Village Gamer

Victoria – The TCS Bootcamp, being held on Tuesday September 15, is a full day event being offered by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service in partnership with VIATeC.  This event starts with a morning seminar that first teaches you what California investors are looking for, then helps you to polish your pitch.  The morning session is open to any individual who wants to learn how to access investors. The seminar will be held at the Vancouver Island Technology Park Conference Centre in Victoria, BC

In the afternoon you will pitch your company to a panel of California investors and local judges.  You will receive instant feedback from the panel on your product and presentation.  All ICT (Information and Communication Technology) emerging tech companies are eligible to apply for the limited number of presenter spots available. Applicants will be juried before the event.

After the presentations in the afternoon, the 6-8 Vancouver Island ICT companies who stand the best chance of success in California will be invited to the next round of presentations in Silicon Valley and San Diego.
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Ottawa – Media Awareness Network (MNet), Canada’s leading not-for-profit media literacy organization, is pleased to announce the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has joined the organization’s team of supporters as a Silver Sponsor.

“We are honoured that CIRA recognizes the importance of media literacy in the lives of children and youth,” said Cathy Wing, MNet’s Co-Executive Director. “These funds will help MNet to continue to develop high quality media literacy programs and resources that support the healthy development of young Canadians.”

“As the Internet becomes more integrated in our daily lives, it is now more important than ever to ensure young people are equipped to make safe decisions when using the Internet,” says Byron Holland, President and CEO of CIRA.  “The Media Awareness Network provides an important and necessary service to educators and parents and as the steward of Canada’s domain and Internet space, CIRA is proud to be a sponsor of MNet’s vital programs.”
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Toronto – Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has been awarded a $2.3 million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada’s College and Community Innovation Program to establish a unique new research centre for screen-based industries. NSERC’s funding follows an initial $300,000 grant from the Ontario government’s Ontario Media Development Corporation.

The Digital Media Centre for Real-time Production takes a revolutionary approach to research, technology development, education and innovation, and will be located in the heart of the filmmaking industry in Toronto.

The Centre’s mission is to conduct world-class research into film, digital cinema and high definition imaging technologies in a wide variety of areas from capture to delivery and archiving. It was conceived and launched by Sheridan and will operate in partnership with creative industries and three levels of government.
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Vancouver – A team of four students at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Advanced Wood Processing has just released an innovative educational “video game” on the basics of CNC technology and tooling. The application allows users to explore a virtual machine shop to learn about topics related to the electrical and mechanical components of CNC machines, as well as tool design, physics, and metallurgy.

While many websites provide technical overviews of CNC technology, it is often difficult to obtain accurate and objective information, and the presentation is typically text-heavy. This video game takes a different approach by using an interactive 3D environment to teach 3D concepts such as tooling angles. The educational content is supported by pictures, graphics, videos, 2D animations, and 3D animations.

The project was developed at the Centre for Advanced Wood Processing at UBC, Canada’s education and training centre for the wood products manufacturing industry. The original concept was proposed by Richard Hewitt, a recent graduate of UBC’s Wood Products Processing program, and Robert Shum, a UBC Computer Science student. The two subsequently hired and managed a team of fellow UBC students to help develop the application, as well as contributing their own animation, video-editing, and programming skills. Funding was provided through BCCampus, a BC government initiative that promotes a fusion of technology and education to create open learning opportunities for students and adult learners.

The educational game is available for Windows PCs and can be downloaded for free at:

http://www.learncnc.org

Calgary – Digital Alberta is pleased to announce the first in a series of upcoming workshops. These one day intensive workshops are geared to providing DA members with a unique opportunity to train directly with experts in their fields.

The First Work Shop is entitled “Digital Painting” with instructor Jaysin from the brilliant DPI Studios. He will run you through the process he uses as you follow along, creating the digital painting yourself. As an artist looking to branching into illustration, design, animation, or gaming this course offers you an opportunity to expand your portfolio and to showcase the pieces that potential employers want to see.

When: Saturday, July 18, 2009
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Where: Calgary Technologies Inc. – 100 3553 31 Street NW – Calgary, AB
What you will need: Laptop, wacom tablet, PhotoShop
Cost: $ 150+ GST for Digital Alberta Members only OR Affiliated Partners (this includes snacks, full lunch and free parking)

Online registration is now open.

Vancouver – Last evening our local ACM SIGGRAPH chapter presented a post-mortem panel for the movie Watchmen, featuring four of the development team from MPC Vancouver.

Watchmen was the first project for the brand new west coast studio, which completed a total of 300 shots for 24 sequences with 50 team members in only nine months. The team wanted to accurately recreate iconic moments from the original graphic novel, which at times proved to be a big challenge, but they rose to the challenge and succeeded. Archie, the owl ship was by far the heaviest asset in the show and played a major part a pivotal part in the show, during the sequence known as Call to Account.

The panel members – Ben Cole, Landon Bootsma, Harry Mukhopadhyay and Tim Mulvihill led the audience through the processes used in building the major shots from reference photos to 3d builds to finished product. Mixed with bits of humour the session was very educational and offered some very good insight into the amount of time and work which goes into the making of a movie such as Watchmen.

Watchmen Revealed was sponsored by: BCIC, 3vis, VanArts, Sophia Books, AnnexPro, Stash Digital Media, VEAbc and Society of Graphic Designers Canada, Vancouver Chapter.

Vancouver – AnnexPro is pleased to be presenting two educational events this summer. First up is the Matrox MAXimum Roadshow on June 23 at the VFS Cafe. The seminar will be showcasing Matrox MAX technology for faster than realtime H.264 encoding for Blu-ray, the web, and mobile devices. Matrox MAX is available in the Matrox CompressHD accelerator card and in the Matrox MXO2 series of I/O devices for the Mac.

The second seminar is the AJA Ki Pro Worldwide Roadshow: From Lens to Post. You are invited to join AJA on July 14 at the Vancouver Film School for a demonstration of their latest innovation in workflow enhancing technology – the Ki Pro. Finally, shoot on the same codec as you edit with, full raster 10 bit Apple ProRes 422, built natively into Ki Pro’s stand-alone, portable hardware. You’ll get a high level overview of AJA and see a live demo of Ki Pro. Ask questions and get answers from AJA executives, and leading industry experts.

Toronto – Interactive Ontario today announced a new project, ONKidz, that is aimed at promoting Ontario’s Kids sector on a global scale. The ONKidz project will culminate with a business event focused on the interactive kids space in the spring of 2010 in Toronto, Canada. ONkidz supports the creation and commercialization of Ontario-made interactive media content and services for kids ages 4 to 15.

“It goes without saying that kids prioritize their interactions with and through digital media very differently than their parents,” said Ian Kelso, President and CEO of Interactive Ontario. “ Interactive Ontario is thrilled to present a unique event pulling together the leading creators of interactive experiences and the producers, broadcasters, and publishers who are leading the charge on building integrated cross-platform markets.”
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Dundee – Over 70 students from as far away as China began their 10 week computer game design challenge at the University of Abertay Dundee today. However, there seems to be a problem with the competition’s web site. I tried to visit the URL as provided in the competition’s press release, and landed on a holding page. Hopefully this issue will be corrected pronto.

The computer arts students and graduates from Canada, China, India, England, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Southern Ireland, and Wales are finalists in Abertay’s ‘Dare to be Digital’ computer game design competition. Sunny Atwal, Eric Stock, Pedro Melendez, and Chris Iaconis from Algoma University will be competing for Canada.

‘Dare to be Digital’, now in its tenth year, sees fourteen five-strong teams competing against each other to design a prototype game or other interactive digital entertainment. The teams beat off fierce competition and survived industry scrutiny during the regional finals, to secure their place in the grand final.
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Vancouver – Last evening, the GD12 students at Vancouver Film School presented their grad projects to an evaluation audience in the VFS Main Theatre. The students spend several weeks in pre-production developing their game concepts, and then an additional 12 weeks in production, bringing their concepts to life.

The first group up to the podium was Team LightSpeed, presenting their 2D Action Platformer game Travis’ Terror. The target audience for this imaginative and colourful game is children under 10, and to that end I feel that they came very close to making a product appropriate for the age group. Developed on Citrus

Light Speed

flash engine, the game’s environment is comprised of artwork which resembles colouring book drawings. The gameplay involves two modes: dreamtime and nightmare. In dreamtime mode, the environment is bright and colourful while nightmare mode has a darker colour palette. The premise of the game is to help Travis get through the game and defeat the boogeyman lurking in his closet. As the player advances through the levels, he is confronted by monsters such as dinosaurs and robots. In dreamtime mode, the monsters are small and easily defeatable. In nightmare mode the monsters are bigger and more challenging. Game progress can be saved at nightlight checkpoints, and there are toys and candies to collect along the way. The player can choose several different paths through the game, each path presenting different challenges. Travis’ Terror is a game which I feel showed hard work and attention to detail on the part of the development team, who overcame many challenges including losing a team member partway through the project.
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