Ni Hao, Kai-lan Discovery Game - Review

This game is aimed at children 3 plus, so we got it for our 3 year old. I don't recommend it, certainly unless the child is much older.

The dice popper, which I thought would be fun for our little one is incredibly hard to pop, I struggle to push it hard enough as it is.

The little pieces are really cheaply made and the card board inserts to the plastic base of the pieces just slide about and never stay put. There is also no box to this board game, so it's really hard to keep all the pieces together without losing them.

The instructions, if you actually want to play this properly are also not printed on the underside of the board, which is a really flimsy piece of cardboard, which is such an over site. The plastic that sits on the board is also rubbishy, weak and within minutes was cracking at the corners and falling apart.

Not very impressed with this game, which is a shame because it is very cute.

Legal Basics for Game Companies

A free half day conference in Waltham MA, hosted by Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, P.C. on the 5th of May 2011.

The iternary of the event is as follows:

Game Law Basics Sessions:

• VC & Angel Financing - 1:00 - 2:00 pm
• Strategic Partnering - 2:00 - 3:00 pm
• IP Protection - 3:00 - 4:00 pm
• Formation - 3:00 - 4:00 pm
• Mergers & Acquisitions - 4:00 - 5:00 pm
• Employment - 4:00 - 5:00 pm

More info on this great event for people thinking of starting up a studio, or who have started up can be found here.

What is Tech Art?

Here are presentation videos from the talk given at 3D Stimulus Day.

The panel was hosted by Chad Moore, who you can follow on twitter as @smapdi

He also has a great blog with a load of information about how to get a job as well as including slides to his talks which you can find here.

The rest of the panel was made up of the following people -

Ryan Griffin, Senior Character TD, Turbine - @griffinanimator
Elliott Mitchell, Vermont Digital Arts - @Mrt3D
Brandon Bateman, Senior Tech Artist, Turbine
Farley Chery, Instructor, ITT Institute and Bunker Hill Community College
Justin Woodard, Technical Artist, Turbine - @JustinWoodard

The presentation covers what a technical artist means, covering how the varied role differs between the size and direction of the company from a large corporation to a small indie developer.

Roughly 45 mins in total over 3 parts, the final part includes part of the Q&A session.

Part 1 -

Part 2 -

Part 3 -

Using Unity3D to create a 2D game

Presentation given by Alex Schwartz and Yilmaz Kiymaz of Owlchemy Labs.

The topic of making a 2D game by mixing 2D and 3D in Unity and some of their tools that were created and techniques that can easily be used.

Some of these tools are available on their website for free.

The presentation is in three parts, totalling around 45 minutes.

Part 1-3:

Part 2-3:

Part 3-3 including the QA session:

Stuff from 3D Stimulus

So this is really a highlight of some of the info as there are videos of some of the talks to come later.

Okay, so most probably couldn't care, but asking to help folks at the local New England resellers out, they're looking to get 200 people signed up for the 20th April event. GET.

If they do, they'll get some money to put towards local events, and they've helped put on a lot of cool events for artists in the Boston area, so if you're in the area or just want to help out, register through them and it'll be much appreciated.

The webinar is mostly a bunch of presentations about vfx, one is from the effects on Black Swan and another movie and one is a game I think.

If anyone is interested, give Heidi a shout - hjelev@greateasterntech.com

She needs your name, email and either an address or your company name and she'll automatically opt you out of receiving any Autodesk newsletter spam, unless you actually want it.

Other bits and pieces, Motion Builder or the Entertainment Suite of products, if you buy through GET, you'll get a free Kinect and set up with hacked software to have your own motion capture device out of it.

www.brekel.com if you want to check out the software that was demo'ed as a mocap software that plugged right into Motion Builder.

A nice free shader for people to use in their work was 3Point Shader Lite found here.

3D Stimulus Day

GET are hosting another 3D Stimulus Day event - 9th April

A recap about the event, which is an awesome free art and networking event -

Location: Mt. Ida, Newton, MA

Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm

Presentations this year include:

• Chad Moore of Turbine and Rigging Dojo, with Job Hunting Tips for 3D Artists
• Alex Schwartz and Yilmaz Kiymaz of Owlchemy Labs, presenting Mixing 2D and 3D in Unity
• A panel-discussion with various tech artists from local game companies, mediated by Chad Moore
  • Ryan Griffin, Senior Character TD, Turbine
  • Elliott Mitchell, Vermont Digital Arts
  • Brandon Bateman, Senior Tech Artist, Turbine
  • Farley Chery, Instructor, ITT Institute and Bunker Hill Community College
  • Justin Woodard, Technical Artist, Turbine
• Willem Van Der Schyf, Tencent Boston, presenting his Workflow for Character Creation using Max & ZBrush
• Afternoon networking session upstairs with demos from local individuals and companies including Brass Monkey, Vermont Digital Arts, Owlchemy Labs, 3d Camera Technology, Mocap with Kinect and Motion Builder and lots more!!!

Adding to this, The Boston Post Mortem are having a meet up on the 13th April and will be talking about Game Law Hot Topics.

This should be a great, interesting meet up too.