Winter break is officially over and I'm already pretty overwhelmed, but at least my spirits are high!
I found all my voice actors and hired them to read out the lines, but I've been putting off actually editing them and cutting them into clips. I'm nervous about hearing my writing spoken by other people in such a professional sounding way. I write A LOT. I didn't keep track, but I probably wrote around 30 chapters for my books over break, so I recognize that I'm generally a good writer. However, all of that writing has been published anonymously. My biggest hang up is that I'm good at writing, but not good enough that I can separate myself from the characters and their cadence as much as I want to. I'm still writing with the mindset of how I would speak and react if I was playing that person and had those kinds of character traits. Subsequently, my writing is a glimpse into how I think, and I feel very exposed in that regard. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but hopefully I can find some guidance from my professors before I start tackling the editing.
I also made a bunch of assets over break.
I also fixed a bunch of textures that I had been putting off because I needed to make custom alphas for them.
And I have the arms textured!
I was also working with my composer over break and all the dream themes for the game have been created, which was a huge load off my shoulders. I've been in communication with my film composer, but I still need to contact the other people I'm working with and set up a bunch of meetings. I'm a little nervous with all of these things happening at once without a producer, and I'm still struggling to get into full work mode again this week. I should have expected I would need time to go from working for a couple hours a day to working all day again.
I had my first kickoff meeting for the Maker Program Tuesday, and I am so excited to start meeting with my advisors and getting help with organization and direction. I feel like I am on top of things, but there is this constant dread in the background that I'm either missing things, or it's all about to fall apart any minute. Thankfully, we have some time before we meet with the Rockstar developers, but I don't want to get comfortable and slack off until the last minute.
My stress levels went from zero to 100 REAL QUICK. Lighting and Rendering is going to be super time consuming and I didn't realize it, but I haven't been in a 3D art class for a very long time. I'm no longer accustomed to critiques and grades based on my 3D skills; all of my classes for the past two semesters have been non-major classes that were mostly graded on participation and effort. It's quite a shock to my system. On top of that, I have to figure out adult stuff like switching bank accounts, buying/leasing a car under my name, taxes, and finding a place to live in less than six months. It's looking like my boyfriend and I are going to either LA or NYC, which are both huge changes. Adding on more stress is applying to jobs and internships and making those connections while I'm working so hard on my thesis. Phew, I'm stressing myself out just writing about it.
Luckily I have my writing to keep my sane, and that's been going really great. I've been getting more and more votes and reads every day, and I've got a small fan base built up that look forward to new chapters every week and thus encourage me to keep going. Maybe I should have slowed down the writing over break to work on more thesis stuff, but I recognize that this was something equally as important to me and I should keep up my hobbies. My philosophy was that I should utilize my break to relax and recover, so I'm not forced to take a break because of burnout at inopportune times. I was also learning to ski, and physical effort like that, mixed with narcolepsy, left me very little energy to work at the end of the day.
Oh! And I went on the Blink Talk Live talk show! It was so much fun but I was so nervous!
I will start updating my blog again regularly as I get back into a more rigid work and school routine, so I'll see all of you non-existent readers very soon!
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