Jason's Full Sail Mastery Journal

My journey through Full Sail Game Design Masters.

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Wahrenberger_WorkCompleted.pptx

Work Completed JASON WAHRENBERGER

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Month 7: PTC Postmortem

The 2 things that I did right:

1.)    During the first two weeks for PTC, I kept in connect with the team of what direction we were going to create a workable digital prototype.

2.)    Try to fill-in for our producer when he was sick in Week 2 of this class and try to give positive input on the working of the physical prototype in this second week.

The 3 things that I did wrong:

1.)    I let my communication to the team to breakdown during the time with I was sick in the third week of class, but they did not make the effort to connect me for any new art tasks that was needed.

2.)    I overthought the tasks that was assigned to me for the Week 4 class time. I think to went to my comfort zone to create an asset from scratch instead of utilizing the game engine asset store to help place the art assets in this prototype of this game.

3.)    I did not give myself a lot of time to explore the asset store of the Unity game engine to work which brings me back that I was overthinking the process of making a prototype of a game.

What I would improve?

I would make myself to stay focused through the breaks in this month and work with the tools I have at hand in terms of utilizing the Unity’s asset store. Also, I should’ve made myself more available for having face-to-face meeting with the team to discuss what is needed from the art end and what I can help on instead using only Discord to communicate with the team. I believe pushing myself harder would not be the answer, but keeping the focus on the tasks at hand and keep communication open to the team would’ve make a better prototype of a better-quality game for later production if the team decides to continue to make this Dodge ball game.

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Mastery Journal Post: GDMS Month 5: MEX Post

   This month’s class, Methods in User Experience taught me regarding how to construct a test for a game to help the game development team to design a better VR game with the players in mind. Gone to Black Moor where the production capstone for GDMS track to see what game are available for specific testing and my teammate and myself choose one of the VR games in development, Cyber Surf, which it is a Silver Surfer-like racing VR game. My team tested it at the SXG expo on 11th of October to figure out if the first person or third person perspective would make a difference in the degree of motion sickness that is associated with VR games for years now. Unfortunately, our results of our test proved to be inconsistent with our hypothesis for our analysis on this game.    Also, this month start my capstone in this degree track, and I got in the Indie Games capstone as an artist. In general, I work on the art assets for the games there. At first, working 30 hours a week is rough, but it is the first month of capstone I feel it be prevalent to try to get a footing of the new norm at Full Sail.

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Mastery Journal Post: GDMS Month 3: PTM Post

My main take away from Project and Team Management is that there is a lot of planned to manage a team from the Project Manager or Producer perspective from creating an idea, managing it, and budgeting it. Even though I like to be a lead artist or Art Director of a game studio in the game industry, I do not want to be a producer of game, but now I understand the level of work a producer must do in order to run a project and team effective in the hopes of a successful project or game. As for presenting a pitch of a project, as Game Designer, I felt a bit alone without a team in presenting my idea due to the fact that game design presents their idea as a team, not individually. Yet, I felt I best I could under the time-frame of this class. I do enjoy Project and Team Management class greatly and it was always good see some of students from Entertainment Business Master students from my first month, Mastery to share in this class. It was interesting to see some videos that I saw in the Mastery class in this class, which they are great motivators get in any project or assignment in any class. On the negative side, I felt there was needed to have some graded group assignments to put some of the information learned to into a graded group assignment. Also, it could be wiser to have an APA paper or brief to keep up on the flow to continue work in APA papers, which I checked that most classes have one or more APA papers in their courses. Despite that, I feel this class helped me to be a more effective planner and hopefully a more effective leader in any lead position in the coming months on the GDMS program here at Full Sail University.

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Mastery Journal Post: GDMS Month 2: RTD Post

The connections made between this month class, Research in Team Dynamics and Game Design mastery plan has good connections that add layers of dimension that could help me on my way through this program. I learn to value the depth of team dynamics which help see the positives like team structure toward a successful team experience to creating a concept of a game. Yet, there are negative pitfalls that could break the back of team through breakdown of communication that could slow down planning and production time on designing a game. The positives in my team in this month was that we started strong with a solid idea due to our team leader in week one, but on the negative side, communication breakdown on what is excepted from each team member was stilled a bit due to external issue to kept some of the member away for the project at very sensitive time in week two through beginning week three. After we found out what caused the problems were in our communication, we quickly switch gears to improve the problems to deliver an interesting concept of a game. On the side of my research, I wanted to explore the effects of visual art in video games even I do have to change my topic toward visual learning to video games. I focused on this changed topic in two of my Mastery Journal peer review article papers and in a large paper at the end of this course.

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DreamWorks Animation. (2008). Master Oogway’s Quote. Retrieved May 23, 2017.

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Mastery_Journal_Timeline.pdf

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My reminder and inspiration for the day. Quote from my head.

Image:

 P. (n.d.). Turn a Quote Into a Masterpiece. Retrieved May 18, 2017, from http://www.recite.com/

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LinkedIn. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2017, from https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-wahrenberger-07904b4b/

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My Logo from Logo Garden

Logo Design • Create a Logo - The Custom Logo Designer. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2017, from http://www.logogarden.com/

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Personalized Social Bookmarking. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2017, from https://papaly.com/#board_id=8578656043a04067ae3ebecf93cd7c23

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DO YOU WANT TO JUST GET A DEGREE OR DO WANT TO EARN IT? - (I create this quote.) [Graphic]. (2017, May 10). Retrieved May 10, 2017, from http://recite.com/quotes/recite-1hqgrop.png

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First Post (My Intentions)

           For all who read this, my main intentions for this Mastery Journal for my time at Full Sail University in the Game Design Master’s program there is to learn on a mastery level and expand my work flow in game art with some programming skills. In the next 11 months, I should be on my way on becoming a master in this field, but I do need to work on my communication and networking skills as well. As of now, I am in my second week in my first month at Full Sail University and I am learning a lot of new information on who to become a master in the general sense with learning a new write style, APA, to continue in my real-world education here in this school.

           I plan to work hard for this Master’s degree because Full Sail is the school I originally want to go to for computer animation back in November of 2001, but my dad thought it was too expensive for an Associate of Science degree which Full Sail only offered at that time. So, my dad and I made an agreement to going to college in the transitional way. I went to Seminole Community College (now Seminole State) in the Summer of 2002 and I graduated in June of 2010 with my General Education Associate of Arts degree. I transfer over to University of Central Florida in Fall of 2010 and graduated in December of 2014 with a Bachelor of Art degree in Digital Media with focus on Game Design.

           I did felt a massive pressure of burning out at UCF, which it was due to my long years of working on coursework in the transitional college fashion. I did have a small dream to continue to work toward a Master’s degree, but the exhaustion of school was too much weight on my mind and body at the time of graduating from UCF. So, after I failure to get into the gaming industry, at the beginning of this year, I research on what grad school I could get into and I found Full Sail University is the only one I can get into due to my overall college GPA of 2.735.

           My burn-out was not due to overwork, it was due to too long of periods between assignments and tests. I knew Full Sail University is a fast-paced school, which I believe it is a good thing for me to flourish to be better at my studies toward my Master’s degree and with the help to get my foot in the door of the gaming industry. I know I am the one who detain my focus and hard work to this degree, but any help is always welcomed.