Characters done in two different styles. Was supposed to finish this by the end of January, but eh, life.
January-February 2018 Chars
Leave a reply
Incomplete teams: Managing student projects with incomplete skillsets
It happens: sometimes you get a student team that doesn’t have a major skillset usually needed to make a game. Not that it’s impossible, but it means the team mentor has to consider what to do to make sure they are able to get a game out.
Now that’s actually not impossible: there are one-person games out there, and my previous research did focus on ensuring designers could survive a worst-case scenario of having no one to work with. With regard to student projects though, there’s a specific goal: the game has to showcase the students ability to conceive, plan, develop and finish a project.
Here are two student teams that had this problem that asked me for mentoring. Continue reading
Three Minute Answers: Az Samad on Becoming a Game Music Performer
Az Samad of www.azsamad.com has quite a background as a guitarist, composer and music teacher. He performed in Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy in KL, Comic Fiesta and Game Start.
This interview was part of a set of interviews captured for a KDU event called Interplay to talk on the benefits of gaming for young people. Here, Az talks about how his experience with gaming led him to one of his career highlights: playing Final Fantasy music in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
Three Minute Answers: Gwen and Sharon on Dealing with the Impostor Syndrome
The “Impostor Syndrome” is something commonly cited as a reason new developers feel uneasy about saying they do game development, or to even engage with those who do. I do feel the need to ask about it since as a lecturer, I noticed that lack of confidence in one’s ability to develop does impede a student’s ability to expand their abilities and network.
Here, Gwen and Sharon gave IMHO a pretty good answer on how does one deal with the feeling of having an Impostor Syndrome.
Three Minute Answers: Sharon and Gwen, audio designers of IMBA Interactive
Sharon Kho and Gwen Guo are two audio designers from IMBA Interactive, a company in Singapore specializing in creating sounds for games. Being GAMBIT graduates – a collaboration between the Singapore govt and MIT to create future game dev professionals – they talk on their journey from their personal interests up till becoming co-workers in this unique setup.
Here they talk about the development of their company IMBA: on how it was conceived, their progress from starting with very little capital, to a view of the foley setup they have in their studio.
Three Minute Answers: Kris Antoni of Toge Productions
Dear Canon G7X. You’re an awesome camera. Your tendency to auto-focus based on your whim instead of what’s right in front of you is a tad annoying though. The blurred interview subject is unfortunate and is something I won’t let happen again.
The interview subject is solid though, and the audio is clear. Kris Antoni of Toge Productions (Indonesia) talks about his journey being a game developer and also becoming a publisher to serve a need he noticed in Indonesia.
Kris was also instrumental in creating physical gamedev gatherings in Indonesia and pushed to make them bigger and bigger…. until it became the Game Prime event in Jakarta. That event was one I was invited to attend and met people like Kris.
Three Minute Answers: Jin Kai
In Melbourne, while attending Unite, I bumped into an ex-student of mine. Found out how he went from developing apps in Malaysia to doing game development in China to currently being in Melbourne.
Here he details his progress from being a programmer, to an Associate Producer to considering into delving into design.
Jin Kai describes his process of discovering his strengths in game development and the importance of making time to find those strengths.
Three Minute Answers: Sam
I did this interview for KDU’s Interplay Symposium early this year. The Symposium was trying to tackle the negative perspectives the public has on gaming activity, so I went out and compiled video interviews of people whom gaming has been very positive for them. A good change from doom-and-gaming-addiction-gloom.
Sam here talked about what players knew regarding the storytelling app Episode. In the video she details how a fan can evolve herself or himself into a superstar by recognition from their peers – and eventually earn an income – due to how Episode is designed.
Bert Monroy, Photoshop guy since the ages
Bert Monroy at SEA Connect 2017
Lecture from SEA Connect 2017. As he puts it, he was the guy that learned Photoshop before it’s called that, and has been guiding its development since. He was quite proud to point out the Grass and Maple brushes in the Brushes set: “That’s my brush.”
The history talk was fascinating as he was telling it as he lived it. Here, upon discovering the Mac, he created a Clip-Art like package of human parts. Continue reading
Game Character Doodles
Trying out some game character ideas.