Scenario Designer / 3D Artist / Animator - Jon

[toDaLeft]

Position:

Scenario Designer (primary) / 3D Artist / Animator

Name:

Jonathan (Jon)

Email:

jkevan (at) hawaii (dot) edu

Location:

Honolulu, HI

Availability:

5-10 hrs/wk

Age:

29

Occupation:

Self-Employed, Research Assistant, Grad Student

Skills and Experience:

Experience - I have partly own and run a medical animation company for nearly 10 years (www.seyet.com). Now a days the owners have wondered to their areas of interest and as a group we mostly do side jobs in simulation/training that will never make it on our website (confidentiality). Now I am rounding out my 2nd of 3 yrs in the Ed Tech masters program at University of Hawaii where I moonlight as a research assistant developing educational content for the nursing department. I am really interesting in doing a "tutorial campaign" for this game so I am hoping to merge my educational theory and 3D skills (if necessary) to accomplish that.

I have a pretty broad set of 3D skills, and so ultimately I am a bit of a hack. Not amazing at anything but good enough to be dangerous/useful is most areas.

Generally I can do anything in the 3D field but my strengths are in modeling and animating. Secondary in rigging although I am not very familiar with 3DS which is the tool I think you guys primarily use. We are a Maya house, but I am sure I can learn anything. I haven't had to do a lot of human animation/rigging though so my curve may be sharp (we mostly animate viruses, bacteria, or other small stuff).

I have done a fair bit of programming (JS, C++, C#) as was required with the Unity3D engine which we use for some of our work. I am sure I can do some simple functionality but I wouldn't turn to me to do any large scale engine efforts.

Motivation:

While doing a fair amount of NSF grant related animation work I happened to learn a lot about the poor state of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. There seems to be a large gap between educators and anyone who creates content for them and their students. My ultimate hope is to understand that gap, close it, and create something useful to change the tide.

Personality:

If I was a turtle I would be Donatello, and if I was part of the Furious 5.. likely Crane.

Short Essay:

I happen to be taking a Free & Open Source Software class where one of our assignments is to work on a related project. I found several slightly interesting projects until I ran into you guys and got VERY excited about the amazing game you guys have put together so far. I was particularly impressed by your intent to stay true to the history... a belief I strongly support and respect.

I happen to love RTS games and this seems to be the perfect marriage between something I enjoy and something I need to practice.

What do I seek to gain? *shrug*. Having completed something people will want and use is enough for me. It might be nice to get some feedback on any tutorial I made. Help me improve my understanding of education.

Interests and Hobbies:

My interests are in anything STEM related, but specifically microbiology (lately) & medical issues. Probably not relevant here. I love to rock climb, work out, play games w/ friends, and go beer tasting with my wife. I have been fortunate my whole life (except Steak & Shake @ 16) to work in areas that I loved. I actually enjoy reading about microbiology... I know.. odd.

Community:

I am occasionally in the #unity3d channel on freenode or commenting in their forums.

Favorite Game:

Ever? Mega Man... I love RTS games though and pretty much anything made by Blizzard. Lots of memories w/ Starcraft. When I was a kid I competed in one of those Nintendo competitions where you would ultimately be on the big stage running through rad racer, mario, and max points in tetris with a few other kids. Sort of like "The Wizard" w/ Fred Savage if you have ever seen it. This was before the all mighty power glove though :-p. I now have a soft spot for all things Mario.

Work Examples:

I did most of my 3D work on projects that are archived so I would have to dig that stuff out. Like I mentioned earlier... I am mostly doing educational content org/dev and scripting. I would prefer to use my skills for you in that light. Most of my current projects I can't even share. It would be easiest if you just take a look at: http://www.seyet.com/portfolio

I am happy to explain what I did on any specific project you have questions on in IRC. Some I just managed.. some I worked on.

The one I did the most 3D on was probably an older one like: http://www.seyet.com/bacteriophage-t4

I co-wrote the importer for this project (pdb files) when importing this file format was still novel. Not so much anymore :-p. Took a lot of MeshLab hours to clean that model up... phew.

Sorry, I don't have any "tutorial" or even "tutorial campaigns" to show you. This would be my first.

Another game I loved.. Savage by S2Games. The first one that is.

- Jon

[Jeru]

I liked your application, Jon, not least because I am a high school science teacher (I teach biology & biotechnology).

[Mythos_Ruler]

Hi, Jon. Have you installed the game yet and played around with the Atlas editor?

[toDaLeft]

I liked your application, Jon, not least because I am a high school science teacher (I teach biology & biotechnology).

Thanks Jeru ;-). Good to know there is another science geek. I would be interested in hearing about your experience as a HS teacher in IRC sometime. If you don't mind talking shop.

- J

[toDaLeft]

Hi, Jon. Have you installed the game yet and played around with the Atlas editor?

Hey Mythos,

Sorry, suppose I should have "multi-quoted". To be honest I have never seen that feature before (or didn't notice it).

Yes, I have played with the game and editor a bit. I will get more time to do that on Friday and this weekend, but I have a good sense of where it is and where it's probably going.

Still trying to figure out how to do a few things in the editor or if those features have even been implemented yet such as scripted triggers, map pings, or camera pathing (besides default location). I am guessing this is somewhat rolled into the JS console under "Misc Hacks". I have started grabbing the repository so I can start fishing through the code. Hopefully get a better idea of my functionality options.

You guys probably have a thread somewhere or past IRC logs talking about these things, but I haven't had a chance to dig for it yet.

FYI: I will be running IRC while I am at my research position most days. Feel free to hit me up there. UN: toDaLeft

- J

[Mythos_Ruler]

Pretty much what you see in Atlas is what is available at the moment. I am in need of someone to help me make playable map mockups for this list of planned random map scripts:

http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=15562

Basically the person should be good at and enjoy creating natural-looking terrain and fully-playable maps based upon the descriptions in that thread. These new maps will be released with subsequent Alpha and Beta releases and will be playable by players and serve as examples for random map scripters.

Atlas is not full-featured yet, but even in this early stage custom map design is quite doable and enjoyable. I've created most of the existing maps in the game using Atlas. Slowly, over time, there will be more options and tools added to Atlas to make designing much quicker and more powerful.

[toDaLeft]

I am in need of someone to help me make playable map mockups for this list of planned random map scripts -

Basically the person should be good at and enjoy creating natural-looking terrain and fully-playable maps based upon the descriptions in that thread.

If that's what you need. Fine w/ me. I think I would enjoy creating natural-looking terrain and fully-playable maps. Whether or not I am good at it... I'll leave that decision to a more experienced person like yourself.

I'll put a plan together for myself this weekend and start on it.

Pretty much what you see in Atlas is what is available at the moment.

Atlas is not full-featured yet, but even in this early stage custom map design is quite doable and enjoyable. Slowly, over time, there will be more options and tools added to Atlas to make designing much quicker and more powerful.

Agreed, Atlas seems very well done. I am sure the process of making the playable maps will empower any future tutorial work I take a stab at. When I take breaks on the playable maps I will explore the code a bit and see if there is anything I can offer there or not.

Looking forward to it,

- J

[Mythos_Ruler]

Good. I think what you can do is just choose a map from the list and try to make a playable mockup. Take a look at the maps I've already done and see if you can match the direction we've established.