Josh worked primarily alongside Theresa, but when I did interact with him, he was eager to put in the work and provide updates.

In fact, he had ideas for different levels in the game on top of his animation duties. I hope he'll be able to get more level design experience in the future.

I took a look at his portfolio shortly before writing this, and I gotta say- quite impressed. I trusted Theresa's decision to bring him on and the work they came up with was incredible.  For such a small bean, they really brought it to life.

As the animators found themselves without tasks for the project, I sent him these questions:

[Why Game Development?]

Video games are SO COOL. I think there’s something really special about being able to interact and have an influence on what happens in your media. And on the other end, it’s so thrilling to curate a specific experience for another person to experience. 

[What did you learn from the project?]

Working with really limited scope was really interesting! I didn't bog myself down with complicated rigs with lots of body mechanics to need to pay attention to, it was really just trying to bring to life this very simple object with appealing movement. And I think that helped because I usually don’t touch the game engine side of things, so making sure my deliverables could get imported into the engine was a very valuable first step into learning for a larger, future project! 

[What was it like volunteering your time in the middle of everything else you had to do?]

One thing I learned about myself is it’s really important for me to have a tiny bit of friction to keep up my motivation and drive. Like you have to have things you “have” to do so you can look forward to doing the things you DO want to do! If I didn’t have my actual job taking up time, I would just sort of flounder, but the game jam gave me something to look forward to doing after work! 

[Will you be participating in more Game Jams in the future?]

I think so! Seemed really exciting!

[What's next for you?]

Grind never stops  Gonna keep animating, keep learning! Picking up more skills to be more hirable! I wanna learn how to rig and model, maybe even make a simple game of my own.