2011
An ODD update…
ODD Animation, like all such entities is constantly changing. A loose organization from the beginning, it’s natural that those of us who have worked together under that name and many others are constantly coming and going. The biggest change, by far, came when I accepted a full time offer from Pearson to work on Poptropica. It’s a full-time gig and the first time I’ve worked as a full-time game developer.
Poptropica is a lot of fun and I’ve still managed to work on four or five animated 90 second spots and a couple of live-action shoots. But in the last year, I haven’t had to reach outside the organizations I’m working with to find the talented people I always enjoyed working with during my stint as a freelancer. As a result, ODD Animation has been fairly stagnant for the last several years. While I’ve become very comfortable working at Pearson, a lot of opportunities have opened up recently with mobile applications, hardware accelerated Flash content, AIR, etc. and I find myself wanting to dip my fingers in several personal projects again in a big way. Several are new projects or collaborative ideas that I’d like to explore and several are new takes on unfinished business I’ve had running around my head for a long time.
For example, I’ve had an idea to build a Spanish vocabulary program for over a decade. I finally built it several years ago. But now it’s time to really finish it, if just to get it out of my head so I can think of something else. Along with that project come a dozen ideas for mobile and desktop apps and games that will take some thinking and looking to find the right people to work with. I’ve never been much of a blogger, but my intent is to offer a forum where I can begin to present some of the things we’re playing with as we’re working on them. Along the way, I might try my hand at sharing some of what we know about the technologies we play with. We’ll see whether that “Tutorials” button stays up there long…
Keep smiling,
Jason
