Off to a bad start, early in the year I came to the sad realisation that the BioWare Montreal studio I had devoted the better part of two years building and promoting was never to fully realise its ambition due to a variety of factors – all of which predicted by team members much more cynical yet clearly more incisive than I ever gave them credit for. Let me clarify that the studio is still a great place for juniors wishing to learn or seniors looking to be at least partially involved in a major AAA game series, but for myself there was no challenge commensurate with my own goals remaining there.

While putting out the majority of cinematic moments for what has been celebrated as one the best games of last year in Mass Effect 2, we’d amassed a cinematics team of the calibre I’m unlikely to ever find again. 5 of the 8 animators had been art or animation directors on previous AAA projects both inside and out of BioWare, and as such we were highly self-motivated and able to put together technically complex cinematics despite being over 2000 miles away from the core team in Edmonton. Unfortunately life imitated art and on this suicide-run of an adventure only 2 of the 5 survive at the time of writing.

So conflicted was I in my decision to leave this dream-team that following my first of several interviews at another studio I found to my horror I’d mistaken their washroom’s waste basket for a urinal as I wrestled with my thoughts. Thankfully no-one pinned the mess on me and I got hired regardless – just don’t tell anybody at Ubisoft, ok?

What followed were several weeks of relaxation and travel to my parents’ just-finished home in Cyprus in my self-proclaimed role as International Man of Leisure while I awaited the new work-visa to come through. (A word of advice – don’t quit your previous job before you have something new lined up no matter how frustrated you are – especially when as a foreigner you can be kicked out the country after just a few months). So now at the new job I’m having to start over and once again prove myself as a valuable team-member as is always the case when one makes a switch into unknown territory. I’d say this was a good period, but since leaving BioWare Montreal I’d been constantly accompanied by a lingering frustration as to what might have been, given the enormous potential that (perhaps) still rests with the fledgling studio.

This period of cautious optimism was short-lived however as, looking forward to our first summer together in 4 years uninterrupted by visitors, a cruelly ironic twist of my own foreign status and the long-distance nature in which we first met sent my then-girlfriend away to the UK to work for an indeterminate amount of time. This time became indefinite when after only a few weeks she decides she prefers living alone to living with me. What followed were several weeks of excessive drinking and strip-clubs as good friends did their best to cheer me up, which to a degree was surprisingly successful – reinvigorating a social-life static from years of coupledom and clarifying things when I discovered I was far more upset with my BioWare breakup than with the girl. The darkness remained though with the fact that I’ll never see my dog again (after 4 years they become like kids) and I had to go through the trouble of selling the condo we bought together, and do this all on my own. Then things got really bad…

Right before a trip to Poland for my friend’s marriage, (followed by a lonely yet reflective week in Paris booked before the split), I had the misfortune of flooding the kitchen via an overnight burst pipe. While I initially appeared to get off with minor damage, (both downstairs neighbours’ ceilings were ruined and were immediately forced to move out), on returning from Paris I found the entire wooden floor of my (recently listed for sale) condo to be warped in the extreme. A further investigation showed mildew to have permeated throughout under the floorboards so I was to spend the next 5-6 weeks jumping from 1-star hotel to worse while the place was repaired at the snail’s pace preferred by Quebecois floorers and road-workmen alike.

Now, with the insurance for hotels only paying out after the fact, and lack of access to a kitchen to cook my own meals causing an inordinate amount of eating out, these weeks, (and the several proceeding), were spent as close to the breadline as I have been since my student days, oftentimes leading to decisions as to what food I could purchase that would realistically avoid going without before the next paycheque. Add on to this an immediate fall into sickness and work demands calling for me to pull consistently long hours and one can imagine that this was certainly not a fun time and one that will definitely not be easily forgotten. Matters were made significantly worse by the realisation that selling so early on a mortgage so close after the financial collapse of the modern world would incur a penalty upwards of $20K, in turn leading to added stress for a potential future of debt to the bank on top of no longer owning property.

But, as things often do, several elements all came together at once at the end of the year to make me realise I am firmly past this hump in my otherwise fruitful Canadian adventures. It turns out that listing your property for sale then denying access to potential buyers for weeks on end due to vacating the premises builds up a certain artificial anticipation. That, coupled with brand new flooring throughout, created a flurry of competing viewings and offers all at once which were favourable enough to not only cover the mortgage termination penalty, but leave a little in my pocket to aid rebuilding my furniture collection. A promotion to Animation Director coincided with the completion of the heavy work deadline as well as the move into my new loft apartment to embark once upon the bachelor life I had lived back in Alberta, and before that in Scotland.

After a successful meeting at Ubisoft HQ in Paris in late December things are looking great going into the new year. Our project has been green-lit for production and we’re already strides ahead of where we should be at this stage so I intend on hitting the ground running as the team gradually pours back in after the holidays. Put in perspective, I realise it’s really not such a bad year as I still have all my limbs intact and these are all problems borne of being in such a fortunate position in the first place so I hope this rant doesn’t offend anyone. I just need to get that shit out as part of grabbing 2011 by the horns, and can’t wait to share all the amazing things we’re working on as and when the project is announced. Things are going quite ridiculously well outside of work as well, but this isn’t a blog on that kind of filth so I’ll just close by wishing everyone a great new year and good luck in all your various endeavours – artistic or otherwise. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this it’s that no matter how bad things get, it’s never as bad as it first seems when you must cut your losses, or have them cut for you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That old post reminds me that Rockstar are still one of the few developers that have fully adopted Naturalmotion’s behavioural physics-based Euphoria, (most likely due to NM’s stipulation of inserting their own guys onto your team), leading to some unresponsive controls which are thankfully greatly decreased in the recent cowboy offering. The big sell will undoubtedly be their soon-to-be-released “Backbreaker” above, featuring character-on-character interactions as a centrepiece.

So in addition to ramping up the gym attendance, it was high time for my first serious stab at a diet – specifically one that would kickstart the old metabolism to make it sustainable when going back to “real life”. Thankfully, I have the support of a similarly enthused exercise nut in MJ who has joined me in this challenge and proven invaluable in terms of forcing good food habits on the both of us.

As such, I can say that after just a couple of weeks of cold-turkey I found it really easy to manage, all the while eating better quality food than ever with the only downsides being the extended time to prepare meals and, hardest of all, facing the social challenge of not drinking around others, (each of the major spikes above being a piss-up). In addition to completely changing my food intake and greater exercise, part of this project involved picking up Wii Fit as a means of exercising at home while playing. However, much like every other Wii enterprise, I quickly found the exercises tedious and low-quality to the point of the balance board being a mere gimmick – how can you possibly get fit by balancing alone anyway? While I used it nearly every day, its scope was dramatically reduced to being nothing more than a fancy set of scales.

What I didn’t count on though, were the reinforcing effects of having your scales directly linked to a self-updating graph, charting progress (and regress) over the following months. These little triumphs are what drives decision making during the day, whereby not only are achievements and mishaps recorded, but calorie intake becomes something of a game to try and go for the “hi-score” in weightloss every day. The latest issue of Wired magazine has its cover and a sizeable section inside dedicated to exactly this – the power of personal data-tracking, with articles on Nike+ and other gadget-related accessories, though for some reason overlooks Wii Fit and its hidden weightloss meta-gaming.

Now with just 9lbs left to achieve the ideal BMI of 22, but with a 2-week holiday and the parents visiting from Scotland in a few days, I’ll once again have to run the gauntlet of alcohol and other temptations – which can be considered something of a boss fight.

A pleasant surprise, however, has been my awakening to the joys of cloud computing. Some time ago I placed all my bookmarks on Firefox’s Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) site after experiencing the pain of rebuilding my surfing experience during the initial move to the laptop, which really paid off during this situation.

Additionally, I’ve been dabbling in image editing with the AMAZING online photoshop-like suite of Aviary tools. This is really impressive stuff, especially the Node-based UI of Peacock for generating effects and really sparks the imagination for what could be available in the future – 3D animation software perhaps?

Lastly I’ve been writing up documents and spreadsheets with Google Docs – something that’s certain to continue even after the computer is fixed as it’s opened up a world of non-static, shared documentation. Having spent the last decade working out of server-based file-management systems like Perforce and jumping in and out of Maya’s referncing system, (not to mention several years tinkering with .html and .php), I find it abhorrent to work on documents static or local.

I’d be interested to know if there are other cloud-based software out there I should be aware of?

There are instructions as to the various stages of the art creation but unfortunately the text is image-based so I can’t babel it. While there are 5 characters at the time of writing, it looks like it’s going to grow over time so certainly something to check back on.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jason Porath for swiftly providing a translation for the stages of production:

1. Get the design of the character, usually from the art director, or sometimes Rough Design. One character usually takes about 3 days.
2. Make a 3d model of the character. This usually takes 2 weeks per character. You also make the ranges of motion, which takes around 2 months/character.
3. Render out the 3d character. To bake out all the animation for one character usually takes around 2 weeks.
4. Touch up the render, according to art director’s wishes. This usually takes 1 week per character.
5. Add in additional stuff like wrinkles, muscle creases, and the like, while maintaining the form. This takes each character around 6 and a half months (!). This is where all the character’s consistency in form is checked.
6. Adding in gradients. This takes 2 and a half months per character.

Each character usually has around 500 frames of animation, but some are up to 4x that.

Officer: What is your status in Canada?
Me: I’m on a work permit.
Officer: And what kind of work do you do?
Me: I make videogames.
Officer: Made any famous videogames I might have heard of?
Me: Well… perhaps. My last big one was called Mass Effect? [...] It’s kind of an eighties sci-fi story in a similar vein to Star Tre…
Officer: Is it rated E for Everyone?
Me: No, M for Mature. It’s quite grown up.
Officer: [Indignantly] Well I’ll make sure my kids never get to play it.
Me: Well you make sure you do Officer, so you can carry out your job as a parent with every bit the efficiency of your day job.

OK, so the last line only played out in my head as I nod politely lest I wish to follow up with “Step on the gas!” and and ensuing police chase all the way to the Big Apple, but it’s one of the few times I’ve witnessed first-hand the ignorance of opinion that all videogames are for children. When are these parents going to finally get it that they are in fact QUITE RIGHT to ensure their kids don’t play senior-rated games? That’s the whole reason the ratings are there in the first place.

…he gets his inspiration from films, TV and other games, as well as art. But perhaps his best ideas come from a different place: “Being alone is very important. I go to the bathroom and then I try to poop and I’ll come up with a good idea.”

It would be interesting to know how many others in this creative industry find inspiration from unusual places and states of mind. For me it’s the bathroom, plus the acoustics are great in there too.

[via gamesindustry.biz]

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was becoming painfully obvious that my old PC just wasn’t cutting it for a supposed game developer, (I’ve never really been a PC gamer), especially when it wasn’t even hitting the minimum requirements for some of even the most basic of software. I was, however, loath to give up the dual-screen setup I’ve grown accustomed to at work and at home so have found some solace in the FW’s unique 16.4” widescreen.

If it even allows two documents or webpages side by side during my various forays into graphic design or simply gives the 3D viewports a little more breathing space, it’ll be worth finally breaking free of the constraints of the desk. Now to find a café sur le Plateau…