Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Fall 2012 Semester: End

Wow, how long has it been since my last post? Since then, my semester has ended, and I've moved on to my last semester as a student! (Finally!)

I finished out last semester in Entertainment Design Studio (EDS) with one last Houdini project: a colormix OTL with basic compositing. You can see some of the iterations of my work along with the final version at the Youtube link below.
I really enjoyed my semester in EDS, but it made me realize that there is a lot more to Houdini than I can learn in a semester. Luckily, I will be learning a lot more Houdini in my co-op this semester... but more on that later. :P

I also finished up my project, Up+, sponsored by Microsoft. For this project, our team--five programmers, one artist, and one content designer (me)--worked together to create a highly personalized, interactive, retail experience to help sell the Windows Phone 8. The experience we came up with was a website which asked the user a series of seemingly random, unrelated questions. Our algorithm would then analyze the user's responses to these questions, and use this data to create a personalized Windows Phone for the user, complete with all the apps the user liked. My part in this project was designing the textual content and flow of the experience, as well as managing cultural implications and obstacles. You can read more about our project on the project website. The fruits of our labor have been handed over to Microsoft, so you will hopefully see it in retail spaces soon!

Next post: My winter break adventure!