parker’s desk

One of the coolest things I’ve got­ten to do in the game indus­try was go to the Game Developer’s Con­fer­ence back in 2008…February, I think it was.  It was the big one in San Fran­cisco (there are a few oth­ers through­out the year, includ­ing one here in Austin), and it’s basi­cally just a ton of sem­i­nars — some bet­ter than oth­ers — on all sorts of things related to the game indus­try.  You plot out your day (I fre­quented many art sem­i­nars per­son­ally) and then it’s go-go-go until the day is over.  The sem­i­nars are given by other game devel­op­ers, their pay­ment being a free full pass (that’s well over $1,000 I believe) and obvi­ously one hell of an item to put on their resume.

I had planned last year but ended up not sub­mit­ting a pro­posal for a sem­i­nar; I’m very, very pas­sion­ate about the visual effects field and see all sorts of prob­lems and lack­lus­ter FX work in games that I often think is just a result of not think­ing things through before­hand (though I’m sure some was just crappy art­work, it happens). 

I did, finally, sub­mit one this year.  Wrapped it up and sent it off today, I hadn’t really real­ized how much I could do to upsell the sub­mis­sion though so I’m not espe­cially opti­mistic about it mak­ing it through this year.  I knew the requirements…100 word self bio (I hate writ­ing those), 200 word shipped titles his­tory, 400 word descrip­tion of your sem­i­nar and a 100 word “Attendee Take­away” where I explain what peo­ple should walk out of the sem­i­nar knowing/how they are inspired.  I got all of that done, I hadn’t real­ized I could also do things like putting together a web­site show­ing off some of the top­ics I’d be dis­cussing, or attach­ing a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion (which is a require­ment for Phase II, should you pass Phase I). 

The talk aims to, essen­tially, inspire peo­ple to work harder with cre­at­ing their visual effects — pay­ing more atten­tion to detail in how they use them (or don’t) through­out their game — while teach­ing them some of the pro­duc­tion hur­dles and crunch-inducing prob­lems that are bound to come up and how they can pre­pare for them or even work right around them.  The goal of the time saved comes full cir­cle to the orig­i­nal point of the talk, mean­ing it gives the artist more time to work on FX wast­ing less time get­ting caught with their pants down when pro­duc­tion slips.

The real bitch of it though was try­ing to pick a title for the talk.  I got every­thing entered, and then right there glar­ing at me was the “title” field.  I swear I must have stared at that thing for 10 min­utes, then e-mailed a few peo­ple at work ask­ing for sug­ges­tion.  Dustin Dob­son, Pro­ducer extra­or­di­naire (and a for­mer FX artist him­self) came up with a kick-ass title…

“Visual Effects: An Explo­sion of Prac­ti­cal Wisdom.”

Dustin along with Damon Waldrip gave me some great advice on review­ing my sub­mis­sion and offer­ing some points to change, but many really great thanks goes to (and a bot­tle of some kind of alco­hol if I get accepted) our studio’s Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer, Mike “Mr. Mike” McShaf­fry.  From the moment I asked a ques­tion about sub­mis­sions to sub­mit­ting my final ver­sion he was mak­ing sure I was going to fol­low through, review­ing my early drafts and then sug­gest­ing I get some salty vet­eran reviews in on it to boot.  Thank you, sir!

Alright…bed time.  Before mid­night, no less!  G’night!

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