Ayogo Games, Inc. is known as a leader in the movement to transform health care through the use of games and play, by changing both how we learn and how we engage with our surrounding environment. As part of their ongoing search for the best talent to build their team they’ve created an exclusive internship for graduates of Digital Design.
The Ayogo Games Post-graduate Digital Design Internship program is open to every graduating class. Each intern will be assigned a mentor based on his or her background and role in the company, with ongoing guidance and mentoring by Ayogo Games, Inc. Creative Director, Jesse Spink.
“We’re really excited to announce the launch of our internship program with the Digital Design program,” says Spink. “We’ve had a great experience working with and hiring students from VFS in the past and it seemed like a logical next step to better align ourselves with both the school and the program.”
Digital Design grad Levente Opelcz has been working at Ayogo since graduating, after they saw his presentation at Appetizers, the Digital Design showcase. To hear about his experience, head on over to OOMPH.
Before joining VFS, Jon was at Electronic Arts Canada where he worked on over 15 video titles including FIFA, NBA Live, and Medal of Honor. We asked him a few questions about his career, his love for sound, and what motivates him to teach here at VFS. What do you teach in the Sound Design program? Jon: As Senior Instructor of Game Audio in the Sound Design program, I devise, teach, and coordinate the game audio portion of the program. The program has undergone an overhaul in the past couple of years to make it more relevant to the industry, and I have been involved first-hand in revamping the curriculum from the game audio side of things. My subjects span five terms, with curriculum touching on multiple areas of sound design for video games — from conceptualizing and prototyping; to recording, designing, layering, sweetening, editing and creating variety; to implementing audio design in game audio software “middleware” tools for the purposes of integrating into working games. Sound design for games is a unique craft. It combines sound design with software development, and it’s certainly not for everyone. I balance a range of knowledge and skills in my teachings (both technical and aesthetic), and employ various audio tools and techniques to add to the students’ audio toolkit, giving them a competitive edge when they try to break into the competitive game industry. We start with the basics of what interactive, non-linear audio means, and work our way up to designing complex, real-time, parameter-driven audio events functionality in software that works! This way the students garner an understanding not only of how to apply techniques for designing sound for games, but having a context and understanding of how everything works within the big picture of the game industry. How did you break into the industry? Jon: Certainly not in the conventional way (if there is such a thing). I actually came from a primarily academic background when embarking on my career in game audio. I came here to Vancouver after completing a Bachelor’s degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. I went on to complete a Master’s degree at Simon Fraser University, where I specialized in sound design within the School of Communication, studying sound production, soundscape studies, and electroacoustic music amongst other areas of study. By the end of my studies, I was teaching introductory sound production and soundscape studies to undergraduate students. I researched and wrote my thesis “Interactive and Adaptive Audio for Home Video Game Console Systems”, which to this day is still the only MA thesis from SFU devoted to the area of game sound. After being awarded a Master’s degree, I went on to do some freelance audio work, including various projects at Airwaves Sound Design in downtown Vancouver. I had interviewed various game industry sound designers in compiling research and data for my thesis, and I maintained those contacts while working freelance. Looking back on your career so far, are there certain projects you’re especially proud of? Any highlights you’d like to share? Jon: So many valuable rewarding experiences! Working for EA was a real eye-opener. I got to work with so many talented peers, proprietary tools, pipelines, and processes under cut-throat deadlines. Working on AAA franchises on such a massive scale as FIFA was definitely a thrill, as was serving as Audio Lead on my first FPS franchise: Medal of Honor. I probably learned the most working as lead on the Playground IP title, for which we embarked on a completely new target market, technology, and platform never before attempted by EA. Also, wrangling speech for a trainer-driven fitness title was a massive undertaking that yielded great results and recognition. What excites you most about teaching at VFS? Jon: I’m big on giving back, and am passionate about sharing my knowledge and experience with the talent of tomorrow. I take pride in helping to build the skills that serve as the foundation for a student’s audio toolkit. Moreover, I find there’s very little that’s more rewarding in the world than when a student starts to embrace the skills I’ve helped to cultivate, and designs an audio product that they’re truly proud of. Sound is an art that is felt and is emotionally driven, so it’s more than just an accomplishment when you complete a sound design to your satisfaction; it’s a labour of love realized. When students contact me from the field to inform me about how my teachings helped to shape who they have become, or how they apply those lessons in their day-to-day work lives, I know I’ve made a difference. Aside from being a parent, what could be more rewarding than that? Thanks, Jon!
Founded in 1987, VFS has become the destination for amazing artists from all over the country – and around the world. The 2012 Cross-Canada Roadshow is your chance to discover if VFS is right for you, and how you can get started on a rewarding path in the entertainment industry. Sign up to attend one of these free info sessions, where you will: - Hear about an exclusive scholarship opportunity for attendees April 11: Fredericton Click here to find out all the details and register now. We hope to see you this spring in a city near you!
Since then, Mad Men has been featured everywhere from celebrity mags to The Atlantic to Banana Republic catalogues. It’s also won more Golden Globes, Emmys, and critical acclaim than you can shake a stick at. All of this makes us particularly proud to learn that VFS Writing grad Amy Roy has been working on Season Five as a Producer’s Assistant! Generally speaking, her role is to help Maria and her writing partner/husband Andre achieve a number of daily production goals. We can’t say much more at this point, since all details surrounding the long-anticipated series return are being tightly guarded. For now, you can get to know Amy a little more in a video we shot just before she graduated! It’s featured on the Writing for Film & Television program page. Visit amctv.com for air times in your area.
Recently, Brandon co-created and shot a TV pilot project called “Honk if You’re an LA Douchebag”, which has been deemed a finalist in Comedy Central’s 2012 Pilot Competition. The stakes are high, as the winner (according to the competition website) will “receive $7,500 and a development deal with Comedy Central.” We asked Brandon to tell us a bit more about his charmingly-titled project, and what it’s been like fighting it out in a competitive industry. Congrats on getting attention for your pilot. What’s your series all about? Brandon: Why thank you very much! The short pitch is that it’s about two best friends, a woman and a man, navigating the L.A. dating scene. “Lindsey” is incredibly uptight and holds down a real job as an agent’s assistant while her friend “Sean” is jobless and lives in a makeshift bedroom in her dining room, much like I do in real life. There’s also a touch of L.A. film industry satire complete with crazy bosses asking you to do things like write a report on some new sex thing they heard about or buying presents for their various mistresses. It’s mostly based on my writing partner Zack’s and my incredible ineptitude at dating. This, my friend, is a well that runs very, very deep with episode ideas. Wow, that was actually an incredibly long pitch. I’m so sorry. Along with the perks of winning, what do you think it’ll mean for you if “Honk” is chosen by Comedy Central? Brandon: Beyond the cash and the automatic development deal with the network, it means exposure. We’ve already gotten a manager off of it and we’ve taken a couple agency meetings. The great thing about this contest is that just making the finals is a big deal. Comedy Central can enter into as many deals as they want with the finalists. Similar to American Idol, being William Hung can be just as good, or better, than being (insert name of forgotten winner). Can you talk a bit about your post-VFS journey? What kind of gigs have you been doing up until now? Brandon: I moved to Los Angeles a few months after graduation. I soon landed two internships and those two internships led to a job as an assistant to a literary manager (who is now my manager). After I fulfilled my year and a half commitment to that job, I demoted myself to part-time so I could finally focus on writing. The first product of that writing was this pilot, which I co-created and co-wrote with my friends. Working an industry job is invaluable, even if you have to basically go off the writing grid for one or two years. You make connections and meet people who will want to see your script when it’s ready. It’s a hell of a lot easier than sending out queries randomly. Oh, and I also tutor and freelance reading scripts and books to pay my enormous plastic surgery bills. Brandon: Definitely. It’s exactly why filming teaser trailers for spec scripts is the new big thing now. Any time you can show someone (producer, agent, manager, executive) what the movie or show would actually look like, it’s usually a good thing. Cons? There are no cons. If you have a little bit of money and a lot of talented friends, do it. Are there any other projects you’re working on right now that you’re trying to get out there? Brandon: We’re working on a new pilot and a feature. We’re probably more focused on the pilot right now because pilots are a lot quicker and easier to write. After we’re finished with that, we’ll move back to the feature and try to finish that up in a few months. We also do sketch comedy and will be posting some brand new videos pretty soon, including one where I travel back in time to win back a girl, but I fall in love with my past self and we… It’s very erotic. That sounds… interesting, Brandon. Thanks for the update and best of luck with Comedy Central!
Shane O’Connor – G4TechTV – $7,000 “I was happy just discovering my passion for game design,” said G4TechTV winner, Shane O’Connor. “Most people don’t get the chance to discover what they love, let alone pursue it within an environment as enriching as what we’re provided with here at VFS. Injecting a scholarship into that is surreal. I’ve been acknowledged in a powerful way, and now I’m more motivated than ever. I can’t wait to give back to the industry and community that turned my life around. Thank you so much.” Congratulations to all winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors!
Only two months after graduating, Ryan works for a company that specializes in mobile UI and Matt was placed at a local game company. Their discussion covers a wide array of topics, from working with recruiters to handling interviews to balancing school and looking for work. Read the full story on OOMPH.
Recently, she’s performed on Vancouver’s Urban Rush talk show (watch the performance here) and was profiled in Vancouver View magazine. We asked her about how her year at VFS is wrapping up, and how the future looks to a multi-talented up-and-comer like herself. What is your final project and why is it important to you? Tonye: My final project is a 20-song music compilation called The All Love Album, dedicated to the memory of my friend and bandmate, Randy Ponzio, who passed away in November 2011. Following his death, I reached out to the Vancouver music community and used the skills that I garnered at VFS to license original material from them to create an album that could be sold to raise money for Randy’s three children. The album features 20 heartwarming contributions from some of Vancouver’s most-celebrated artists, including Juno Award-winning rapper Shad, 2012 Juno nominee Mario Vaira, rising Vancouver star David Morin, and Randy’s sister, Valerie Ponzio. The album was a cathartic and important activity for me to undertake as it helped me find healing in a time of pain and sadness. Randy was an incredible spirit, and his death had a profound effect on the music community, so to see all the artists come together to work on tribute songs was really amazing. The support for the album has been incredible, and I couldn’t be more proud of the finished product! The album has been featured on Shaw TV’s Urban Rush, and I was pleased to perform my contribution “Safe From Harm” on the show! You’ve been pursuing a career in the music industry for a little while now. What drew you to Entertainment Business Management? Tonye: I was drawn to this program because I am a firm believer that the key to success is no longer artist management, it is artist empowerment. As an independent recording artist and record label owner, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that in order to attain real success, I must stay on the cutting edge of all aspects of the industry and move into the realm of trans-media production, working on many platforms and expanding my reach. The music industry has changed so much in the last few years, and the former models that have been an accepted standard have slowly become antiquated and irrelevant. The entertainment industry is an exciting place to be right now, but you’ve got to be on the pulse of rising trends in order to find real success! Tonye: I have surprised myself in the last year by developing a real interest in Alternate Reality Gaming! I find this unexplored territory so exciting, and the possibilities are absolutely endless for integrating social media and physical marketing campaigns into the ARG landscape. I truly believe that in the future, this will be the most effective way to engage audiences and I plan on exploring the ARG space in more depth once I leave VFS. What do you see yourself doing one year after you graduate from VFS? How about five years after? Tonye: One year from now I see myself celebrating the one-year anniversary of my record label, Living Society Records, and operating a successful production house specializing in developing conscious artists that are dedicated to spreading a message of love, peace, hope, and unity through their art. I see myself hiring a team of skilled professionals who share my personal beliefs, and using entertainment to inspire, motivate, and encourage others. Five years from now I see myself returning from a tour of the world, performing on each continent (including Antarctica!). Thanks, Tonye! Good luck with the world tour! Find out more about Tonye Aganaba, or check out her final project, The All Love Album, on Facebook.
Guest post by Joseph Alina It is no secret that students in 3D Animation & Visual Effects work quite diligently to create demo reels with aspirations of attracting an opportunity from a heavyweight production house. In this instance, that opportunity and that heavyweight production house came to us in the form of Sony Pictures Imageworks. My fellow classmates and I were graced with a visit by Ken Maruyama, Vice President Recruiting and Academic Relations /Animation Artist Management. Ken came up from Los Angeles to discuss Imageworks’ operational chart, recruiting, and the future for their Vancouver studio. Along the way Ken toured The Studio and, to my surprise and good fortune, I was one of six students to directly present our work. I was somewhat nervous to show my diamond in the rough of a reel to Ken and to an audience of schoolmates. However, my review with Ken showed our faculty and staff are dead on when telling us how to achieve a demo reel that draws interest from studios such as Imageworks. Imageworks, with their involvement in movies like Arthur Christmas, The Amazing Spider-Man, and MIB 3, has approximately 150 employees in the Yaletown district. The exciting part – they mean to double that figure within several months. Ken highlighted an avenue to join their stellar core team through a paid internship program. Eight weeks in duration, internships are paid, allowing you to become familiar with their processes in creating blockbuster movies, with the opportunity to become a full-time hire. The added benefit to the internship is that your work can be featured in a major film production. In securing movie credits at such an early stage it becomes a great start to a fun career. During my enrollment as a student in 3D Animation & Visual Effects, I have felt more connected to this industry than ever before. Thank you Vancouver Film School! Thanks, Joseph!
Students Ryan Cramer, Marc St. Onge, and Ben Kanbour conceived of Gravitilt in their Flash class for an assignment, but mobile devices were on their mind early. All three provided the following answers. When you started making Gravitilt, did you know you were going to try and get it on the App Store? Our original goal was to get a game working on the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Uploading Gravitilt to the App Store was a stretch goal of ours as we decided that we would only submit it if we were proud of what we had created, and if we had time to fit it in with our class schedule. Once we completed Gravitilt and received feedback from our classmates, we very quickly decided to try to get it on the App Store. In simple terms, if you can, lead us through what’s involved in getting a Flash game to play nice with iOS. Getting Gravitilt onto iOS devices presented our team with some very interesting challenges. In order for us to even test our game on the iPad, we had to pay Apple for a Developer Account and then link specific devices to that account. Then we had to get development keys for our development machines (i.e., school computers) in order for them to run and build our code. Without this, the devices were unable to receive the game. The biggest hurdle was the optimization of our game for iOS devices. We were using very powerful computers to build our game, so we were unaware of how well it would run. As such, Gravitilt had severe frame rate issues on the iPad, to the point that it was unplayable. To get around this issue we placed a limit on the number of movable blocks in each level. During testing we also saw that laying the device flat on a table, say, to rest your hands, would confuse the accelerometer, so we had to account for that in our design. Once our game was done and handed in for our class assignment, we began the process of uploading Gravitilt to the App Store. This required us to redo the provisioning of our devices and also get distribution keys to replace the development keys. Once that was done we built a final version on our school PCs but were unable to submit it to the store. Apple requires the use of their machines to upload games. We took our game home and used an iMac to submit it to the store, at which point our status became “Waiting for Review”. We submitted our game on February 24, and it wasn’t reviewed and released by Apple until March 1.We immediately submitted an update to fix an issue, and that update is still “Waiting for Review”. What was your inspiration for the game? What can players expect? We wanted to make a game that was fun to play using the mobile device’s unique hardware features such as the accelerometer and touch screen, and we also wanted players to experience the joy of creating their own levels. Players can expect a game with simple mechanics but plenty of depth. Anything you wish you’d done differently? What was the hardest part? What, if anything, was a pleasant surprise? Testing. You can never figure out what isn’t working the way you expected without constantly testing it, as well as having people who have never seen it before test it. More testing may have prevented the need for an update immediately after release. We also wanted to have more puzzles for the player. We were pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to expand the quantity of the levels as we originally had only ten in mind, and we were able to double that amount in just a few days. Thanks, guys! You can download Gravitilt now from the App Store and the Android Market.
Faculty Spotlight: Game Audio Expert Jon Fish
VFS is home to many instructors who have built amazing careers from their life’s passion. Sound Design for Visual Media Senior Instructor Jonathan Fish is so committed to game audio, he even wrote his Master’s thesis on it. (Trivia: His paper is titled “Interactive and Adaptive Audio for Home Video Game Console Systems”.)
I applied to work at Electronic Arts Canada, but they weren’t initially hiring. It wasn’t long, however, before they needed an entry level Sound Artist for a new burgeoning business unit. I interviewed for and was hired on to do audio for handheld titles to start with. This blossomed into a career where I had the pleasure of working on over 15 discreet game titles (most of them AAA sports titles) on a host of platforms/consoles, including FIFA, NBA Live, Medal of Honor, The Sims, Madden NFL, NBA Street, and EA Sports Active franchises. I went on to serve as Audio Lead, overseeing all core audio disciplines for several SKUs in development including some new IP titles.VFS is Hitting the Road From April 11 to May 5, 2012!
We’re celebrating Vancouver Film School’s 25th anniversary by visiting 13 cities across Canada from April 11 to May 5, 2012 – and we’re bringing an exclusive scholarship opportunity with us!
- Get an inside look at student life at VFS
- Discover how VFS prepares you for your career in film, TV, games, and design
- Meet a VFS Admissions representative for application and portfolio tips
April 12: Ottawa
April 14: Toronto
April 17: Winnipeg
April 18: Saskatoon
April 19: Edmonton
April 21: Calgary
April 25: Victoria
April 26: Vancouver
May 1: Penticton
May 2: Kelowna
May 3: Kamloops
May 5: Prince GeorgeMad Men Returns This Sunday – With a VFS Writing Grad!
Before the first season of Mad Men premiered, many of us here at VFS couldn’t wait to see what the former Head of Writing for Film & Television Maria Jacquemetton was working on.Writing Grad Makes Comedy Central Finals
Writing for Film & Television grad Brandon Klaus has been working his way through the film and television scene since he graduated in 2008. After interning and building up his contacts, he’s now starting to make an impression in the comedy world.
Do you think there is an advantage in pitching a produced pilot over just a script? What are the pros and cons? Welcome the Latest Crop of VFS Game Design Scholarship Winners
We’re pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Game Design Expo Scholarships! The scholarships were generously provided by our Game Design Expo sponsors.
Victor Valdes – Radical Entertainment – $2,500
Kaue Rosa – Slant Six Games – $2,500
Alexander Mueller – Annex Pro – $2,000
RuiJie Zhou – Microsoft BigPark – $1,000OOMPH: Digital Design Grads on Recruiting, Following Passion
“Really be aware, as a designer, of what you’re creating – whether you’re a UI designer or User Experience designer – know the process and be ready to support your decisions if you’re in an interview.” In a recent post on OOMPH, Digital Design grads Ryan Hoback and Matt Dale talk to Mary Blalock, a Talent Manager with Filter. Filter and Digital Design have forged a relationship aimed at helping talented grads start their careers. Rising Music Star Builds Up Business Skills
Entertainment Business Management student Tonye Aganaba is nearing the end of her year at VFS, but she’s got a clear idea of where her career will be taking her in the coming months and years. Before she decided to delve into the business side of entertainment at VFS, Tonye’s music was being heard online and around Vancouver at live events.
Students here often discover skills they didn’t know they had. How have you surprised yourself this last year?Guest Post: Sony Pictures Imageworks Provides Industry Scrutiny to Student Reels
Sony Pictures Imageworks paid a visit to VFS recently, to review student work from 3D Animation & Visual Effects and discuss opportunities at their studios. Current student Joseph Alina had his reel undergo industry scrutiny, and filed this report. From Student Project to the App Store, All While Still in School
Last year we told you about Forerunner, the iOS game designed by a team of five Game Design grads and their friend. Well, this year is barely two months old and already a team of students has taken their mid-term assignment all the way to the App Store.