GDC with Tom

Post date: Mar 20, 2017 2:44:27 AM

    Upon my first couple days in, GDC wasn't open for two days, so I did my best to learn the city and find my way around. Using the GDC app I got the info I needed and spoke to some cool people, and ended up having lunch with a Senior Project Manager, Sharon Price, who works at Demonware. Demonware is a subsidiary company deriving from Activision Blizzard. Ms. Price's branch is located in Vancouver, Canada.

Luckily we became fast friends and she showed me around and helped me prepare for GDC's registration, which ended up being a super simple task.

    This was my first time going to GDC, and I had a pretty good experience. My efforts were mainly steered to networking with people and getting to know and in touch with as many people as I could, so I spread my wings like a social butterfly and met tons of friends, and potential colleagues.

I spent my first two days conversing in the North and West Moscone Center buildings, just checking out the Day of the Devs indie games, trying out what they had, challenged other attendees to versus games, and asked a lot of questions on their reasons for coming and so forth. 

Sadly I didn't  have a pass to go to any of the talks, so I did what I could and continued to network as much as I could, in the end I ended up with 39 business cards!

Wednesday, The expo floor's opening, was awesome! The banners and signs for all the games and companies felt very inviting, and it was slightly overwhelming to honest. I wasn't sure where to go first, I worried that I might get stuck in a long line for something while not knowing if there is something better or at least more promising,so I went for the Epic booth first to look at what they had to offer. There were only a few things I really got out of the presentation they had up currently, which consisted of really expensive car materials that involved multi layered coats to provide extreme gloss in the paint, and higher specular and reflection on sleek surfaces. I'm not entirely sure what it consisted of since most of if had to do with cars, so I moved on.

I eventually made my way around easier, got into some lines for portfolio reviews with Hardsuit Labs, WildCard Studios, Crystal Dynamics, Playstation, and a few others.

For what I need in my portfolio, I was told multiple on multiple occasions:

• • Add break downs of assets and process

  • For shots - Increase poly count super high

  • Show off work most comfortable only

  • Add more variety in environment

  • Add at least one crazy asset

What I got back from my portfolio:

• • Good compositions

  • Great mood

  • Good layout in the terrain

  • Decent lighting/Light up path more rim lighting

  • Work on asset silhouettes

  • Good attention to detail

With this I now have eyes and advice from all sorts of people, and luckily my name out there with them.

The expo floor was flooded with hundreds of people, and flooded with VR experiences, I tried out almost all of them, my two favorites had to be the Zombie survival in Arizona, and Epic's Robo Recall, which was major intense, it was epic.

During my time in the expo floor I constantly ran into Ringling Alumni, which was awesome. I got to hear how everyone was doing, what they were looking forward to, and how the industry is compared to Ringling, and it seems to be quite similar, aside from the fact that you get paid for the work you provide, and there's usually no work you take outside of office hours, depending on the company.

So for the next year or so, I plan to work on my portfolio, add to it as much as I can, and live in florida, working by freelancing or find a company close by. 

I'm looking forward to self improvement!