Warning!: huge post ahead!, (well. not that huge anymore, had to cut it down (why? not sure..) i want to give the Denmark experience a whole blogpost )

Hey there people! long time no see you (yeah trying to be nice so you forget I’m lazy enough to not to update very often), I’ll try to make a little resume about what was my life about the past month, lotsa stuff happening! chronologically:

• The Apricot Open Game have a new name! and a member less

• New courses at the Blender Institute! during July, to the classroom again!

• Denmark!, at the end of July the Game Development Camp 2008 took place in the Aalborg city, at the north of Denmark, and I was part of it! (awesome experience i had there, full blogpost soon! is already written it just needs some tweaks and photos, and time..)

Now lets go deep in the topics..

Apricot: Yo Frankie!

Yo Frankie!

Apricot Open Game, now officially called Yo Frankie!, with 2 episodes: A Furry Vendetta! (developed completely in Blender, using the Blender’s built-in Game Engine -BGE), and Funny Furry Frankie! (or something like it, it uses the Crystal Space engine), as I said in the last blogpost, the game project that was supposed to run under Crystal Space only, finally will have two versions, both with Frankie as main character, some furry animals running around, in a “Big Buck Bunny-like” environment, but there will be *big* differences on them.. gameplay wise mostly. Right now I could only tell about the BGE version, because I’m not totally up-to-date with Crystal Space, and is (is?) being developed during August too.. so not sure what is its state by now, I guess the next blogpost will be about the finished game, once I get home (one week from now..!).
One less member!. While we (the artists in the team, Chris and I) switch to BGE, Pablo Martin, “Caedes” decides to leave the team, why? don’t know! I don’t see him since mid June (although he promised to go with me to Barcelona, he didn’t go and I had to give mine and *his* presentation.. nice hu? but it was fun.. thanks to the very nice people over there).
Anyways.. nowadays is not very clear how many/who is working in the game, would like to clearify it here since is an important aspect (most people thinks that they are about to play a game made by 6 people -full team, and is not even close to that):

• Project started back in Febreuary, 6 members: 2 artists, 4 developers, in March the Art Director (Qaareb) leaves the team.

• April 8th, I’m officially part of the Apricot team, in the Blender Institute (Amsterdam).
  Again: 6 members: 2 artists, 4 developers.

• End of May, the 2 artists in the team decide to use BGE as alternative, since the Blender to Crystal exporter wasn’t good enough, it made the workflow very slow, along with the entire project slow.. Now the team would be: 3 Crystal Space guys, using the art we made in all that time (and the one we would be making the next months), and in the BGE side, 3 guys: 1 full time artist (me), Chris would be sharing between art-making and BGE logic/python (since he is very good with the game engine), and Campbell Barton, our full-time programmer, bugfixer, and he ended up making almost all the logic!

• Middle June, Pablo Caedes decides to leave the team (not officially, but.. not going to work is a way to leave the team, isn’t?). CS: 2 developers. BGE: like before.

The project was supposed to finish at the end of July, so for the last month and a half, the Crystal Space team had only 2 developers and the art/animations we were making. While we continue with the BGE.
End of July, every one but the 2 artists go home, the CS team would work from their places, and Campbell will work a full month online from Australia. Chris and I will stay whole August here in Amsterdam to wrap up the project, make documentation, DVD and website.

That’s it!, just wanted to leave things clear, and say to people that the game you will play is not made by 6 people, 6 months, the Blender Game Engine version of the game that you see here, is only 2-3 months of work, June, July, and August.

Blender Institute: Courses!

Blender Institute

Yep! courses time once again!

Luckily, no more bones and rigging!, this time was about one of the topics that I enjoy the most, Compositing!, we went through the nodes, render passes, make effects, color correction tools, using masks, add depth of field, mist, motion blur (vector based), create videos with the Blender Sequence Editor and a lot of things more that I can’t remember now, we managed to put all that in a 4 hours class, thanks to how fast they learn and that this time was only 2 people in the room (and me =), one was from here (Netherlands), and the other one was from Germany. A big cheers from here and thanks for making me feel so comfortable with the class!

ARgarhrahghahghh <— Yes, there are only 5 days left to finish Yo Frankie!… 5 days! in a week I will be back in Argentina!, aargghh 5 days.. to make a DVD.. a website.. and finish the documentation.. eeekkk ..  what if I jump over the window or so? mmmh would get hit by the bikes.. err this days are stressful.. but then is all relax for a few days.. relax..

Cheers to everyone and THANKS for the nice emails about the game and everything!

PS: by the way! there is an article about Yo Frankie! (only spanish, sorry), in the first edition of the EichNews magazine, sadly because of the lack of time I couldn’t give a interview, but is good information for those who don’t follow the blog, and lotsa images.

PS2: The other day I gave an interesting (you’ll see why) video interview at Blendernation, check it out!:
http://www.blendernation.com/2008/08/22/apricot-blender-beer-tai-food/

peace and joy for everyone!
venomgfx