Recap Week 01

 We started off the first week by getting introduced to the group of people that we are going to work with for the next 6 months. The group consisted mostly of students from around Europe, but also a few people with professional experience.

Our task of the week was to start working on the creation of the universe. We will later on use this universe to develop a game and a movie. This would be tough to do with any kind of group, especially when you don't know each other.

On tuesday we went through an epic 12 hour long discussion about the different ideas we had and how to expand on them. Since we come from different backgrounds we also discussed a lot about the similarities and differences between games and movies. We didn't really come to any conclusion about anything that day, more than the fact that it is very frustrating to try and get along with a group of people you have only known for a day.

On wednesday we got to meet a panel of various awesome people. Among them a project manager from Sony and the creator of the Star Wars lego (and a lot of other lego products as well). We got a lot of advice regarding how to get started and what to focus on. It was definitely good to have the huge discussion the day before, we knew what questions we needed to ask. I think we also took the panel's advice to heart in a way that we wouldn't have done if everything had happened smoothly.

The later half of the week we spent working on one-day projects to get used to the workflow and working with each other. The concept group (consisting mainly of the game and animation director) had meetings to come up with a universe. The whole group got briefed at regular intervals on their progress. Even if a smaller group comes up with the initial ideas, the input from the rest of the team is considered very important.

A Paparazzi photo of the concept group in progress.

Next week will be all about fleshing out the universe and deciding more about the direction we want to go.