LLC

Gears are turning. For the first time it feels like something could actually "happen" in terms of my videogame career. I don't want to say this is will be a sure-fire success (because chances are it will not be) but I will say that things are looking up.

 

My programmer friend Matt and I are going through with the creation an LLC to house the production of some games we've wanted to make. We currently have one game in the works and are in negotiations to develop another game related app.  Neither of which I can really speak about indepthly at this moment, but since everything is moving so quickly, I don't think it'll be long before I start posting updates relating to the two. The above render are characters from our first game! Exciting :)

The Game.minder Expo is this coming Saturday (March 16th) up in Cleveland. Matt and I will be there, walking the floor, talking with people, and learning everything we can about starting an independent game studio. A lot of the Cleveland Game Developers will be there and as of right now, admission is free, so go check it out. It should be a fun event!

A couple other things I've worked on recently include a 3D rendering of a baseball bat grip known as the BatJack. You can go to their official website and check out the video on their homepage. The video is a little long winded and my animation only shows up for a couple seconds at the 3:30 mark, but all in all it was a cool project. The Bat Jack is a nifty little invention that improves the grip on a bat. It really works too!

I also designed the logo for a local bowling team which you can see below. They are the Coconut Monkeys! That was a pretty fun project as well. This logo is actually going to be embroidered on their shirts. I'm hoping the embroidery comes out well so I can get a picture of the final shirts and post it on here.

Computer. Complete.

It's finished! My computer is finally together and I couldn't be happier. I tell ya what, this experience has been really rough. It was about 4 months ago that I started assembling the mountain of assorted parts in the corner of my room into a real, working computer. I still remember day one of the build where I estimated it taking a few hours to complete. 4 months later, it's finally done and I'm exhausted.

Now, I don't want to point any fingers, but a lot of my problems generated from the person who was supposed to help me with the project. The so called experience individual who has put together quite a few computer in his life. Granted, the original, broken motherboard was not his fault, but pretty much everything after that was. I ended up taking the new computer to work and having our amazing IT guys dismantle and then reassemble the thing in a matter of an hour or two. It is now in perfect working order and I am forever indebted to those IT guys. As they bestowed the shining, purring machine to me I asked if I was suppose to bow to them, but they told me to simply tell the world of their deeds. ::Thank you, guys::

With that hurdle behind me, I've started the arduous process of installing all of the necessary programs needed to do what I do. I've got high hopes! This new computer ended up with 32 gigs of ram and has at least 2 more cores than my last computer's processor. Zbrush should now have no problem handling what I plan on shoving into it. Skin pores? No prob! Hair follicles? Lay 'em on me!! (actually, no thanks)

In other news, my small business plans continue. My partner and I have the ground work of our IOS game running. However, our real-life jobs have been pounding us lately, so the time we have to work on our game is slim. But this game will be completed, and it will be glorious.

We are still going through a list of names for our studio, but once we pick the right one, we will be making the official Facebook, Twitter, etc. and then purchasing our business license. After that, we plan to put some cash down on an iPad for testing purposes. Once the game is in working order, we plan to fire off a kickstarter to see what (if any) money we could make in order to purchase a copy of Unity pro and then build out the game for the app store.

It's a lot to do! But we plan to have this game available in the first few months of 2013. From that point, there's no telling what will happen. The ideal situation is to make enough money to fund our next game, and then the next game, and so on and so forth. Thus the dream becomes a reality :)