South Texas Samurai

*reading link* time jump? Man.. I'm so going to wait 10 full seconds before deciding to buy it anyway.

Whoa! Thats so cool! Dammit its on Sega though. A system I never owned.. I hated that damned controller. I wonder if there's anyway I could get that piece of awesomeness.. Thanks for the link though!

I've gotten pretty good at Lightwave 3d. I'll very most likely be going back to my local college because they are actually opening up a game development program in the fall. I've got a few questions. I'll give a bit of what I can do at this point after it if there are any questions on what I can do. 1. Jobs for entry level employee's. 2. Pay. I don't want to be an overpaid upstart, but I don't want to be taken advantage of either. I actually want the most average pay avaliable so I WON'T be noticed when checks are passed. Noobs need to pay bills to. 3. Good techniques to practice. Such as certain commonly used lighting, rendering, TEXTURING, and modeling practices in game production so in the future I'll be a valuable asset than just "that dude we hired". 4. What a noob 3d animator SHOULD know for the game industry that really isn't mentioned in the general discussion of the 3d field. Such as "do 3d animators need to know how to program to be effective?" 5. Oddly enough, the shift in business from console and PC development. Such as whether a lot of US game developers are moving to consoles for certain endevors as well. And a bit about what I can do. For those wanting a better idea. (Note: I do not plan on trying my hand at the game development field yet. This is just where I am at now.) ---------------------------------------- - Modeling. I absolutely love this aspect of 3d, and I've become pretty compitent in lightwave modeler creating characters pretty accurately even if a model sheet doesn't present a character in the appropriate profile positions. I can eyeball something and still make it turn out pretty well or close to the artist's concept. I think all I need is the usual experience in the field. - Animation. I can do it and it intrests me greatly.. but my love is modeling. I simply get really get disgusted with rendering times and checking an animation's progress simply to see if something minor I attempted to fix was corrected. I also am not as compitent as I wish I could be because of rendering times and the need to check particle effects AFTER its rendered. I believe i'm not appropriately effective on.. camera and particle effects.. -Texturing. I need a lot practice. I can do it.. but UV texturing I always seem to shy away from and this might be my second biggest quell with 3d. That and I don't usually do UV textures for humans. So its daunting trying to figure out how to UV texture a face. -Rigging. Heh heh.. I like it. I really like doing this. I just feel I need some more practice so I can actually be efficent with time and so I can easily doctor it on my own if any technical problems come up. -Lighting.. bleh. I can do it.. I just prefer NOT to do it. I know the basic lighting techniques, and I'd say i'm average at it at a student's perspective. I'm just not effective in providing those amazing lighting effects that professionals can do. (This is in comparison to the hi-poly 3d work done in CGtalk.) -Rendering. Ok I need to work on it. Unlike texturing, more technical problems come up with it for me because one can't tell if something was done right till it was rendered. So it kind of ruins my train of thought once in a while. I know how to use render tools and options. Maybe i'd like it more if I got a 3dBoxxx and render farm or something. Anyway I'm not efficent and not as compitent as I'd like to be. Graphic Design Background - This is what I studied. I'm efficent in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illistrator, Sound edit, Adobe Premiere, Flash, Dreamweaver, Flash, Director, Deck 2, Freehand, and Painter. Hell I know how to even use some other program's interface more than I know their names.. heh heh.. I must admit though. I must learn Adobe After Effects. I know lightwave uses it for Targa file animation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I will however continue school for the new program and likely re-touch upon 3d animation specifically for game development. Any pointers would greatly be appreciated.

Thumbs up on the Family Guy and Columbo ideas. They were some of the most sane that were brought up. As for split personality one.. it has been done, but perhaps they wanted it incorporated differently. I got another Babylon 5!! Heh.. an RPG, a strategy game, AND a flight sim. T hat would be great. Anyway I got an idea when I was reading some of this stuff. While it HAS been done.. the US hasn't really experimented on games with a mini-game engine as the Japanese have done. There is likely a demand or US market for games with dating sims and it be cool to see a game with a good sim in place incorporated in the story or at least intergrated in the overall gameplay independent of the story.

Despite how cool some ideas would be.. it just aint going to happen. Post them. Mine would be ExoSquad or Gargoyles RPG or action game. Because those two cartoon series need a serious revival via DVD re-release. *twitch*