Burton Posey

In this video, a former Disney animator offers us a glimpse into the creative power offered with VR. Using the HTC & Valve-developed Vive hardware and an application called TiltBrush, he sketches familiar characters in 3D space. I think one of the neatest things about this video is that despite the goggles, you can still really see the sheer delight on his face that he gets from being able to create and work around his creations in this new medium. Granted he works on the team

Soon consumers will have access to VR, the emergence of which is thanks in part to lots of buy in from companies like Google, Oculus(Facebook), and HTC and Valve. The Vive hardware has the ability to track where a person is in a space up to 10 square feet. The hardware can also tell the angle of your head or hands within one-tenth of a degree. We have the ability to move about a totally artificial space and create a world within it, a place to ourselves or a place for us to mingle, collaborate, compete, or carry a conversation with others. Oculus is offering somewhat similar but distinct hardware with motion controls that understand finger gestures as well as some degree of tracking.

It's a very exciting time. VR is a new, expressive medium and frontier that offers a tangibility to experience things new and old and express ourselves in ways we haven't even thought of yet. With my new company, I'll be working on several VR prototypes in addition to some VR consulting work, in both Unity and Unreal, if you're curious :). Hopefully as the prototypes take shape they'll show a lot of promise and I can get one or more of them developed into a commercial product!

I'll be attending Oculus Connect in LA the 23rd through the 26th. If you're going to be there and would like to meet up, let me know!

Today marks my last day with Hi-Rez Studios. I've been incredibly fortunate to be a part of their team over the past year. Todd Harris, the COO, almost single-handedly brought me back from the dead when I was down following the end of my last project. I really can't thank him enough for believing in me as well as the quality of my work. He constantly reminded me of what I am capable of and eventually I started to believe him!

One of the most important things to me in my professional life is really putting my creative stamp on things and making things that I can in some part have ownership in. I also really value the ability to finish up work and then go home and work on projects of my own. That's not always possible at bigger companies, sometimes for good reason.

Lunchtime Doodles - 2014-10-01.

I came across this article linked on Jon Jones blog. I must admit I am pretty new to his writing, but a lot of my fellow gamedev friends follow him on Facebook so I'm likely to check out more of his stuff. He's already a winner in my book with this article he's linked: 

Job requirements are mostly fiction and you should ignore them

I feel like I'm living proof that this is true most of the time. I got my first professional job before I had a college degree. I actually dropped out of college for a while because I hated my portfolio and I didn't want to make a bad first impression with the few game companies here in Atlanta. So I hired a recruiter to go to work for me and he found me a job within a few days that I stayed at for 10 months until the economy took a nose-dive in early 2009. When that happened I took my 10 months of work and finished up school with my professional stuff filling in my resume nicely :).

I've also done a contract job where the client was based in another state, looking for an individual to go work in their office, so being local was a requirement. I wrote a sincere letter asking them to look past our geographical differences and give me a chance and they did!

This list of requirements is something that a lot of recruiters are going to be beholden to. They usually don't know you personally, so they don't know how to sell you any better than the list of bullet points on your resume/LinkedIn profile to the job posting that they're trying to fill. So when it comes to job requirements and looking beyond them, you really need to go to bat for yourself. Essentially, you've got to be a great salesman of your own brand. Just don't be a sleazy/dishonest one.

I usually try to find a need the company has that I can fill, hopefully uniquely. Do you really fit into their culture well or know a crazy amount about what they do and/or what they've created? Maybe you are working on a new technology and you're able to add that proficiency to their arsenal. Back to the sleazy salesman part. Don't be a liar about what you can and can't do. You're going to burn a bridge really quickly if you vouch for something you can't really do. I usually tell people at companies, "I don't know how to do that, but I do believe I can figure it out if I'm given some time."

Lastly, and not totally related to the subject of job requirements, is persistence. If you don't get a job, look for feedback on why you might not have gotten it. I think it's good form for a company to get back to you and tell you why you haven't gotten the job. This will give you a list of actionable things you can do to improve yourself and fit that mold should you still want to be in a particular role with a company that may turn you down. I know it's hard to pick yourself up after you get passed over or turned down for something, but the important thing is to keep improving yourself and become a "better you at what you do" every day you can find the time.