Oh, wow… you’re still here.

Last time we met, it was April — for those of you who are like me, that last post three months and twenty one days ago — and I said I’d give you two blogs that week.  Let’s pretend I did that, and kept doing that all this time, so there’s no hard feelings.

So, what’s happened since I dropped off the planet?

Lots, actually, but only a few things are really worth mentioning, and I’ll do that in bullets, because I’m feeling neat, tidy, and list-like today.

• Someone actually validated my least-popular blog where I said you should work for free.  Until I read that, I’d been wondering if I was all wrong… now I know I’m not.
• Siphon Spirit is going strong, though our release is looking farther and farther away, thanks to feature creep. But it will be awesome, I assure you.  One thing I’m incredibly happy about is that I’m getting to use XACT for the first time, and finding it really helpful.
• Violet Kiss (the website is down, apparently) was finished — I may have mentioned that — and is being submitted to film festivals around the country.  If you’re interested in seeing it, let me know, and I can try to find out the dates and locations.
• I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project, and though my team didn’t win, I had a great time. You can watch the final video here, and our practice run here.

And now, the bigger news.

In Salt Lake City, there is a gaming and electronics expo called Geex (if you’re in Utah, are a games publisher, or an electronics manufacturer, you should check it out), where, at the very least, there were a bunch of sweet game tournaments and contests, one of which was a Game-in-a-day, where I wrote music and sound effects for a small number of games (two with music, three with sound effects).  My official team came in third place, and one of the teams I did sound for came in first.

Rick Bradshaw, Dave Matney, Chance Thomas

But that’s not the big news… See, at Geex, there were a myriad of panels, one of which was Audio in Games, featuring some pretty big names in the local, and even global, game audio community.

Hosting the panel was Mike Neilsen, from Wahoo / NinjaBee, who did a great job and kept things rolling.  On the panel with me were Rick Bradshaw, a sound designer from Disney Interactive, and Chance Thomas, from HUGEsound.

My initial thoughts on the panel were that it would be dull, and we’d have maybe ten people in the crowd, and we’d probably end up finishing early because of lack of interest.

Boy, was I wrong… there were probably 20-30 people in the crowd,with every one of them asking incredibly good questions and keeping things moving — Mike only had to step in a few times to offer new topics.  We were given an hour, but since we were the final panel of the day, we ended up going somewhere between 30-40 minutes over.

The best part of the panel experience, in my opinion, was that there was a mutual respect between us, and we all seemed to really get along.  Though Mike and I only have a few years experience, against Brad and Chance’s twenty-plus years each, both Mike and I were able to have valuable input, with none of us really taking center stage.  I particularly liked that, for almost every question, the panel would end up discussing it like we were talking over coffee — someone would ask a question, one panelist would offer their opinion, then turn to the rest of the panel, and we’d discuss it with each other.  It felt really nice to shoot shop with people who have far more experience and shipped titles under their belts, and not feel like I was the odd man out.

So, now what?

Back to working on Siphon Spirit, most likely, as well as a few MonkeyEgg projects that haven’t really taken off.  I’m also working on a bid piece for a short horror film, and I should be officially compiling my demo reel over the next couple of weeks.  In the mean time, I’ll try to update here, more often… and I’ll get some music uploaded so you can hear what I did for the Geex Game-in-a-day.

Related posts:

1. One Hour Audio pt. 1
2. Global Game Jam, 2010
3. Guerilla Marketing for Modern Composers: First Things First
4. Final Burn 2009
5. Time to start taking myself seriously.