Rise

School has officially ended and we will be receiving all of our grades in the next few days. I am confident that I will pass all courses. That's not to say that I was all that great. In fact, I don't believe I'm good enough. I know I have a lot to learn and I understand that the learning may never actually end. Now it's over and I'm extremely thankful for the experience and knowledge I received by partaking in Dawson College's Independent Video Game Design program here in Montreal. I still have tons I need to learn and I welcome the challenge.

For the meantime, I'm supposed to be taking it easy since college has taken a lot out of me. I think. But I can't help but feel like I couldn't just let a single day pass without doing anything to put myself one step closer to my goals. I can't have a 0% day. I feel the need to do a tutorial on either a music creation software or Unity each day. Draw, sketch, work on the website or brainstorm ideas for my first real project. Speaking of brainstorming ideas, it's something I have been doing for the last two weeks since college has ended.

I was able to list around 17 game ideas to choose from. By the end of week one, I have been able to narrow it down to the 5 that I found exciting and now that week two is about to end, I have it narrowed down even more to 3 with one of them being the choice to redesign and rebuild our school final project from the ground up. But as much as I am so inclined to do that and be able to tell the stories I want to tell, I feel like I might not have enough technical skills to execute upon the vision as perfectly as I wish for it to be. But then again, I also know that I perform well when diving into things that may be over my head. I like the risks and the thrills of not knowing everything but ultimately discovering things, learning and improving as I pushed through the challenges. I'd like to give myself a few more days perhaps after week two passes, and see if I'll be able to come up with an idea that truly excites me and that I believe is a unique enough project that will be both fun and feasible for me to execute upon. For now, the brainstorming continues.

The last two weeks have also been about learning something everyday. I have been taking LLMS tutorials on YouTube and I gotta admit, I really feel like this could be the software that will be my go-to tool for music creation when I finally cross that bridge during the development of my first real project. Luckily enough, I have some background in editing music as I spent a bit of time recording back in 2008 to 2010. Although, my electric guitars now serve as dust collectors more than anything else.

At the end of each day, I e-mail myself to report on what I have done during that day. The goal is to be able to tell myself I didn't slack. To be able to tell myself I did not have a 0% day. Even when I visit my GF, I try to do a tiny bit of research or brainstorming when I get a chance. Although, I do not e-mail myself during those days.

I am so excited to be able to do what I want to do without having to cut corners due to assignment deadlines. I understand that this doesn't mean I'll take 5 days to draw up a new logo for my next project. But the idea is I can really give it my 100% this time around instead of having to do 50% because I had other hats to wear. Or perhaps I'm being quite naive that the reality may be deadlines are going to be even worse for me since I am now aiming for a project facing actual commercial release as a solo indie game developer. But, like I said, I welcome the challenge.

It's time to send myself that e-mail for today. I'm late. It's already past midnight.