The first few weeks of this year have been about careers – specifically talking to people about mine – and being fully immersed (pun regretfully intended) in the creative process. Here's an update on what's been happening...
BBC Production Unlocked with ScreenSkills
In February I was invited by Screenskills to speak on a panel at BBC Academy's Production Unlocked event. Chaired by Manchester International Festival's Hayley Pepler and joined by hair and make-up professional Marcia Blackwood, we discussed the twists and turns of a career in the creative sector and how to make the most of opportunities as they arise.
Attendees at the conference formerly known as Digital Cities took place at Fazeley Studios in Digbeth –twice previously my place of work – comprised people looking to break into the creative industries across TV, media, and digital and it was great to see so much interest in our panel.
BOM (Birmingham Open Media) Open Worlds Bootcamp
Following swiftly on from Production Unlocked, I attended BOM's Open Worlds social event to meet some of the bootcampers and XR creatives in the region.
And as an unexpected follow up, I'll now be speaking about careers in immersive media at the Open Worlds bootcamp this week as well as giving 1-2-1 advice on the next steps in the cohort's journeys.
Beachcomber Production
We are pushing ahead on Beachcomber with our whitebox build expanding and transforming with new collaborators, refined mechanics, and enhanced artwork.
We've been perfecting the locomotion system through our VR narrative, with a particular focus on comfort and stability often found lacking in immersive headset experiences.
Work has continued on refining the script with our writer, and music production has begun with a composer beginning the technical and creative task of bringing our musical world of memories to life. Apparently we are nearly breaking musical theory to do what we're doing, so watch this space for more on that.
New artwork is beginning to replace our placeholder VR environment, with real progress made in adding scale and a signature look and feel within Beachcomber. Hopefully we can share more as we get closer to completion.
Bloomberg Digital Accelerator
I've been continuing to support organisations on the Bloomberg Digital Accelerator for Arts Council England, working with FACT Liverpool, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
It's been BRB with the recent big announcement, as they are launching Black Sabbath: The Ballet which I'm very excited to be going to in September. I think I'll be watching the intriguing mix of metal heads and ballet fans in the crowd more than the performance...
Things I've seen and thought about
Notion AI - Another AI service, this time bringing writing prompts and time-saving across your notes, productivity, and files. It's a useful format for keeping your files together and AI writing only serves to speed up some of the boilerplate
Move AI - I've been following Move's progress for a long long time, but their recent open beta shows how it will be a game changer for motion capture. Using just a few iPhones you can generate mocap to use across games, animation, and immersive with relative ease. The results look great. I love services that level the playing field for creativity.
Creative Catalyst - UKRI's Creative Catalyst received thousands of entrants to its new fund for creative projects. My own project Anotherstage unfortunately had to duck out of the process to production commitments but the volume of interest tells me arts + digital is only growing and there are big ideas out there. I'll be keeping an eye on who gets through.
Quest Pro - I've been thinking about how to use the passthrough mixed reality in my field and also pining for new hardware to try and test. Further thinking and playing required!
For more updates, sign up for my Field Notes and you can connect with me on LinkedIn now that I've purged all other social media platforms from my system after over a decade of information overload. Until next time...
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