Siggraph 2010 Blog #2
Posted By
Elizabeth Owens on
August 02, 2010 04:17 pm |
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Somehow I got the opportunity to volunteer in the Posters section near the beginning of the conference, when the submitters were first checking in their work. This was a great experience for me just for the fact that so many brilliant minds from around the world checked in during my shift. It gave me an opportunity to talk to them and welcome them to the convention. The great part was that everyone I checked in was polite and easy to talk to. At first I was nervous that such great minds might be distant or unwilling to talk to a student, but it was the complete opposite! From Mexico to Japan, I was able to meet really friendly people who turned out to be geniuses.
My next shift the day was the famous Sandbox. The only place where playing video games is the work, well, maybe not for people who work for video game companies. This was awesome because I got to play Blur (a new racing game) for the first time. At one point an eight year old was beating me, but I’m okay with that. (I can always say that I let him win to be nice.) But Project Gustav was by far my favorite. It’s a new painting program Microsoft is releasing. It’s pretty awesome because the application of “paint” in the program actually resembles the way real paint looks. (This amazed me as an oil painter.) The program also interacts with the way you hold the tablet pen, for example if you were using the pastel tool and turned the pen sideways, it would make a mark much like it would with a real pastel. So if you want two great places to go, check out the Posters and the Mudbox before you leave Siggraph.
Elizabeth Owens
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
BFA Digital Media