Tuesday 12 February 2008

visiting speakers - Relentless and Jon Bird

Relentless software developers

Relentless come in to talk about their work as software developers for Sony Playstation. They specialise in social games, like their popular 'Buzz' series of quiz based games. Games take around 2 years or so to be released, with only around half making it to the final stage. The explained their business is run efficiently, with a more 'regular' 9-5 working day, which seemed very unusual in the industry.
They gave some good advice on compiling portfolios and showreels, namely keep in minimal, don't overdo fancy editing and effects, and don't included anything that's not your very best. They made their work seem very appealing, just not sure I've got the right skills for that line of work - my experience of working in 3D is very limited.




Jon Bird from the Creative Systems Labs at the University of Sussex gave an interesting talk on his work on Interdisciplinary Research Projects, where maths, science and art meet to go wild. Evolutionary robots built to produce creative works, which raises the question of what is creativity?. The challenge is to build a robot, yet programme it without controlling its creative output. Fascinating stuff, some of it just out of reach of my understanding, but all very impressive.
(by the way - the slide of the Bower Bird he showed - if you've never seen these fellas, you should check 'em out, (theres a low quality clip here) they are one of the most amazing things I've seen in the natural world. David Attenborough's Life of Birds has some stunning footage, i recommend taking a look)

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