A good friend of mine introduced me to 3dmotive.com - a lovely website that is teeming with information from industry professionals. It's always, always good to watch and learn from people who are that much more learned than yourself that it makes you want to give up completely. It either makes you give up completely or push yourself to learn what they know so that you can both relate to their other work and also pioneer your own style with the foundation of their experience. It's a good thing. Most of the tutorials are locked to guests and accessible only to members which is fair enough. Membership for the long-term is about $204 a year. Not that bad when you see that that averages out at about $17 a month. But they take it out as one chunk, so it's a bit more noticeable. Nevertheless, it's a pretty small price to pay to learn from people who know a great deal about what they are doing. And - from what I've seen - more than adequately able to teach well; even through a short video.
Another high point of the last few weeks was the ability to doodle and draw for myself! Although my ideas for university flood my mind (well, it's not so much a flood of my mind as it is a sitting on my mind like a reservoir), it's always nice to watch something or involve myself in something that's completely different to what I've been making my job for the past five months.
I don't get ill very often, so when I do, it's quite spectacular. December saw this happen. The week before Christmas, no less. I kindly gave whatever it was I had to my dear wifey and in return, caught it back off her just after Christmas. Share and share alike. That's how we roll. I took the time to think things over and just rest. I hadn't really played many games lat year until that point, so I took it upon myself to do some painstaking research into the world of Pandora in Borderlands 2. I'm Axton. I love him. IT. It. I love it. The game.
One of the biggest learning curves I found over the Christmas weeks came from my family. Now; my wifey has a pretty decent grasp of what it is I've been looking at over the past five months because she's been involved from the start. I ramble to her incessantly and, by her grace, she listens. Or at least nods along in the right places. This is a wonderful thing because she questions some of my thoughts and helps them move on and progress. She is also free from having the mind of a games designer. Things are as they are offered to her. There's no thinking about an end game or mechanics. There's an idea and there's the idea's clothes. If the clothes look odd, we'll change them. If they're ill-fitting, we look at the idea underneath and see what bits need reforming. There's nothing about the insides. Nothing about the intestines or lungs or heart - the inner workings. Just a basic view of a simple idea. This works well because all changes, however impractical, are logical. There's no changing for changing's sake. It's design at the simplest level.
With the rest of my family - the ones who aren't as involved but take just as much of an interest; the explanation of what I'm researching and the actual creation of it requires as much information as my wifey has but in a fraction of the time. One of the biggest things I've learned over the past couple of weeks is how to give a short, concise overview and explanation of my game to people who have a very little idea of what a mobile phone is, let alone what an Augmented Reality app. for it is. Or what Augmented Reality is in general. Explaining things in a small, well-rounded package and still having extra information for questions people have has been a great learning experience.
It's been a great year and one that promises to fuel an even greater year to come. I can't wait.
Peace.
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