling the QA department at work is starting to wonder what to do with me. After testing basketball for 3 days, they moved me and the remaining members of the original facebreaker team over to a "fresh eyes" testing team for NFS HD. That would be fine and all normally ... except the NFS QA team is probably hands down the largest in all of EAQA existence and adding us to the mix won't really change much. Sofar we have't found many bugs, less than 10 between the 4 of us. And we've already been on the project for a week and 3 days as I write this.

The parents are renovating the basement, finally. They've been talking about it since before I graduated but now that I have, and gone out and gotten a quasi-job and the whole bit, they're actually acting on it. Which kind of sucks because that means the computer has to be moved upstairs and I'm not sure for how long, and the state that my room is right now, probably couldn't hold much more. So I decided to get a laptop instead. It'll be useful not only because it'll allow me to work on my personal projects while the renovations are going on, but I will also be able to work on them wherever I am instead of being chained to this desk all day at home. My only issue right now is I'm not sure as to the tech specs of the laptop I will need. Lots of friends to advise me on the matter though, so I'm not expecting it to be much of a problem.

To save up money for said laptop, I volunteered to do OT this weekend. At first I was tempted to do Saturday and Sunday, but then realizing I'd be doing 12 days of work straight, i turned sunday down but am still working on saturday. I'll see how i'm feeling then, and then decide on what's gonna happen on Sunday if its not already too late. Just gotta be careful not to go over 45 hours of work or the government will tax my sorry ass.

Maybe not getting fired?

Just a quick update since I have to get to bed real soon cause I've got work in the morning. So last wednesday they transferred us over to NCAA basketball to run through a list of scripts. I'm not sure what state the game is in an the moment, or what milestone, but we were just filling a work order sitting in the WWQA department for about 3 days. The first day, Wednesday, wasn't so bad although i'll admit the game was boring as shit though. We were just running through screens and testing controller pulls and the like.

Dave was pissing me off as usual and i was taking it out on donovan which made me feel bad - but come to think of it, he's also done a few things to get under my skin. doesn't matter though - i ended the day by pretty much flipping on dave and giving him a piece of my mind at the expense of looking like a bad worker to Jeff. Talked to Ding, turns out he doesn't like Dave much either, hehehe. So now that he's not my ATC, the real dirt comes out, love it.

Thursday i called in sick. the truth is I wasn't really sick - i was feeling under the weather, yes, but that's not really odd since this job is seriously robbing me of sleep. But I had a dentist appointment at 1130 but they called to make it earlier at 11. by the time i get out of the appointment it would've been too late to show up for decent hours at work anyway.

Friday i went back to work feeling a little sick for real, but decided to suck it up because it was payday! And as usual i forgot to pick up my paycheck at lunch so i went over to sanaz's office but interrupted them in the middle of deciding who to fire - which was awkward. Yavar sat us down and told me, donovan dave and rocky that we were going to be moved to NFS HD on monday as a "fresh eyes team", meaning we were to approach it as a group of end users judging the game for how it is, not tainted by any of the core team members' opinions. Too late for that, lol.

Nate also recommended me to a friend of his, the development manager for Wii tennis. I also have Ding helping to pull me into the project. If I get in on this project, that means I'm guaranteed to stay till at least summer of next year, which is quite a long time to get my nose farther into the EA art department. Here's hoping everything turns out well.

About to get fired

Or let go, i should say. The game's coming to an end. We're finalizing today. Although the contract is supposed to end in October (my guess is to make room for any errors and must-fixes), our game's been hitting its milestones on time and WWQA wasn't able to find anything that had to be fixed that we haven't already logged into the system. Jacob was able to find some compliance issues that slipped through me but I don't think they're anything too noticable.

So because everything is on time, hopefully the powers that be will see that our team is valuable to keep around, plus me since i have knowledge and experience in Nintendo compliance. However, even though that is what i'd like, I doubt they'll be keeping me on because projects are winding down. And if they do keep me on, it won't be for much longer.

It's okay though - i'm exciting to be able to dedicate lots of tome to working on my next character, complete with skin shader, YEAH! And I've made enough contacts I need over here at EAC who I plan on communicating with on a regular basis - doing those logos for nathan and updating my character progress with Brandon so hopefully if he sees enough promise in me, he'll ask me to come on as a co-op guy if the opportunity arises. Also i don't have much time left with Charina so i'll be jumping on every employment opportunity she throws at me. Dave tells me they're should be letting us know what happens to us today but i wouldn't count us that lucky.

In other news, I just got rockband 2 today - nate was nice enough to buy it for me using his discount even though i gave him my own money, lol. Can't wait to get home to play it. gonna be getting it for cody cause there's none at the EAX store.

I'll update this as soon as i find out what's going on. i have nothing better to do here at work anyway.

Updates

So I decided to start working on a new character - I started the weekend after meeting with Brandon, and I'm gonna be putting Tammy on the backburner for now. She was coming along nicely but to be frank, I'm quite sick of her. This new character isn't going to be anyone special, just your average 6 foot tall white guy with different clothes, most likely going to be a basketball player so I can apply to EA with something relevant.

Work's been more or less the same, with some interesteing twists this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday they had me working up in Phase II for a bit, doing compliance scripts there. I got to meet one of the programmers to test out the bird minigame - more specifically, testing the fixes that he made. And then there were some hair clipping isues with Romeo which was themost interesting bit.

Reg came up to me and told me they needed some help up at the artworks department which was pretty exciting because I get to actually walk into the artwork station! I didn't realize who i'd be talking to until they led me to a workstation and Tam was there. Then he introduced me to Colleen, who i've seen on the list of employees before and knew she was a modeler that way. But I didn't realize she was a character modeler. So some changes were made to teh build and while we were waiting for it to load, I figured it'd be a good time to ask Colleen some questions about character modeling but didn't want to come off as being too forward.

Then Tam stepped in and told me now was a great time to ask some questions and then that's what Colleen realized what was going on, so I started talking to her about modeling, meshflow, z brush and what not. the other guy who was there - the one was helping with the hair clipping issue started giving his own tips too. Said he was a teacher at BCIT, teaching Maya. Asked him to check out my website when he had the time and told me his name was Elliott - the art lead for the team. I couldn't believe my luck!

Elliott promised to check out my site and get back to me on it. He hasn't done so yet as of this writing but I hope he will soon. I also forwarded the same email to Colleen and she hasn't got back to me either. That's okay, while I'm waiting I'll be working on Frank - my new default basketball player, lol. Almost done modeling him, just got to get his clothes on there, ears, feet, and then I'm ready to UV. Hopefully I'll be done by early next week so I can start applying to EA.

Probably among the worst days of my life

Well this week was probably one of the more depressing ones. First off it poured pretty much all week - gray, cloudy and cold. Alex left on Thursday to go back to school for a few semesters. He's hoping to come back next year as a programmer and I wish him all the luck. He was a great ATC. Ding's gonna be taking over for Alex in managing our team. I notice he's a little bit more of a hardass but not enough to warrant me hating him. I'm actually quite partial to Ding, he's a nice guy.

I finally had the meeting with Brandon Jackson - an Asian guy, which was kind of surprising but not really important I guess. More important was what he had to say about my work. Pretty much told me i wasn't good enough to land a character artist job.

Funny that's the first thing I remember because he gave me a lot of compliments where he felt they were due. But for some reason, maybe it's in my nature, but I only remember the negative. But it's a pretty big blow when you have your dreams swiped right out from under you. Getting into the character artist field, I understand it is really competitive. And I realize that I have a lot to learn especially when I've only really been doing 3D for 2 and a half years when I've been drawing my whole life. He said I had a lot of things going right in my drawing but i'm keeping too much to my safe zone, not to be afraid to do more exploration. More importantly is to do more life drawing which I admit I haven't been doing enough of.

Looking back at my character models, they clearly aren't anywhere near the quality of professional realistic models. I shouldn't feel as disappointed as I do because everything makes sense, really. I just have to hunker down and get better. Practice, practice. It's easier said than done. But I have to really want it, and I do - and I can't get discouraged. Part of the desperation is to be independent and I guess i'm trying to get better for the wrong reasons as a result. But I feel i can do this. I look at the professional models and it's like ... I FEEL i can do it. But for some reason the work I pump out isn't reflecting that.

I have to prove it to myself first before I can hope to convince other people of what i can do. Maybe that's what's stopping me. there's alot to consider as to the reason of my short comings. Or maybe, I shouldn't even bother thinking about it. Just keep doing it and it will come to me naturally. After all that's what I've been doing my whole life, right?

Hmm ... i think i'm onto something here. That kind of reflects what Jackson was saying to me earlier about drawing. Just draw. Kind of like modeling, texturing and everything else I love doing. Don't think, just do. That's advice i can follow. I mean as it is, he says he sees potential. I may not see it myself, but the fact that someone that accomplished sees it, I can have faith in what they say. Believe in myself - at the risk of making this entry sound incredibly corny.

Sure I can do it now. But I can do it tomorrow. And if not that, then the day after that. It's like quitting smoking. I'll do it tomorrow, or the day after that, and if not, then the day after that. There's no reason I can't apply that to my artwork as well. YEAH.

Suddenly I'm starting to feel better. Not today, but tomorrow. Everyday is a new day, and a new chance to improve.

I'm going to be okay.

Yet another Dev meeting! WOOT!

Went in to talk to mr. chandler the other day, following reg's advice. Chandler told me to come back in september and I wasn't planning on another HR visit until then but reg said it'd be a good idea to stop by and see if he's heard anything new as to a character artist position. As aspected, he hadn't heard anything new and admitted to me he wouldn't know anything until the bodyshop decided they needed character artists. And even then he wouldn't know how many and other specifics until the head of the department contacted him. The positions on EA's website are currently open but they don't plan on filling them till around fall.

He suggested in contact someone named brandon jackson who is apparently some kind of lead artist in the bodyshop. so I said okay, and emailed brandon to see if he wanted to meet me so I had a chance to show him some of my work. Not expecting anything to come out of it, really. But then 2 days later I got an email back from him saying "it would be his pleasure" to go over my work. You know what this means - POTENTIAL job!! I'm pretty stoked about it.

That was the same day I got into a verbal showdown with dave. I can't even begin to describe the level of his ass kissing. He's got his nose so far up alex's ass, alex is coughing up dave's snot. dave decided to check up on the new guy, Adam asking if his regression was coming along okay, and adam said yes. Dave stayed and pressed him on his regression, making sure he was doing everything right, so I politely leaned over and told dave to get back to work. Adam is experienced in QA testing and didnt' need him hovering over his shoulder.

Dave took it as an attack against him and told me to stop talking and to get back to what i was doing. He was doing some kind of soak which left him with little else to do and that I should mind my own business. He turned around to get back to work but I wasn't quite finished with him yet.

So i turned to face him and said we didn't need him checking up on us and that alex was doing a fine job running the team by himself. "No thanks to you." he retorts back - which is the saddest comeback ever seeing has how i LET alex do his job.

Donovan told me afte that ALex talked to dave about it, and said it sounded like dave was the one who was pissed off and not me. Probably because alex saw in the truth in what i said but is just too damn nice to say anything about it to dave. whatever, like alex cares anyway. he's gone next thursday - going back to school.