Iron Man the movie hit the theaters yesterday, and the game hit stores. The PS2, PSP, PC and Wii are the ones I got to produce. The next gen SKUs were done by Sega’s own studio.

Last night we went to the movie, then home with the newly purchased game and I watched Jonathan play. The evening was a very cool ride, a happy culmination to 18 months of hard work.

When I produced Happy Feet, access to assets was complicated by the fact that the movie was being produced in Australia. Nevertheless, the whole team got to see the movie at various stages of its production. I had therefore seen it three times by the time it was released.

With Iron Man, the film crew was extremely open with assets, and we visited the set, witnessed some scenes being shot, met director, cast and crew, saw flight animation tests and the Iron Monger suit in the “flesh”, visited Stark mansion and saw Iron Man suit concept art, but I never read the script or actually saw the movie. Consequently, having been allowed access to some information, without seeing the finished product, just made the whole thing extremely tantalizing.

And last night was the biggest payoff a superhero fan could wish for. The movie is awesome, definitely up there with the first Spider-Man for superhero movies.

Go. And make sure you stay until the end of the credits

I mentioned recently that I’m now working as a freelancer. It’s probably a good idea to get the word out about the kind of freelance work I’m doing, so here goes.

What I’m most interested in is pretty much anything having to do with training, including in-class training, instructional design (training programs and materials), e-learning application design, and training consultancy. Right now I am designing a highly immersive online course for a client, a type of work which I’m finding, unexpectedly, to be quite close to game design. The big difference is that the main goal is knowledge transfer via entertainment, rather than being entertainment itself.

My other freelanceable skills include project and personnel management, technical writing and translation, though I’m much less interested in the latter two.

It’s funny how fast one gets used to the new lifestyle, and gets confronted with the typical freelancer dilemmas. How much work should I take on, versus working on my personal projects? Will refusing this contract damage my relationship with the client? Will working outside my home increase productivity enough to be worth the lost time commuting?

The chronicles have just gone through another makeover - much as I liked the previous template, it reflected a part of my life that’s over, and so a change was imperative. This new skin is a courtesy of Jonathan, whom as you can see pinked his own revamped template to create mine. Still some kinks to be ironed out, such as the bottom-of-the-page image of Comet (in IE 6 anyway), but for the rest we’re pretty much there.

I like it, and hope you do too.

Nobody hated sharks more than I did growing up. I couldn’t even look at a picture of them without being nauseous, and I’ve never swam (swum?) in the ocean because of it. But when I saw this trailer I was intrigued.

Sharkwater just came out on DVD and I highly recommend it. Watching it this morning did make me nauseous, but only at the human indifference portrayed and the weight of the consequences. When you see what’s happening to the oceans and to the world’s top predator, you will not stand for it.

This has been brewing for many months, and today I can blog it. Late last week, I resigned from my post as Game Director. I won’t go into the specifics of my reasons for this move here, but suffice it to say I haven’t taken employment elsewhere as a videogames producer (or any other position for that matter). In my estimation, Artificial Mind and Movement is an employer of the highest integrity, humanity and professionalism, the best I’ve worked for. Nevertheless, I haven’t enjoyed being a game director there in a while.

Considering how highly I esteem A2M, I doubt things would be better elsewhere, so I haven’t traded this job for another one. Wanting more control and flexibility over my conditions, the manner in which my work is done, and consequently the final result, I’ve decided to just leave, trust the future and see what interesting doors open.

In the meantime, I’ll pursue two avenues: freelancing, and working on a special project. I’ll write more about each shortly.

Rock Me Amadeus just came on the Internet radio, and it’s such a feel good song. It reminded me of that funny car ad that was playing recently in theaters, with German car engineer types driving wildly while this song played really loudly in the background.

Enjoying that ad always kinda sat wrong with me, considering the fact that Falco died in a car crash. Didn’t anyone tell the ad agent?

Sounds daft, but this video of incredible creatures of the deep is really worth watching!

I once heard someone say, upon learning that snakes have pelvic bones, that “it might be because they’re in the process of evolving legs”. I didn’t go into it at the time, but that’s wrong. Evolution doesn’t start with a specific result in mind, thinking “I’d better put in a pelvis so I can pop out some legs in a couple of generations”. Evolution just tries things at random, and if one of those random trials happens to be more useful at promoting survival and reproduction, then that mutation can spread through the population. The essential part is that generally, every little change has to provide an advantage of its own, in order to spread and become established in the population. So if the snake doesn’t get an advantage from having a pelvis, then the latter is more likely to be vestigial than a transition to eventual legs.

I like to think about that process when it comes to changing habits in my life. I watch Million Dollar Baby and think I’d kill for Hillary Swank’s buff shoulders. Sure, I could tape inspiring pictures of her on my fridge as an incentive to go to the gym, but that’s focusing on the end goal. And when it comes to doing something day in, day out, like pumping iron, it’s not going to work for long if it’s not fun every step of the way.

Now, making something feel good the whole way through doesn’t mean you should never do something good for you if it’s not a party. God knows, most mornings I’d rather stay in bed than go for a run in the cold - but the idea is to focus on the way you’ll feel once you’re out there, and the energized (and pleasantly stiff) feeling you’ll get throughout your day, rather than the long-term goal of 22% body fat. This is something that may happen, way down the road, if you keep up a healthy lifestyle on a regular basis. The key point is to focus on the near-immediate small payoff rather than the long-term large benefit.

That, to me, is how you make something rewarding the whole time, and how you make a good new habit sticky, and even addictive.

Lapsus au déjeuner avec Pat ce matin, en parlant de son iPhone:

“Est-ce que l’interface se manipule bien avec un gland heu, gant?”

I’m taking a night class in graphic design - I have a lot of ideas for web-based side projects, and taking the class is cheaper than hiring a designer. Plus, there’s a weird, alchemical quality to the skill of graphic designers, which I see as an “art with rules” that I’ve always been curious about.

I worried that a night class would cater mostly to housewives looking to “have evening activities”, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The teacher, a self-described old-school old fart, seems to be aiming to train professional designers. This is not my goal, but it’s definitely going to be an honest class.

Nevertheless, in every course one seems to meet the same archetypes of obnoxious classmates: the Oversharer, who feels the need to provide long personal stories illustrating each element of the lesson. These seem particularly common in management classes, and thankfully graphic design doesn’t lend itself well to this. However, no night class I’ve ever taken has ever been without a Commentator, the one sitting in front making unfunny jokes on everything the teacher says, thinking it’s banter, but really just delaying the proceedings needlessly. Who are those people?