This project has been on the bench for far, far too long. It’s time to get back in the game and start making things happen again. I’ve been sidetracked most of this year. Much of my time was spent working on two other projects and most recently the day job has been consuming my life like never before. What time I was able to spend on Newfound Room this year has been spent in learning mode — time spent on learning normal mapping and GIMP mostly, but also on learning new ways to do this type of on-the-side work without killing myself from lack of sleep and exercise. Now, however, the time is here to get moving again.

Thousander Club Update
Here it is! The home stretch is finally here… after, how many years now? 4 years? 17 more hours and I will have met my goal of 1000 hours spent making game art. Where do I stand after all this time? Stay tuned and I will provide a nice look back at the journey at the end of the year. Also, I crushed my goal of 1000 miles of biking this year. That goal just got easier and easier during the year. So much so, that I even ride through hail storms and winds that knock pieces of the bay bridge down.

Previous Year: 737 hours
Total: 983 hours
Biking for the year: 1,543 miles

A New Challenge
Now that the thousander club is wrapping up and things are just starting to get rolling here on making new models for game devs to use, I will be taking on a new challenge. I’ll have more about it in the next few weeks, but for now I will simply state that I will be challenging myself to make and distribute a new free game asset every week for the coming year. I’m still debating on the details of how I will work it, but in short I will be putting a lot of focussed energy on making this site as strong as I can in the coming year.

Stay free
~shs~

Hooboy! what’s the right word to describe the last few months? Whirlwind? Flood? Avalanche? hmmm… how about crucible? That seems the best. I have new toughness forged in the heat of constant and overwhelming work. I have been so incredibly overloaded with work — both at day and at night that the amount of work I have been doing easily surpasses any amount of time I have done in previous years. The bad thing about it, besides losing sleep, is that it left no time for updating things around here. The good thing about it, which is something I had worried about as I was starting this site, is that I am now confident of being able to create a model a week for this site once I get going. I know this because I have done ten times that in a week on a few occasions these past months. I have been working on creating ways to alleviate the workload and hope to get on schedule here. Here are my updated stats for the year.

Previous Year: 737 hours
Weeks 3-12: 153 hours
Total: 890 hours
Biking weeks 3-12: 327 miles
Biking for the year: 391 miles

Stay free
~shs~

Here I am sitting on the couch watching one of my kids playing with Lincoln Logs, the other playing with K’Nex and I am thinking about how for the past three weeks I have been working on something very similar. I’ve been on a freelance project building modular pieces that people can use in social worlds to build complex structures. It must be genetic. Another busy week this week, spent almost entirely on freelance work, so the official launch of this site will need to drift back another few weeks. The great part about this work is that I have already managed to pay this year’s web hosting bills for this site and my portfolio. I also managed to get a big chunk of work done on my own newfound room (more on that later).

Previous Year: 737 hours
Last Week: 15 hours
Total: 782 hours
Biking this week: 24 miles
Biking for the year: 64 miles

Stay free
~shs~

Related posts:
I Return to the Thousander Club

What a busy, busy week! The year is off to a big start and it is fun to be able to jump back into the Thousander Club reporting with a big number. I had a big freelance project that I was on last week, so none of the time spent flowed into preparing newfoundroom for the official launch, but working so hard is definitely satisfying. Adding in the few extra days from between New Year’s day and last Sunday I came up with a whopping 30 hours. I’m also returning one of 2007 goals to my reporting — exercising. I am shooting again for 1000 miles of biking for the year.

Previous Year: 737 hours
Last Week: 30 hours
Total: 767 hours
Biking: 40 miles

Stay free
~shs~

Related posts:
I Return to the Thousander Club

At the beginning of 2006, I made a pledge to myself to work hard to become an expert at 3D modeling. I had based this on article from the GBGames site that talked about how practice is just as important as talent and that mastery of a skill is achieved after 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Even 1000 hours can lead to the level of experienced expert. So, I set the goal for myself of not only devoting 1000 hours of my time to creating free 3D models, but also to reporting on my progress through the year. Now, three years later I am still plugging away at those 1000 hours and I am now devoting myself to once again start reporting the hours on a regular basis. I have been recording my hours, if not reporting them, and I currently stand at 737 hours over three years. The goal is to finally reach that 1000 hours by the end of the year.

One of the reasons I am bringing this back to my own blogging endeavors and transporting it over from the Low Poly Coop blog is that I want to put out a call to a renewed part of this challenge. I challenge every artist in the community to make some free game models — enough that we as a community can release 1000 models free to the world of game devs and students. I can’t completely manage a project like the Low Poly Coop in a way that is big enough to handle 1000 free community models, so I urge everyone out there who can to make some models, post them somewhere for download and get the word out. I already have a number of models to throw in the pot to get us started and I plan to complete at least another 50 this year. If enough decent artists get out there and do this, we could get to the goal of having 1000 free models in circulation. Join with me in making this a real goal.

Stay free
~shs~