Back in the stone ages

You may remember my warnings a couple of weeks back that my computer may die at any moment. Well that day came on a cold winter's afternoon last tuesday. I had just come back from town, where I had thought to myself 'hmmm, I haven't backed up any of my ongoing projects since, umm, I started them' and lo and behold, my computer refuses to log on. It also refuses to run any 3D software. Luckilly, thanks to the crap security of windows computers, I managed to get access to my old files and copy them off to a dvd just before it all self destructed. I spent 3 hours on the phone to my tech support company the following day, trying to get them to admit that the computer was unsalvageable, and 3 reinstalls later I'm waiting on an engineer to come out on wednesday. For the time being I have to use the game suite at the uni, but access is limited and I've already used up all my allotted disk space. So blog posts may be infrequent for the next couple of weeks. That said, in 6 weeks the company has to give me a refund in vouchers if they can't fix my pc (which they won't), and I have my eye on the new iMac... we'll see

anyway, back to business

Road Safety
As I work part-time on Fridays to keep the wolves from the door, my girlfriend volounteered to present the finished film to the main client. Apparently their happy, and I even got a few oohs and ahhs. Payment is being handled by one of my lecturers, so I'll see that in a few weeks (i'm upgrading to photoshop CS2). So that project is now officially done, will put up a link if the client decides to put it online, if not then i'll put it on my website (more on that later).

Family Crest Reconstruction
The client agreed to the design I put up earlier. As I was paid in advance I've already spent my earnings, but it's still a good feeling to have completion on that too

Election Website
The client likes the mock-up I posted, so I'm just waiting on the data he wants it to contain, should be able to bash that together this week

SIFE documentation (new)
I've been contacted by a friend I produced the SIFE website for to produce a pack of brochure, business cards and assorted paraphinalia for an upcomming conference.. i quoted him low as he's a mate, but this one is definitely gonna help with my CS2 upgrade. The job won't start for another couple of weeks

TV show
I've been contacted by the producer, who's currently organizing the sound, and a storyboard artist.. So full production should, conveniently, start when I get my new PC. I am going to have to ask him in our next meeting if I can spill the beans on here and finally show you guys what I'm up to on this

mikebithell.com (new)
It's about time I established a web presence, beyond the crappy site I made for myself about 5 years ago (i won't post a link, as I'm embarassed, but you should be able to google it if your heart desires). I have a really cool idea, which would present me through an interactive and hopefully fun, web toy. I've started sketching concept art, but as I have no access to a scanner here I am at a loss to show it off. Don't expect the site till sometime in the summer, as I'm gonna take the time to make it really special, and link it to a bit of mail-out self promotion I have planned.. if you work at a game company I like then you will be getting a neat little parcel from me.. as Bli is the only reader I know I have that fits that bill, I may have to gift wrap his :)

HL2 MOD
Wow, I see that I've gone another week without an update.. sorry about that. Here's another Dev Diary then....

Dev Diary: Day 27 - 5/03/2006
Machine Failure

Due to a the death of my computer, I have fallen behind with the diary, luckilly I have signed up for weekend access to H2, so I have been able to push on with my work. Here is a summary of the week

Tuesday
Had a meeting on Tuesday with the group. It was short and brief. Adam had continued his sterling work on the game, creating a train system, and really beginning to polish the level builds we had seen before. Ed returned to the fold. He seems very worried about the implementation of the bike code, but we've all got behind him and I'm sure he can do it. Dave was not present, so we are still missing the bike and main character models. Myself and Jules were on top of the work. Doctor Mike seemed happy with the intro, so I now have to combine that with Jules' audio

my task list
editing sound to video track and adding additional scenes, organising sound studio time, building sound asset list, beginning to collect resources for our use

I did the sound asset list first, a very small job. I've also had a number of conversations with our sound guy, as long as I give him a week's notice he's glad to help us out. Therefore, my main job for the week is the sound and intro scene editing. Jules also wanted a couple of extra frames to show the swarm and facilitate the transition I mentioned earlier

Thursday
Worked in the studio adding the extra frames to the master photoshop newspaper, ready to animate. Then headed over to Jules' flat to see Adam's build of the game and have a chat with the team about where the bike code is heading. Ed had still got big probelms with the implementation, I doubt we'll have a bike in game for Tuesday. Adam's level is going from strength to strength, and also featured a very early attempt at the swarm code.. It's starting to come together.

Sunday
Sat down with the audio file in premier, and worked out the timing for the camera pans over the newspaper, put together a cue sheet in my sketch book which means I can animate it all, hopefully tomorow. I may have to burn the midnight oil, but it'll be worth it to get this done.

Right, i'm back in the studio tommorow, so you can probably expect another post.. fingers crossed it will contain the sound edit.. we shall see.. sorry about the lack of pictures :(