Day 2 - Official First Day!

Today, we went to the office for the second time. Today, we went to the bank so i could set up my account, and then we got the big blue card which lasts 30days, for 60$. At the office we started with tutorials. Dashboard and getting to know linux which houdini is ran on.

The company then took us out to lunch at a mexican store. I ate a burrito and drank some dr pepper. which we then head back to the office.

we discussed with our mentors what we would do. In the same time i met that one of the current interns are working on a game project that used houdini. The discussion was about issue with these types of 3d applications, where it is preety much split into two. On one side, there is a third party physics engine to handle physic like physx, on the other side, there is houdini which things would happen as expected everytime. A good to point to make is that when you want each respectively, they are available. For example, if you want a directable physics event, for example, a building exploded but you want a certain segment to stay or not get affected by the other pieces. or to react in a certain way. Using, say, physx, you are unable to do that. That's where houdini steps in. This is more or less, a cutscene thing, or an event based event, like the church event in Gears of War.

After all of that we went back to the apartment and split up. Me, BY and daniel went to the supermarket, while wt and ed stayed back and cleaned up the apartment, mopping and sweeping.

ed and BY cooked, and we had dinner.

With that we end the day.

Day 1

Finally reached california, USA. after a 18 1/2 hour flight, watching, family guy, simpsons, futurama, hurt locker, book of eli, the tooth fairy. Now have got to readjust to new timezone. The chair in delta airlines is horribly uncomfortable.

We went to the promanade, the downtown of santa monica which is also where the office is. We stopped by the office, and picked up some of thing the previous group left behind. The rice cooker and a choppin board.

We had lunch and grabbed prepaid phone cards before heading back to the apartment for rest and naps. Well, that's that. Time to readjust and fix the jet lag.

Day 0 - 8 more hours till airport

Well, another 8 more hours till travel with my family to airport. I'm doing all i want to do left. Some quick chat with friends on MSN, last check through for packing. And the last supper gathering with primary school friends.... wow. how biblical. lol.

Well after some deep thought i have decided what i want to do, i want to create a short story using tissue paper. probably i should expand on the idea more, but it's a starting point. I'll think of it more while on the plane. In the mean time, i have more stuff to catch up on and last minuite things to do... like get a bath XD.

Allright, till then.

2 Days till D-Day.

Packing done, well almost. Left with chargers and several other pins. This blog here will be my daily "diary", so i'll just unload everything here at the end of the day while i'm on the atachment. To be very honest, in a day i'm leaving but it has been bugging me. Why am i doing this. Why am i going to Side effects, when i'm doing games, in school... I'm guessing i shouldn't be talking about this in my blog, but i think it would be good to be very honest.

The school prefers me to create a game and come back with a game with the experience i gain while over in USA, SESI. When i signed up for the programme, i wanted to learn animation, special effects, which might or might not have a relation to games. However, as the days get closer to leave day, I start to question myself... "What am i doing?". In short, my only straight answer is "I don't know". To be very honest i am not even sure why am i choosen. But never the less, i should make full use of my experience, time and money spent into the programme, and come up with something amazing, fantastic and wonderous. Open my mind wide, and learn as i go.

I know this might all seem very shady, but i have to reflect like this, being the only student from DET Games. not DET Technical Direction. What do i want to achieve out of this programme? I want to make an awesome piece of animation. Full-stop. I want to make something "mind blasting". But perhaps that might set the bar abit too high. We will see.

As you can see here from my first post, my internal conflicts in my head are still fighting and I don't really know what i am doing here. Unlike some of my peers that have set goals, habits and achievements, i'm going in with an empty mind, no habits as of yet and a variable goal.

So what is my goal? Like i said earlier, to make an animation. But to make full use of my time, i would also be making a game in my own spare time probably at night. For that, i won't talk much about in this blog. This blog will feature my own personal commentary on my experience there and lessons i have learnt and how stuff can get done.

With that i leave with a quote, "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.", Maria Curie.