Summer Dreams

As my finals approach once again so do the days of careless daydreaming that occur during summer, but this year I'll change this lackadaisical routine. Of course the best way to accomplish this is to arrange a workload with set goals, sadly though I have only a few ideas in mind.

One of my desires is to increase the amount of daily creative writing I complete, this number is currently hovering around zero, unless, of course, you consider my blog posts as pieces of art. I do... anyways, back to topic before your laughter ends in a hospital visit. Swirling about in my head are four stories that I've been dying to commit to page. Each of them are inspired by the styles of some writers I have been reading lately: Camus, Rand, Asimov, and Kafka.

Lo and behold, I also happen to have four free months of vacation, with no small amount of trepidation, I shall challenge myself to finish a story per month. Each of them will be short in length, from five to twenty pages, and my focus on each will be to express the central theme with as little additive fat as possible. Lean stories told in the most straight-forward manner as possible. It will be a good exercise in preventing my nature of layering sentences till the point of collapse.

One issue I must resolve is where to upload these masterpieces once finished. The template provided by this website is unsuited for hosting pages of story. This leads me to my next need.

By the time my required academia suffering beckons again, I hope to have learned enough html to build a custom blog, or even better, a site to host my projects. Searching the net I found quite a number of good html tutorials. The rest will be up to me, best of luck me!

I've wrote quite a bit without mentioning my videogame career goals. No worries because I won't neglect the sticky business a moment longer.

The top six goals I have are; play more games, obtain total mastery of Maya, develop basic C++/- fundamentals, write industry related articles, structure a D&D campaign, and create a card games for my portfolio.

1. Play More Games: As my youth slips away from me so does the free time I once had, and this has left so many titles I wished to play in the shadows. I truly feel saddened that I've yet titles like Beyond Good & Evil, Jak Series, Ratchet and Clank, Sly, Psychonauts, and so on till et nauseu. The main deficit in my gamer diet is platformers, as the previous list indicates so well.

2. Mastery of Maya: This is a tall order for a program with such depth, but I believe my conviction is strong enough to become an above average CG artist. I've already cleared the first 100 pages of my beginner's Maya handbook, so push on tenacious me.

3. Basic C++/-: A well rounded developer is the successful developer. Too bad math is my kryptonite and I hear them vidjagames run on those doohicky compooter langidges. I can already see my hunched form basked in the computer glow, eyes bloodshot, brain fried, and fingers aching from evaluating impossibly large databases.

4. Write Industry Related Articles: I'm sure my future employers would love to see evidence that I understand the business upon which I'll be entering. The ultimate goal is to gain a few of my pieces published on a site such as Gamasutra, or Frictionless Insight, or Kotaku. That sort of notoriety would simply be tops.

5. Start a D&D Campaign: Dungeons and Dragons is an absolutely phenomenal way for me to stretch my analytic game design muscles. Plus I can torture my friends in my creations. It would also be a blast if I could enlist my potential employer into my campaign. That really would be a cool learning experience to hear their perspective on my creation.

6. Create Card Games: I would love to meet a prospective employer, impress them in my professionalism, and when I leave provide a polished trinket for their enjoyment. The cards would feature some pleasant artwork, and God willing, would be honestly fun to play.

I've provided the best rundown I could muster on my summer plans. All that's left is the hard part, sticking to the posted plans. In the next two weeks I'll give some meat to this skeletal construct and then all missions will be go. That's all for tonight.

-Ciao Everyone