a sketch a day - October

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And another week has past. It's only been two weeks but it seems like a month! The energy here at the Shanghai studio is very different from back home. Because of the newer people to the industry, one can feel the excitement as they work on something real for a change, instead of just outsourcing. People play games after work a lot more than back home, too, and I have to say I like it. It's been a while since I've worked in such a vibrant environment. The feeling is more of a small studio, where everyone wants to be there and work hard at something fun, than a big corporate office, where a lot of people, and not necessarily good ones, get lazy, bitter and way over paid for too little productivity. Oh, yes, BTW, I heard that there was a little lay-off action going on back at the big "H". Makes me wonder if there's going to be a job when I get back, hahaha. Frankly, I don't care any more. That's sounds so bad:-I Anyway, today was a full day of checking out of the hotel, moving into an apartment. One nice thing that finished off the day for me was an email from one of the artist, thanking me for helping him with his modeling and texturing. Although what I taught him is considered common knowledge back home, it's all knew to them - It's nice to be appreciated. Then again, that's why I was sent out here to do. I can sure see some writings on the wall. Sigh...


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Sorry for the late posts, but like I said before, updating this blog is not as easy as back home. As per Jane's questions, I see this experience as a glass half full. The artist here are excited about working on a real title instead of cranking out asset after asset, but the experience of doing things the best way are not yet learned, so they are doing things the "outsourcing" way, which is to do things according to what is given. They need to learn to think for themselves in terms of doing things more efficiently to save time and budgets.

Saw an accident for the first time today while outside the office while hailing a cab to go to lunch. This cabs screeches in front of us, and in turn cut off a lady on a moped, who slammed on her breaks, but were to close to stop in time. All of us heard a loud "CRACK" as the front of her bike hit the rear bumper of the cab. "Oh, shit!" I thought as my co-workers and wondered if she was ok? I think she must have collided around three or four miles and hour, but still, people are quite fragile, if you think about it. Anyway, the funny, but unbelievable part was that when the cabby got out of his cab, the first thing he did was to inspect the damage of the bumper! What the hell? He's not concerned about the person, but about his freakin car? Good thing the lady was ok. My co-worker said that "Yeah, that's the way they are, here." Nice... Yes, indeed, if you ever visit Shanghai, don't expect "pedestrian's right of way" here, or else you're going to eat pavement! Cars have right of way, and don't you forget it, hahaha!


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Wow, what a week! this is the first work week here across the Pacific and it was a hectic one. Got into the office Monday to find that the computer they gave me was not totally set up - I had to do it. By late Wednesday, I was finally synced up to all data required for actual work. while checking all the applications, I found that the system seemed a little slow, so I checked the hardware specs and found it shockingly under powered - a 1.89GHZ with 2GIGs of RAM. This was their standard issued artist machine? I guess since they've been working on individual objects, a 1.89GHZ machine's not bad, but when they're expected to start building actual levels here, it ant going to cut it! Needless to say, I raised the alarm bell to the brass back home and got the ball rolling for some better hardware, some one's going to be eating this fat cost, and it's not going to taste very good!

Hardware issues aside, I found the artist here art quite talented, the only real issue here was their experience. Since China is just starting to get into the game development business, ala the increase demand for outsourcing from the States due to cutting development cost, there's just not very many experienced game development people. All the artist that are on this high profile game are junior grade at best when it comes knowing the best practices of building assets. As the TAD(technical art director) and I get their systems set, this whole week, for integration and production for the game, we were hit with a lot of problems that are too hard to get into for now. Needless to say, these problems should go away when they get new computers.

Communication is a huge barrier and that was one of the reasons why I'm here. So far things have been difficult between EASH and EARS due to revisions that were supposed to be done not totally resolved, but the artist seems to appreciate that someone from the head office is here to help them out with translations and issues, that's not to say that it's going smoothly. I'm not a native speaker and I can only understand simple conversation, but I guess a little is better than nothing at all. Now that I am here, I think I'm in for one hell of a ride - a lot is dependent on the success of this studio, and it CAN NOT FAIL! Talk about no pressure, sheesh, because there's no other options due to the fact that this game have to ship next year, so I have a feeling that the "four" month stay may become a six month one, I will have to explain that one later. I definitely feel that I've been thrown to the wolves - SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAA!

But on to happier things. Food here is freakin great and this city is all about eating. I've had three free lunches this week because I'm the "new guy" and all the places that we went to is close to work. After work a couple of ex-pats who's here on two year contracts showed us some other good places that frequent - a food blog will definitely be started when I get the chance. The hotel I'm staying at is a nice one bedroom with a small kitchen that's pretty much useless because there's not silverware, dishes, pots or pans. I do a 1.3 mile walk to and from the hotel to work, but that's going to change sometime next week as I find out whether or not they find me a place to live. Like I've mentioned before, blogging is going to be a bit difficult because a scanner is not easily accessible. Oh, yes, one last thing; somehow, when the price of gasoline throughout the world is quite expensive, gas here is around two bucks a gallon, go figure:-I


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Well, looks like blogging's going to be a little rough for a week or so as I'm getting settled. There's no scanner I have easy access to and I'm not sure if I should activate the online service at the hotel. I think the easiest way to get the pictures up is to take a snap shot of it with my camera and get it ready when I have the work machine set up. Again, there's no guarantee that I can view my own blog sometimes for some stupid reason, even though I can update it. Updates might be a little sporadic due to opportunity.


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While waiting at the airport, totally bored, I did some sketches of the waiting passengers around the terminal to fulfill my daily sketch. The flight was not too bad due to the fact that I was able to change my window seat to an aisle - thank goodness. Many thanks to the check-in lady who was kind enough to do that for me:) Arrived in Shanghai today, or rather, the day after, and it's already dark. Work had a driver waiting for me at the airport and I was dropped off at a hotel to settle down for the weekend. Co-workers want me to start a photo blog of my four month tour of duty so I'll start when I figure out what's going on at work Monday.


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Today was the last day to enjoy the foods that I will not be able to eat for quite some time, and one of those foods is the dollar tacos that's found on the edge of little Mexico in Redwood city off of Middlefield Road. I ate four of those delicious tacos; one pollo, one asada, one carnitas, and one el pastor, and washed it all down with a nice cold glass of horchata, mmm, mmmmm. For dinner, my friends treated me to all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ and for desert, a two scoop ice cream sunday. I have not consumed this much calories in a very long time, and damn it, it was good! The ID is now satisfied and the EGO is back in charge....for now.


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Had a wonderful going away dinner with some co-workers tonight at our favorite Japanese restaurant, Hotaru. We must have ordered at least twelve to fifteen dishes of sushi and rolls of all kinds. Of course I had to order some tuna sashimi all to myself - just can't get enough of that stuff, mmm, mmmmm! I'd figured that I had better get my fill now because who knows when I'm going to get another chance over seas. It was unfortunate that not everyone on the invite list could make it. It was also unfortunate that not everyone who went to dinner could go bowling afterwords, which was a good thing, for bowling didn't end until late, and I was getting quite tired. Tomorrow will be my last day to go eat dollar tacos for lunch and I plan to enjoy every last one, heh, heh.


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I hate to say, but I'm not sure that I'm looking forward to this field assignment across the seas. A month or two would be OK, but having to put everything on hold for four months just don't sound fun, but maybe I'm just a bit scared that it won't work out. It seems like they're expecting a lot from me, especially making the outsource team work. But like they say "nothing tried, nothing gained" hahahaha.


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