Happy New Year! I've been a bit tardy on this blog, though with good reason - Wheelman has gobbled up my free-time like some kind of pilled-up workaholic. Thankfully the light can be seen at the end of the tunnel and we're finishing up with a lot of things. It's nice to get a sense of closure though it's a bit sad - there's always something strange about releasing something you've worked on for so long into the big, bad wilds and seeing it fend for itself. Needless to say that I've had a lot of fun working on the game as well as learnt a lot about the structure of the studio of a large game project. It was quite daunting and overwhelming to begin with, but now I think I've gotten into the groove and become part of the system too.
I do think that I can affect stuff through the simple process of communicating - during my time in the industry, I've noted the lack of communication can lead to some terrifying outcomes, so I often chat to co-workers about the game, send out feedback e-mails and the like. I also find that I'm more of a workaholic than ever before. It's strange - when I was lounging around playing Fallout 3 (scarily excellent game, by the way) during the extended Christmas break, I was getting slowly more and more bored of it all. I needed some kind of motivation with my time. It's also because it's the end of the year and it feels right to laze about scoffing chocolates and not getting up to much. I beat myself up about not being productive for myself rather than working on Wheelman. Now the New Year is upon me, I'm now starting to ramp myself up for some productive art-type stuff. I still have late-nighters but soon they will become a thing of the past and I can concentrate on my own arty passions like drawing huge paintings of cyborg lasses and....
The Cult of Karl video! Above is my first YouTube upload and it's a good one - the finished animatic for the video! See that pic at the top of the post? I did that today and it's a kind of "proof of concept" about how the video is going to look. I've already uploaded the animatic on my YouTube page - where I'm also starting to collate playlists of amazing animated (and non-animated!) music videos. My partner in crime (and the awesome writer of The Cult of Karl tune), Chris Merritt, has plugged the video and it's now managed to grab 1,000 views. So many views for my modest video! I think that both Chris and myself are benefitting from this exposure so it's definitely a great thing to do.
Now comes the hard part - working on the finished thing. It's great that I have a framework to build on top of in Flash now, though I am always weary of Flash as my extended experience working with it on Wheelman has given me the knowledge that it's a horrendously buggy piece of crap. I mean, there's things you can do in Flash which are, well, Flash, but they can't be exported in video format - which means I might have to cheat and use FRAPS to capture a running Flash file. It sucks, yep, but so does Flash at times. I'm wondering if Flash CS4 has solved all of its wonderous issues. Still, the prospect of getting a finished music video is very exciting indeed and could hopefully lead to bigger things for me during my spare time!
Oh, plug time - Official Wheelman website! It's up and there's lots of goodness to learn and glean from what I've been up to for these two years. We've been getting some bits and pieces in the print magazines, though not nearly enough coverage as we could get. Hopefully nearer launch things will gear up and sort themselves out.
This is a relatively short blog post for me, though this is due to the fact I've been busy again today doing work-type stuff, but (most importantly) being industrious and loving what I do. I'll keep these blog posts more regular and less like novels for the New Year. I do have some nifty resolutions too, one of which involves working less though only because I couldn't have worked any more last year..!
So with that, I will leave you as I venture to bed with dreams of Broccoflowers. Yep, they exist.
Nightnight! �
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