Plan for Adam deGrandis

First things first, the biggest news as of late is that I'm now an employee of GarageGames. Rockin. Im pumped, excited, and more to be working with so many super talented people, not to mention be privy to all the top secret goings on. And let me tell you, there is TONS of awesome stuff going on behind the scenes.

Plans for world domination aside, I wanted to use this plan to talk about my path as an intern who became an employee, kind of to go along with Tim's.

Ill start at the beginning. I applied for my internship during the fall of last year. At that time I was still in school, I had just started Games Extract and I was working on my portfolio all the time. I expected a response back to the tune of "thanks for applying, but this application has only succeeded in embarrassing you", so imagine my surprise when I got back a reply that said "We're impressed and want you to come out to Eugene".

I graduated in May and headed out for Eugene in the beginning of June. After after a cross country trip I arrived and almost immediately was learning new things. That in and of itself isn't that remarkable; I had been learning new things since I started game art. The mind blowing thing is that GarageGames is a place where learning is not only encouraged, but it's made a chief priority. "Make a point to share what you know... It helps everyone make cooler stuff" is an attitude that's found in abundance. And since everyone follows this rule, I'm constantly learning cool little tricks. A better way to model a hand. A quick method to break down a complex image to its base composition. They're small things mentioned almost in passing, but they add up.

Contrary to popular belief, there are just about a million ways to break into the game industry. If you want some VERY good experience, apply for an internship. Your work will get much better very quickly, and besides that, it looks great on a resume.

So while Im here, I figure I should let you know what I'm up to, even if only briefly.

TDN is progressing nicely. No launch dates yet, but the formatting templates (what users will use, "Getting Started with TDN" articles, and site designs are all completed or very near completion. Basically, all the items on the "Things TDN needs to have are all checked off". I'm now working on some nice, tasty icing to cover the cake with, but Ill write about all of that in another plan.

I have a bunch of pretty art type stuff in the pipe but alas, no screenshots. Heres a little picture of Brian Greene, who wrote the book "The Elegant Universe".


Thats all. Thanks for reading. :)