Graphic art

It's not that I didn't have a great deal of respect for graphic artists before I started a website, but I now have an immense respect for them.

One of the nice things about taking care of Harrison is that I'm able to take things a lot slower in terms of job hunting. Before Janice got a job I would have considered spending this much time trying to figure out a website layout a waste of time. However, now I have the luxury of really learning how things work, and that involves my weakest skill set: art.

I've spent the past week throwing all kinds of different patterns and colors up on the website layout that I posted last week, and did a lot of research with professionally-made websites to really look at what kinds of colors and layouts they have. I took screenshots of a variety of high-profile websites, and paid extra attention to websites trying to sell a person, like politician or mid-level celebrity websites. I'm still working on the layout, but by borrowing a couple color schemes and mixing and matching, I think I've made some progress.

This might not look like a week's worth of work, and that's because it isn't. The majority of my week has been spent trying to learn graphic design just by observation, and this is the fruit of it. Even though it's not fantastic, I'm quite pleased with my budding skill with making things look good visually all on my own.

Website construction

These past few days I've stayed home with Harrison while Janice is off training for her new pharmacy job. I definitely have a newfound appreciation for how much time babies consume, and whatever time I can manage to scrape together has recently been spent building my website. It's slow going, but really rewarding. Here's a screenshot of what I have so far:

The HTML/CSS portion is actually pretty fun, and I really enjoy working with the layout, but I'm having a harder time figuring out a color scheme. I'm developing the website in an open source project called Brackets, which seems really great from my limited perspective of web development. As per Codecademy's instructions on website building, I'm also using Bootstrap to develop the gridwork of the website a little easier. Other than that, it's mostly my own doing.

I suspect that I'm going to struggle learning more of the graphic design than the coding on this project, but it's a good thing that I have a challenge to help me work on what I consider to be my weakest area.

Serious Games

The interview with STG went well, I think. I interviewed with a super nice PR guy named Colby Christensen, who even picked me up from downtown after I'd gotten the address wrong. STG seems amazing, they shift employees through various 8 month projects, and pay you to learn in your off-time, where you get to work on any technology-related thing you want. I really hope they call me back, it sounds like the perfect job for me.

Last week Cyber Heist was nominated for an award at the Serious Games showcase in Orlando. I'd submitted it a month earlier and was quite surprised that we won. requirements of entries included things like what behaviors or information are we trying to convey to the user and what metrics we were using to keep track of their progress. Cyber Heist is a pretty excellent game in that it encourages players to communicate with each other and learn to work as a team in an environment with different roles, so I spoke to that in the application.

One of our teammates apparently had some inside information on the judging at the Serious Games Showcase, and said that our game was a smash hit and getting played by all the judges, not just the judges who were assigned to play our game. I would be very surprised if we end up winning a competition that we absolutely had no intention of designing for, but it looks like AJ is going to represent the team by in-part representing EAE as well. Hope things turn out well.

STG interview

While Janice has been getting ready for her first day of work as a pharmacist on Monday, I got a response from STG, who'd like to interview me via phone on Monday!

STG (Software Technology Group) is the company that Jake Fuller works for, who I met in LA for E3 and have continued to run into inexplicably ever since. He's apparently a specialist in user experience, and forwarded my resume to higher-ups on his company. I really want to work on video games eventually, but the more I investigate typical game studios the more it seems like it could benefit from better organization and planning. I think a few years in a really professional environment might be just what I need to really bring a solid skill set to the table.

We'd have to find daycare for Harrison, of course, but assuming that the money I'd make could at least pay for that, I'd get the benefit of gaining real experience while paying off debt even faster. I'm quite excited.

Learning website construction

One of the first things that I want to do is really spend some quality time on my personal website to really showcase my skills and experience, especially with Cyber Heist. My original website was put up earlier this year by code wizard Chris Rawson as a favor, but I don't have enough experience with web design to even understand what's going on under the hood, much less manipulate it to what I want.

As a result, I've spent the past few days with Codecademy, a website that provides free, in-depth tutorials on how to work with code and build websites. I'd heard a lot about it, but I was not prepared for how high a quality a product they were giving away, absolutely for free.

Codecademy's interactive website building course. Codecademy provides instructions to the left, code (HTML in this case) in the center, and shows the live updates of your work in a mini-browser window on the right.

The capitalist in me can not wrap my brain around it. The courses teach everything you need to know, step-by-step, with a greater ability and flexibility to teach than the majority of code classes I've paid for. Yet somehow, Codecademy gives it away for free. I don't know how they make money, but for now, this seems like pure, unadulterated altruism. They really are trying to make the world a better place, and I am very impressed.

Needless to say, I highly recommend Codecademy for almost everyone. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday going through the HTML and CSS courses for building websites before tackling my own website design. Unfortunately, much of it includes PHP, and I went back to take the PHP course. I plan to be done with the PHP course tonight, and I'll start planning out on paper the kind of structure I'd like to have for my personal website.  

New Goals

My wife, Janice, recently accepted a job offer from Walgreens as a Pharmacist! After my initial grumblings that she got offered the very first job she applied for after my harrowing 5 month job search, I've settled  into the idea and determined that this will be fantastic for both of us. I'm going to stay home and take care of Harrison while honing additional skills and making games while Janice starts whittling away at the unreal pile of student debt we've accrued over the past 4 years.

It's definitely not easy for me to take a pause like this in life. I have a firm belief that if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. However, I'm starting to see it as less of a pause and more of an opportunity--I'm in a unique position to experiment for real with forming a startup company and/or really dedicate some time to learning additional hard and soft skills. I'm going to continue to look for jobs, but it's going to be less stressful and aggravating now, and I might be able to accept some entry-level jobs to work my way up slower and steadier.

In either case, I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands, and in addition to writing much more frequently on this blog, I'm going to change the title from "Perspective of a Game Designer" to "Musings of a Future Game Dev". The new title is less boring to me, and is kind of like my written-down goal to eventually be a part of a team that creates widespread, entertaining, and influential content for games. I have confidence in my abilities, the drive to continue gaining experience that will help me, and the patience to see out my goal to fruition.