Shaking up things

After a long hiatus, I've decided to start writing again.

I am not promising weekly updates, but I will try to dump my brain in here more often. Lately, I have been finding myself with a little more of time, and I keep expending that time trying to improve myself professionally as a game designer and game programmer. In the past few months I have been using my free time to play lots of games, deconstruct them, understand their inner and outer workings; reading about other games and design in general; and exploring the huge city that L.A. is. And even though all this is great, I feel I haven't been able to plug myself off to process the huge amount of data that I have been eating.

That's why I mainly want to shake this blog again,  and use it as a tool to facilitate the catharsis of my brain, and organize the lessons learned so far.

That being said, I feel that is only fair to give you a recap on what's going on in my life since February. The project that I was working on at the ETC was a bumpy ride that barely made it in the end, but it was finished and the client was satisfied. We ran into a lot of issues as a team, mostly because we lacked a clear leadership and we had a foggy vision of what we were trying to accomplish, which lead to a lot of time being wasted, and intense crunch time.

After that the summer came and I found myself making up for all the deprived sleep, reading a lot and actually enjoying Pittsburgh. It is really surprising how the presence of sun can raise the spirits and make everything better. I had several interviews with different game companies and did job hunting most of the time, and around June I got an exciting offer with Disney Interactive Media Group, and after some weeks in Miami visiting family I moved to L.A. to embark on this great opportunity. The first month was scary and great at the same time, and I was given the opportunity to both design and develop a small part of the game I am working on. I have to admit that I was really confused about my role and what was expected from me (and what I was expecting from the studio) but I quickly got over it and embraced the culture of the studio. I am really looking forward the next months where I will be working on some other exciting tasks with Disney Online Studios.

See you on the other side.

Tim Schafer and Double Fine Jobs Website

As usual is midnight and I am still working on A or B at the Entertainment Technology Center. This time I am not working on a Virtual Reality game with Head Mounted Displays or IR Trackers for interactive dancing pieces, or a stop motion Lego short-film or applying to be a SIGGRAPH 2011 student volunteer or trying to dominate the world by creating an army of extremely adorable cute pirate robot bunny demons with ... WAIT A SECOND! I'm not suppose to talk about that ....


anyway ... I'm working on finding a summer internship. While visiting different websites I found this...

"Even if we don't have any current openings that are right for you right now, if you are interested in working at Double Fine, send in your stuff anyway! We are always interested in making contact with talented and experienced programmers, artists, animators, designers, and production people. Even if you're not looking for work right now, it's good to stay in touch because YOU NEVER KNOW. 

I can't guarantee that we will be especially good about responding to each and every email we get. Sometimes we get busy and ignore that mail box for months on end. But don't give up hope. Eventually, the mail server will get full, and we'll need to delete some of the applications, so we'll all get together and read through the resumes in there and make fun of people's spelling errors or read their "Job Objective" statements in sarcastic voices and stuff like that. 

But maybe we'll see your samples or your web page and all at once the laughter will stop, and our jaws will drop, and then somebody will say, "Whoa." And then I'll look at them and I'll say, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" And then someone will yell, "I'm way ahead of you buddy!" as they pull up in the company bus/monster truck and as we all pile in, somebody shouts out, "LOCK AND LOAD!" And we drive full speed to your house and you come out and say "D-D-D-Double Fine? But--" and we put a finger to your lips and say, "You had us at hello!" And then your parents try to stop us because they don't understand, so we duct tape them to a streetlight and peel out, popping a wheelie all the way down the street while "Sweet Home Alabama" blares out of the radio and then you and I try to say something at the same time because we're both so excited, so then we both shut up so that the other can talk, and then we both say, "No, you go!", but then we both start talking again at the same time, and we have to just laugh until we're crying tears of joy, and we sense in our hearts that we will all be best friends forever and ever, and never think about what or who we were before. We will just enjoy the ever-unfolding kaleidoscope of happiness and discovery and adventure and laughter that lie before us.

And then we pull up to the office and I yell, "Alright, back to work suckers. And no talking!" And weld the door shut with everyone inside as I laugh and laugh and laugh. Oh, the fun."

Thank you Double Fine for making me laugh so hard! I'll definitely send my stuff and hope for you to come in the Monster Truck.  

Don't you feel like this?

Sometimes I wonder if it's only me... but this made me think about you. 




"It might not be the right time
I might not be the right one
But there's something about us I want to say
Cause there's something between us anyway

I might not be the right one
It might not be the right time
But there's something about us I've got to do
Some kind of secret I will share with you

I need you more than anything in my life
I want you more than anything in my life
I'll miss you more than anyone in my life
I love you more than anyone in my life "


Something about us - Daft Punk




Anyway.... I love good songs. 

So this is it!

Oh boy... where to start? This semester at Carnegie Mellon's ETC was total craziness. Building Virtual Worlds, simply awesome and a lot of hard work! Totally worth it, I got to be in the BVW Show at the end of the semester showing one of my projects and people LOVED IT!

My new friends are amazing! the whole class is full of amazing people that is super caring and fun! It is so sad that after practically living together (around  17 hours/day together) *every* day (including weekends) in the same 2 rooms, now we all go our way to different places in the building or even campuses/countries. Even the good bye was to abrupt!!

I just realized that I can barely stay awake so I'll just leave this here.

One Up

So... wondering what in the name of cuckoo's nest I'm doing in grad school?

DON'T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY TO FIND OUT! 

This is our Visual Storytelling last project where we were given a location, a color, an emotion/state-of-being and an object. We had to come up with a story interpreting and/or using those elements. In our particular case we were given a garden, exuberant yellow, envy and a mirror.

The ETC schedule

BVW round 3: Lightning Round (1 week).

BVW Round 3: Fireflies from JK Serrallonga on Vimeo.


This is an early stage of a project developed for the course Building Virtual Worlds at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). This project was developed under one week by a team constituted by a Programmer, Texture Artist, 3D Modeler and Sound Designer. My role was Programmer and Project Producer. The whole team participated in the general design of the experience. 

For this project we used human tracking technology (Playmotion!) and Panda 3D. 

Programmer/Producer: JK Serrallonga
Art: PeiHong Tan & Robyn Gray
Sound Design: Luke Jayapalan.

Special Thanks to my awesome FRIEND Cassandra Ichniowski who I know was extremely happy to dance...