*YAWN*

Geez, what a week. Victoria and I are moving together and have to start packing our stuff (I already missed the weekend I wanted to move my furniture), I’m busy with a company deadline, and I have to finish my GDC talk. Not a lot of sleep in the last few days, I think I average 4 hours per night It’ll soon all be over, though, and I’ll try to hit a few parties in San Jose. I’ll probably arrive Wednesday morning and leave Friday night. Victoria will join me for Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Updates?

I apologize for the recent lack of updates. I’m preparing for GDC, working a lot on our game and preparing for a move at the end of the month. More on all of that later.

GDC Talk

Softimage have published their GDC 2006 plans, among them the Visual Arts talk by yours truly:

FrankenDragon Flies Again! Creating Playstation 3 Art for Lair
Special Guest: Factor 5.

Location: Room C4
Time: 09:00-10:00AM
Presenter: Matthias Worch

A big part of the industry now knows what it means to create “next-generation content”, but many lessons that come with the new workflow are still learned the hard way. In this presentation, Matthias Worch from Factor 5 looks at the highly detailed creatures and environments of Lair, Factor 5′s upcoming Playstation 3 title, and how Factor 5 used SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.5.0 to solve various problems that cropped up during development.

About Factor 5:
Based in San Rafael, California, originally founded in Germany in 1987 and privately held, Factor 5 LLC is a leading developer of interactive entertainment software and technology for a variety of console and computer platforms. Among the company’s many successful titles is the multi-million selling Star Wars®: Rogue Squadron™ line of games for LucasArts Entertainment Company and the classic Turrican® series.
With the imminent arrival of the next generation of console and handheld technology Factor 5 has multiple game and technology projects in production for major console manufacturers.

For more information, visit www.factor5.com

Hope to see you there. The GDC page should be updated soon, as well.

And Now For Some Political Commentary

Blatantly stolen from Gunnar’s (and now also Niklas’ and Thomas’) page, I just like it too much. You should be paying them a regular visit, anyway!

Softimage XSI Layout

This is the layout I use for all my XSI work. More space-efficient than the standard layout, and loosely based on the Maya interface with easy access to all editors etc. from the menu.

Download this layout.
You might have to right-click on the link and “Save As”.

The Big Three Zero

Wow, my 30th birthday. This could be a time for a lot of self reflection, but I just haven’t managed to stress out about this date yet. I’m way too busy and life is going great! Victoria and Wolfi threw me a surprise birthday party on Thursday night during our weekly Walzwerk get-together, and surprised I was! I was prepared for something for this date, but it just hadn’t occurred to me that we would celebrate before the actual date. Really cool, a lot of people came out and I got more white chocolate out of than can possibly be good for me. Picture courtesy of Wolfi.

So, what am I going to do on my actual birthday? Setting my alarm for 4am to catch the men’s 20km Biathlon live on TV, for one. Because it’s something that I have liked to do for a long time, and if American television gives me the chance to catch it live I will take it! Watch the first NASCAR (show) race of the season with Victoria tonight, as well. Sleep and go out hiking a lot in-between to make up for all the TV. And open the remaining presents from everybody. Which reminds me…I think I’ll have to leave now!