Italic Pig – The Infinite Hotel
For the Studio Guided project for my Animation for the Creative Industries module, I was placed with local games company Italic Pig, based out in Holywood. My fellow team members were Ryan Connolly, Sinead Burns, Michael Kelly, Josh Mc Avoy, Daire Wilson and Matthew Mc Veigh. We were to work on their upcoming Virtual Reality game ‘The Infinite Hotel,’ which already had a demo and trailer, to help develop different aspects that was still needed for the game.
Project Coordinator
At our first introductory meeting at the studio, we gave a short presentation that the team had put together showcasing our work and abilities, and talked about the studio’s work and the project. Creative Director Kevin Beimers and Head Producer Ross Morrison asked us how far each of us wanted to be pushed, and we responded enthusiastically as we really wanted to learn the most we could out of this experience. I put myself forward for the role of Project co-coordinator, which meant I would have to ensure regular communication with the studio by emailing on Monday’s, whilst also confirming a studio meeting each week on Wednesdays. I felt pressure initially taking on this role, as I had taken a leadership role in organising things in previous teams, but this time there was a group of seven of us and I had only worked with Sinead before. However, I jumped right in after the meeting and set up a group Trello board, that would allow us to split the tasks equally between us, whilst allowing the rest of the group members to see and view the rest of the other members files and what they were working on. I set up a system of ticking things when they were completed, so we could see each week if we were on track.
- https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CXGkUup5e3b9u5CPoEKf1fhp63br0MGaADzomQqzrxY/edit?usp=sharing
Link to Meet the team Presentation
Project Management
I also set up a group Slack that would allow the team to communicate efficiently outside of University, with different channels for our weekly presentations to the studio and a software file share channel so we could upload things and view each others work with ease. Using Slack as a project management tool was effective, as we were able to communicate between ourselves any issues that we were having, before relaying them back to the studio. I then set up a group Google Drive as another file share option, however the team didn’t engage with this as much as the software file channel share, so we moved away from using that eventually. Having weekly presentations to the studio before we transitioned to remote working was helpful on keeping the team on track, and I took responsibility for making sure these presentations were set up and completed each week.
Group Slack I set up for the team 
Google drive I set up for team file share
When we transitioned into remote working, we continued with the group Slack as well as a Slack that Ross from Italic Pig set up for us. This was good as we had almost daily communications with the studio, however it came with the added pressure of feeling we were constantly working on the project. I subsided this feeling with regular Zoom calls with the team each morning or every other day, checking in on everyone and making sure we were on track to getting things that needed to be done finished on time. Per the studio’s request, I came up with a production schedule that would see us to the end of the project, which everyone engaged with, however due to sign offs and re-iterations we were not able to follow this a linear as the team would have liked. In the future if I were to take on this role again, I would definitely make a point of creating a production schedule from the start. Overall, I think I contributed majorly to keeping communication going between the group and the studio, and seeing the project through to the end.
evaanimate. 