As he says, “believe it or not, these guys spend a lot of time making the games you love, and they have a lot of knowledge to share.” Now, I don’t know if I could make such claims of myself, but it’s definitely a noble idea – I’ve long believed that games developers (and not just the famous, high-ups that you’ve probably already know about) should get a bit more recognition for the hard work they put in to make the games that you play!

It’s still early days (you can already find me on the Artists page) but the site needs more blogs and more input! The more the better! If you’re involved in games development and you’ve got a blog, you should get yourself over there and submit your site for listing. If you don’t have a blog, maybe you should consider getting one? GameDevBlogs.net also has a presence on Twitter, so get going!

If nothing else, it should ensure I keep my blog more up-to-date! ;)

Twitter is incredibly flaky in this regard; 99 times out of 100 it claims Twitter is over capacity. Apparently the maximum image size limit allowed is 800k, but I rarely get it to upload unless the image is somewhere in the region of 200k (a.k.a. hideously compressed).

Get it sorted please Twitter!

Anyway, here it is in action:

Should you wish to follow me on Twitter, you can do so here: http://www.twitter.com/asphaltOnline

I am aware that this post might come across as a shameless, shallow attempt to gain more followers, but it’s really just so I can show off my new background, honest guv!

Oh and the Rockstar website does have some awesome wallpapers and avatar images by the way. If you’re into that sort of thing, you should definitely visit the Rockstar Downloads page.

I’ll be uploading and backdating my work from the last few weeks as soon as I remember where I put the the files ;)

Of course, the other reason I want to take a break is because I’ll be starting at Rockstar North next week! It seems foolish to spend the first 3 months of a new job, in a new city, being locked away in a new apartment when I should be out socialising, learning my way around, making friends and throwing my all into the new job!

I’ll do another post about the move up to Edinburgh, but for up-to-minute news you can just follow my Twitter feed or search for the hashtag #operationEdinburgh ;)

A little late to the party I admit, but I’ve only just got hold of my post and this May copy of EDGE magazine. There’s a rather large feature on the upcoming PlayStation Move controller and games, and who should appear on page 68? Why, it’s none other than yours truly. Hello!

At last, my plan for world domination is finally in motion! Shame they didn’t think much of TV Superstars! 8)

Thanks to @MrTom for the heads-up all those weeks ago!

Awesome polling station photo (via @getavote)

Hope you did too!

And where is it that I will be going? Well…

Heck yes!

That’s right folks, in July I’ll be heading up to Edinburgh to go and work as an animator at none other than Rockstar North, the studio that brought you GTAIV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, to name just their recent hits! I don’t even know what I’m going to be working on at this point, but I do know that it’s going to be awesome.

This really is like a dream come true. It certainly makes me feel like all the hard work I’ve put in (particularly the past 16 months of Animation Mentor – which have nearly killed me) have been totally worth it. Talk about a confidence boost, eh?

It’s all happened rather fast but I’m really excited about starting. Fortunately I’ll be allowed to finish my current term at AM before I start (it was after all, the main reason I decided to leave Cambridge). In fact, I will be working alongside former SCEE colleague and AM chum Andy Davis, who is a fantastic animator!

As you might be able to tell, I’m quite excited. Many thanks to Jim Jagger for offering me an interview and to Facebook for putting links to my reel and CV on his News Feed ;)

My dear friend Paul, alerted to me IOGraph this week – it’s a rather simple but lovely program that records your mouse movements across your desktop and outputs a PNG. Why? Well, why the heck not!

You can also add your desktop background into the image to clearly show where your mouse pointer spends most of its time – I just added the major traffic routes (Maya, basically) as notes on Flickr.

I think the results are quite striking – what do you reckon? I might well try a little experiment once I finish work where I try and run it every day for the 3 months that I’m off and then animate the results somehow… Could be cool!

The Choice

I say “this week” but this is something that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now. I feel like I didn’t get enough out my last term at AM due to a number of factors, not least because things at work have been ramping up and because AM Term 4 covered stuff that I hadn’t really done before. I was really happy with my pantomime piece but I was really disappointed with my dialogue shot; it just didn’t turn out as I’d hope. Juggling 20-30 hours of animation studies on top of a 40 hour working week for 12 months really took it’s toll on me, hence why I opted to take a Leave of Absence at Christmas and recharge my batteries for 3 months.

But soon enough, there was the invoice for AM Term 5 sitting in my inbox and I had a choice to make: try and juggle my normal working week with the most difficult term at AM (multi-character dialogue shot) or take a risk; do the course full time, treat it like a full time job and really nail it. Although I’ve spent weeks stressing about my decision, at the end of the day I think I probably knew all along that this was definitely the right decision.

The Plan

Naturally, there’s no way I could afford the tuition fees for the course alongside rent in Cambridge and living costs whilst not taking an income, so I will be moving back to my parents’ place in Enfield for the duration of the term. It is incredibly comforting to know that my parents are willing and able to help me achieve my dream and I am eternally grateful for the contribution they have made/are making to my career.

At this point, the plan is basically throw my all into this term and really make the most of it. I’m intending to treat it like a full time job and do a full time job’s worth of work each day. This should allow me to continue to have a “life” and it will be much better for my health! At the same time, I will be putting together a new show reel (currently in production) and I will be applying for jobs in the hope of securing employment by the time I finish Term 5 at the end of June.

The Risk

The risks should be fairly obvious. There is no back-up plan; if I can’t get a job when I finish AM, that would be… awkward. At the same time, I’ve been in full employment at Sony now for over 3 and a half years and I’ll have been studying Animation Mentor for 18 months by the time I’m done. I feel like I’ve got enough experience, released titles and passion to go anywhere I want. I ought to be very employable. I certainly hope somebody out there thinks so.

The Move

So what of Sony? Well I’ve had an awesome time over the past 3 and a half years, worked on some major titles with loads of amazing, passionate and creative people. I will be desperately sad to leave Cambridge and all the good friends I’ve made since I’ve been here. The massive support, camaraderie and fun I’ve had at the studio can’t be underplayed and I can only hope that wherever I end up will half as good as my time at Cambridge.

And I guess that’s about all I have to say for now. If anyone is looking for passionate, experienced character animators to start work in early July, let me know.

Thanks for reading!

It was sent out from Shopto on Tuesday and as such, should have been with me on Wednesday. Without going into a whole load of detail, there were some issues about where it was meant to be delivered. After calling just about every UKMail depot in the area and talking to Shopto numerous times to get them to chase up the issue as well, it eventually transpired that the package had gone missing. Pain. In. The. Ass.

Anyway, I got a refund and dragged myself down to a bricks and mortar shop to pay over the odds for it 8)

Still, it is now in my possession and man, it is nice:

Now, you might argue that I’m incredibly sad for taking some photos of a beautifully packaged game, but screw you asshole! I can’t help it if I really appreciate well-constructed cardboard!

/geekout