Just about a year ago I was sitting in this very spot, behind my computer, working about 20 hours per day to make the most important deadline of my life. I was working my ass off to create my demoreel. I worked 10 days straight. No breaks. Little sleep. No compromises. I set out to create something cool and I promised myself I wouldn’t settle for anything less. Towards the end of the project I was exhausted; close to the edge of throwing in the towel and giving up. I was lucky to have my girlfriend around that day because she was able to talk sense into me. She gave me that last little push so I’d finish what I’ve wanted to create for so long. And boy, it was worth it. She proved that I can do anything as long as I give everything. For that, I am grateful.

A few weeks later my dad called me to say he’s moving back to Luxemburg. Those of you who know me a bit better, know that I haven’t had a good relationship with my dad. So him moving away for good was actually good news. At the same time, it meant that he’d be selling the house I grew up in. That was quite hard for me, even though I haven’t been there much during the past 5 years.
A lot of strange things happened around that time. In the end I decided to take a step back from everything in order to get my life back in order.

A few weeks later we ( = Devine & NMCT students from the Howest University) went to San Francisco. Unlike many people, I turned out to experience San Francisco exactly as I always imagined it. I was always dreaming about moving to the States one day… You know: The kind of childhood dream that never let’s go. When I got back from San Francisco, I knew for sure: One day, I’ll move there. Visiting the USA was one of those things I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do for a very long time. One dream checked off the list.

While we were in San Francisco, we had the privilege of visiting many companies and even present our own work at some of them. When we were visiting Momentum Design Lab, I took a shot and presented my – at that point unfinished – Preso-project. I showed the strengths of the project while carefully covering up the buggy and sometimes missing parts. After my improvised presentation, a man came up to me and give my his business card while he said “When you’re back home, get in touch with me. We’ll talk”. The card said David Thomson. I looked up to him and asked him, who exactly he is. “I’m the CEO”. A week later, back in Belgium, I sent him an email. And while nothing big came out of that email-conversation, that one moment – when he gave me his card – gave me some kind of new energy: “I can do way better than that… And this guy is sold… Just wait until you see what I can do when I really stretch my legs“. Sure, it wasn’t a big international company we all have heard a lot about. But it left a major impression.

Then, on June 1st, I got a phone call saying that one of my best friends, Sarah, had died in a car accident. I still remember that day vividly. I remember being confused. It felt like one big nightmare. To this day I still don’t really grasp how she can be gone. I remember going to a movie with her just a few days earlier. She had this beautiful smile that would make every day seem a little better than the last. Everybody loved her.
That very day, I realized how fragile life really is. I miss you, Sarah. Every single day.

A few weeks later, while my girlfriend was doing her internship at Saatchi & Saatchi Brussels, she was telling me about the problems they were having to get a few banners produced. Apparently they were moving big budgets, just to get a few banners out. I was blown away. I told her to suggest me to create future banners. I would deliver within a few days (instead of weeks) for half the budget. And I would get it right straight away. Only days later I got a call from Saatchi. And yes: The very next morning at 7AM I delivered my first set of banners. I hoped to get a lot more work from them soon. But I didn’t.

Summer started and I went to Westende, to the empty house where I once grew up. I stayed there for a month while doing a summer job. I started wondering if I’d really wanted to stay in the digital industry. By the end of the summer -back in Kortrijk – I was about to apply for a job at an Apple Store in Ghent. I really thought about working in a store, instead of studying and creating cool stuff. So my girlfriend stepped in: “I’m tired of you just waiting and being unhappy. I’m tired of you not doing your thing! Prove yourself, god damned. It’s what your good at. Do what makes you happy. I miss the old you“. So, I recovered. For the 2nd time. I took a good look at my life. I had to figure out what I wanted to do…

A few days later, one of my lecturers – the one I liked and hated most at the same time – pointed it out to me: “Being a student has made you lazy. You’re getting too comfortable around here“. He was right. I had received numerous job offers from pretty big companies during the past 5 years. The first time I turned a job down was because I might need a bachelor degree if I ever wanted to become a lecturer myself. However, I can’t remember why I turned all the others down. Yes, he was right. I had gotten too comfortable. And it didn’t make me happy. Not even a bit. A few weeks later I decided to quit Devine, the university and my life as a student altogether.

I decided to start off as a freelancer and just see where things would go from there. It was a scary time in my life as I didn’t know the road ahead. There was no turning back from here. A week later I found myself doing some work for Saatchi & Saatchi again. This time at a pretty steady rate. At some point I had to jump in for a ‘tiny project‘. I still remember the words “Do you know something about expandable banners and video?”
I turned out to be building an MSN homepage take-over using Google’s DoubleClick Studio for 14 countries.
I had only half a day to figure out how DoubleClick Studio works and learn to use the custom-made components by Google. And everything had to be done by monday. I was briefed the Friday before. A lot of responsibility was resting on my shoulders. By Friday night I was pretty sure I could do it… But I was pretty much freaking out. What kind of budget is going up in smoke if I miss this deadline!? 14 countries? Are you crazy!? I went out with friends to have a drink and get my mind off work for an hour. But what I actually did was realizing that this was what I actually loved doing: I make things move. I create stuff. And I will meet the deadline.
By saturday morning 10AM I was done with the master files and I could finally get some sleep. They would be translated by the next day. By monday everything would be ready.

Not too long after that, I went to the Saatchi offices in Brussels where I met with one of the creative directors. I was trying to promote myself in order to make sure they would hire me more often for even bigger projects. Instead I walked out there with a job offer as a full-time project manager. We all know how that ended.
Today is the end of my 5th week at Saatchi & Saatchi Brussels (Yes, I have a day off today).

They say that time flies. Yes, it does. And it flies very fast. This year went by so fast, I can’t believe that within less than 36 hours we’re in 2012 already…

What has 2011 thought me?

• No matter how tough you think you are: sometimes it’s not enough. Luckily you have friends who will pull you through it, kicking and screaming.
• Don’t get comfortable. It makes you lazy. If something scares you, it probably means you’re on the right track. Just keep going and hope for the best.
• Do what you believe will make you happy. Don’t let nobody talk you out of it. If they do, you’ll do the safe thing. Something that won’t make you entirely happy… And it will slowly kill your inner child.
• Never hold back to tell your friends and family how much you love them. You don’t know what might happen tonight…. Maybe tomorrow it might be too late. They deserve to know how amazing you think they are.

Along with that we had to create a conceptual touchscreen application that might be used inside the museum, allowing visitors to look up more info about Darwin and his immense research. In order to make sure we can pass our ideas along, we were ordered to create a demo video that features the use and experience of the application. I finished that demo video last night and I really wanted to share this with you!

One of my latest school assignment was to create a site where users can create news-content. (Me being way too excited to have actually paid attention, I read users should be able to create new content… Turns out my lecturers really wanted NEWS content… ) In this assignment, I saw the perfect opportunity to create the basics of the Draw A Doodle project. So I did…

I really put in a lot of effort into detail and animations. Nearing the end of the deadline I had to cut some corners… I had to leave out the layer-rearranging system in the Doodle Creator, I didn’t get to take care of all tab-indices, I had to skip the scrollbar for the users-list and the comments-lists, etc.

Oh god… I was going to cut right through the chase and show you the project! How did I end up telling the story of my life again? Well anyway: Pictures!

This is probably the biggest and most exciting project I have done for school. It consists of 84 dedicated classes (meaning I don’t count open source libs like TweenLite or my util classes). That’s a total of 5 120 lines of code or 384 kb of class files. Those are numbers that actually blew my mind once I realized what I actually did. I think this is the biggest thing I’ve created so far… And it turned out to be a way better project than I expected. I’m really proud of the result so far. I’ll be working on this over the coming weeks in order to finally launch the actual site at DrawADoodle.be.

I have some great plans on integration with the existing WordPress plugin, Dooodl. I’m really looking forward to sharing that with you.
If you feel like giving the current pre-alpha version a run, go right ahead and let me know what you think: Click!

At school I was given the assignment of creating a room in Flash that tells a story. One, and the most important, limitation was the fact that we were NOT allowed to use any Actionscript 3D libraries out there. No Papervision3D. No Away 3D. They wanted us to feel pain. We were forced to use the 2.5D capabilities of Flash Flayer 10. They’re not that bad… But I really really really (yes 3 times) prefer Papervision… And not only performance-wise.

I really put all my effort in this project and I am pretty positive about the result.

If you’re not interested in the story, feel free to stop reading and feel free to check out the site. You won’t miss anything important (I think…). (Oh btw: the site is in Dutch, but the content isn’t really that important )
If you do: (this is where the jump is )

A few of the limitations, or actually requirements, first:

• No Papervision3D, no Away3D, no nothing like that.
• The walls can’t be vector shapes imported from Illustrator, etc
• The room has to be rebuilt in Flash using 2.5D planes in Flash Player 10
• The user has to be able to navigate in the room. It be using pre-programmed animation paths, or interactive movements.
• The use of Flash Video (FLV/F4V) was important
• SWFAddress had to be implemented
• A Javascript powered sidebar in HTML allowing the visitor to rate the site and leave a message.

I might have missed some important ones… (which is probably a big problem since I’ve worked on this project for 6 weeks and only handed it in this morning… Either I never knew or they never told me…) Anyway: When I received the assignment, I immediately thought of this as some kind of ‘limitation-of-creativity’. Come on? No Papervision… In a 3D project…

I felt like a beast and I got boxed in a very small cage. And I wanted to run! I wanted to really get everything out of my system; I wanted to push the boundaries. Not only my skill set and my willpower, but also the possibilities of 2.5D. I wanted to express this in my project so I needed a room that actually is a room, and not an open space, and yet allows me to to whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want.

It’s then when it occurred to me: My ‘real’ room is exactly that. I live here, I am the boss here, and nobody can tell me not to do whatever it is I want to do here… So in a way it’s a ‘box’… But once I get in that ‘box’ I am free. Because here is where I live. Here is where my story, my life, lies.

But how do you tell a story? Without telling it?
Well I suck at storytelling and trying to make a point without actually making one, so after discussions with a few of my mentors, I decided to create a video blog in 3D 2.5D.

You can view 6 days of video blogging. Every day has it’s own preview, alpha movie and full movie.
The alpha movie is a difference close-up of the desk, where I spend most of my time.  It only shows you what changed during that whole recording.
The full shot shows you the actual timelapse of the complete room.

Controls:

• SPACEBAR: Go to next blog item
• R: Go to random blog item
• Drag mouse up/down the screen: Move forward/backward in z-space
• UP/DOWN: Move forward/backward in z-space

I could go into a few of the details of 2.5D (and it’s massive lack of stand-alone intelligence) and some ( read ‘lots of’) my findings  but I’ll do that some other time.

Final note: If you really want a good laugh: Check out the site in Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome first. They all work right away. I designed it in Firefox. Now check it in _any_ IE version.
What the hell, right?

Anyway: if you made it all the way down here: let me know and I shall honor you in my prayers (or something else)

The result is pretty much what I expected (although I am pretty embarrassed about the horrible arm-in-front-of-logo-disaster. Feel free to enlighten me on how to do this without making it look this bad ). Enough words, check it out!

This is my first shot at making something look good in After Effects. If there’s anything on your mind, let me know. I could use advice and feedback

UPDATE: I changed the way the arm is put over the logo when turning it around. It looks a bit better, but still far from perfect.

I could start telling about all the stuff I learned and about the projects I had to make, but why use words, if there’s Vimeo? Here’s a quick showreel about Devine 2008-2009 one of our lecturers (Nicolaas Bijvoet) made.

I’m very pleased about Devine. They didn’t lie at all. They told us we would create. And that’s what we did. We created all kinds of stuff. Robots, product sites, mockups, interactive scrapbooks, hell we created so many things I lost track of what I actually created until I found some stuff back on my server…

And not only did they give us all kinds of assignments, personally a few of them really inspired me. I created and experimented so much in the past few months, and it felt so great!
I am really looking forward to starting again in the second year of Devine, later this month.

Obrecht vertelde me dat in het grootste deel van de bedrijfswereld een diploma inderdaad onmisbaar is, maar dat het in de multimediawereld niet zozeer te doen is rond een papier dat beweert dat jij de persoon voor de job bent. Wat veel belangrijker is dat je je ding kan doen, als je wergever dat van je verlangt, dat je de nodige skills en kennis hebt om de projecten op een goede manier aan te pakken, en te realiseren.  Obrecht is niet de eerste om dit te zeggen. Ook mijn vorige werkgevers (Easybytes en Demasso) stelden het zo.

Ik sta nu in feite voor een dilemma:

• Verder studeren (3 jaar)(ik zal 25 zijn als ik afgestudeerd ben), en een dergelijke kans laten liggen voor een diploma?
• Stoppen met studeren, en meteen in de echte bedrijfswereld stappen, en mogelijks in 3 jaar tijd veel meer leren dan tijdens mijn studies, maar er wel zonder diploma voor staan?

Het enige dat mij in feite tegenhoudt om hierop in te gaan, zijn vragen als “Hoe belangrijk is een diploma in onze branche?”, “Kun je werk vinden aan de hand van je skills, en niet aan de hand van een diploma?” en “Is er een groot verschil merkbaar op de loonbrief, of in de doorgroeimogelijkheden?”

Hoe denken jullie daarover? Zijn er mensen die uit ervaring spreken? Zijn er werkgevers die hier hun visie over willen uitspreken?

Devine?

Deviner {m/v}
Samentrekking van ‘developer’ en ‘designer’

Ok, devine… Maar waarom?
Ik ben zelf al anderhalf jaar student aan de PIH te Kortrijk (Een campus die onderdeel uitmaakt van de Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen). Ik volg er Multimedia en Communicatietechnologie. MCT is uniek in België, en de opleiding is zodanig goed dat de meeste studenten op het einde van hun opleiding rechtstreeks van de klaslokalen doorlopen naar hun toekomstige job.

MCT is een opleiding waarin je tot IT allrounder wordt gevormd. MCT richt zich op business oplossingen. MCT maakt van jou niet zomaar een webdesigner of een netwerkbeheerder. Je bent op het einde van je studies een persoon die voor de meeste IT doeleinden kan ingezet worden.

De opleiding MCT is bijgevolg erg technisch, en dat nekt mijn motivatie om ermee door te gaan. En net op het juiste moment is het dan zover: Campus PIH zal uitbreiden, en men zal er vanaf september ’08 Devine kunnen volgen. Vandaag was de eerste infodag (waar ik naartoe kon), en waar echt info te krijgen was over de nieuwe opleiding.

Wat is Devine?
Devine is een opleidingstraject dat zich richt op online reclame, promo en multimedia. Als je Devine studeert, leer je denken in Flash, reageren in Actionscript, handelen in Photoshop, en leef je op het web. Je handschrift zijn motion graphics, en je ademt concepten die geen ander zou bedenken. Gebruiksvriendelijke interfaces eet je als ontbijt, en de integratie van al dat zoet zal in je zitten als een verslaving.

Devine richt zich niet op business solutions maar op rich media op het web.
Devine richt zich op de creatieve ervaring op het web die de bezoekers niet mogen los laten, laat staan door hen vergeten worden.

Iets concreter graag…
Je wordt aangeleerd dat design niet kan zonder de daarbij horende logica, en vice versa.
Je krijgt de heilige basics van HTML, CSS, JavaScript en ActionScript 3. Daarnaast leer je ook wat kleur en compositie is, en hoe je deze kennis creatief inzet. De linkerhelft en rechterhelft van het menselijke brein worden bijgevolg beiden ingezet, maar dat wilt nog niets zeggen. Het hart van beide helften is de integratie van beiden zodat het een mooi geheel vormt en de boodschap duidelijk bij de gebruiker aankomt.

Dit is in een notendop wat het eerste jaar inhoudt. Over het tweede of derde jaar kan ik nog niets exact zeggen, anders zou ik meer weten dan de docenten

Ja, leuk, en wat over de markt?
Deze nieuwe tak binnen het MCT traject is niet zomaar ontstaan. Al jaren staan bedrijven te roepen om dit soort mensen. In samenwerking met de grootste multimedia bedrijven van België wil Howest nu een opleiding aanbieden die onklopbare designers/developers afleverd in porties van 1 persoon. Dit is waar de Belgische top naar vraagt. Deze bedrijven werken nauw samen met Howest om zelfs al tijdens de opleiding de studenten in contact te laten komen met real-life cases.
Diezelfde bedrijven staan nu al te popelen om binnen 3 jaar de eerste afgestudeerde Deviners in dienst te nemen.

Zoveel tekst… Wat is Devine in een notendop?
Software: Flex, Flash, AIR, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere, 3D studio Max…
Talenkennis: PHP, Actionscript, XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript,…
Skills: Storyboarding, concept design, creative maths, fotomanipulatie, videobewerking, object georiënteerd programmeren, interface design, integratie …

Ok… Ik ben overtuigd.
Ik ook. Ik sluit mijn MCT studies niet meer af. Ik slaag voor al mijn modules met gemak, maar de technische en theoretische vakken doen mij de das om: Technologie, Netwerken, Problem Solving… Zware materie die niet in mijn hoofd past. Ik kijk al uit naar september om aan de slag te gaan met mijn nieuwe opleiding.

Wil je meer info over Devine? Check de officiële website met alle informatie!

AMEN!