Heya all,

Good news: I've just finished my 5th semester at the Centre NAD! Only one remains and after that, job hunting in the game industry as an animator

Bad news: for the SECOND time this year, a project had to be delivered on Monday, the day AFTER a convention. I had to skip Quebec City's Nadeishicon due to me being on stand-by if the project went awry, just like I had to skip G-Anime this January due to having a previous project to be delivered the day after the con.

However... the last project was a success! In short, we had to make a game demo for a side-scrolling platforming, featuring something funny. Here's the fake game footage... well... "fake"... the game was playable in UDK, but we recorded the footage and edited it after, like adding the music, sound effects and voices. [link]
(Please note that the video is in French)

On DA, credits go to:
Character modeler (crabs): Gabriel Blain
Character modeler (tentakitten): Alexandra Dallaire-Fortin
Level Designer: Carlo Gazzola
Animator (tentakitten): yours truly, Jean-Christophe Goyette

The rest (no DA):
Level artists: Jackie Demers, Katérie Fillion, Jean-François Faucher, Majic Ourman and Molouk Lashaei
Animator (crabs): Caroline Hamel

I hope I get a good grade for that project, because on that course, I got a rocky start. The project we had to deliver, by the end of January, was a total disaster... and the teacher graded us pretty badly due to that. We had many problems with Perforce and UDK in order to make the game work, we had problems with the assets and their size, I was supposed to get a pair of arms AND 2 characters to animate, but only got the arms due to issues with the former character modeler. Aw man... a total epic fail across the board. The second project was a mile better and I got a good grade, promting me to keep going; if I had another bad grade, I would have dropped the course and try again next semester.

This last project really took a toll on me:
- It took us 2 weeks, out of 9, to conceptualize the idea and the game.
- I had one major head start with the animations of the tentakitten after those 2 weeks... but 3 weeks BEFORE the delivery, the teacher spoke to me and told that it would not be good enough. I had to redo EVERY animation with a modified rig. The teacher liked it, at least. I swear, I was so nervous the week after I corrected everything that I almost puked in class. Y'know, stress and anxiety cocktail.
- I spent a week correcting the rig, skinning the final model and re-animating the creature... It was downright horrible, I wanted to die since it was that spirit-breaking. How would you feel if your boss has told you that you were doing great, but then he changes his mind and tells you that you suck? You would feel enraged and discouraged... and just want to shout "COULDN'T YOU HAVE TOLD ME SOONER?!?". Yeah, I don't want to go through that ever again.
- We were supposed to have 2 level designers on the team, but one of them had to drop the course because he failed 2 previous assignments, leaving Carlo alone for the UDK stuff. Carlo pulled it off, and I tip my hat to him.
- Many bugs popped up 5 days before delivery, so we had to work overtime to correct them, as Alexandra wanted the final build to make the trailer ASAP.

So yeah, LOTS of rest for the next days. I'm also trying to find a job to earn pocket change in the meantime, but I still have my old job to keep me occupied. I got a new game to play (Pandora's Tower), I got my 3-days pass to get for Otakuthon, I got a bunch of animation clips I'll do for my portfolio, as well as redesigning my portfolio from scratch (dated design), I got pounds to lose with my bike... School's out, summer's in!

What's next? Otakuthon in August and Montreal Comiccon this September. In the meantime, I'll hunt for photoshoots when talking about cosplay pictures. For the rest, well, it all depends on what games are coming. I just updated my Guilty Gear vs BlazBlue ver. 2 screen and I'm working on other screens as well. We'll see how it goes.

Alright, that's it for me, and I'll see you next time.

Cheers