I have been insanely busy for the past couple months. I have been working up to ninety-five hours per week. Is it worth it? I think so. I’m learning a lot.

Today we had two guest speakers, one from Animal Logic and one from retro Studios. Animal Logic is a visual effects studio in Australia that does special effects for films and for commercials. They are releasing their first feature-length film this weekend: Happy Feet. They worked on the special effects on The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, Moulin Rouge, Lord of the Rings, and numerous other recent movies.

Retro Studios is the only first-party Nintendo developer in North America, outside of the Nintendo of America headquarters in Washington state. They are located in Austin, TX, and are best known for the Metroid Prime series, which will soon see its third iteration released for the Wii.

The Animal Logic speech was very motivating, but was primarily aimed at artists and would-be producers. They only employ a handful of programmers, in their R&D department. I have to give the speaker credit, by the end I was contemplating a career in visual effects.

The Retro Studios speech was given by a software engineer and was much more technical, even going so far as to give us a high-level overview of the software architecture of Metroid Prime. The speaker talked a lot about Wii development and about the technical capabilities of the Wii. (Basically, it’s a Gamecube x2.) He also talked about the business practices used by Retro, a relatively small studio, in contrast with EA Tiburon.

There are three weeks left in the semester, including next week which is only two days long. Although I’m enjoying the work, it will be nice to get a little respite over the holidays.

I thought this announcement might be coming. EA has announced that their next-gen open-world rpg Project Gray Company is, in fact, their next Lord of the Rings title. It has now been renamed to The Lord of the Rings: The White Council, which is not as cool as Project Gray Company. I’m pretty psyched about this game, even though it looks a lot like Oblivion, which I thought was overrated.