The IMM Showcase: Advice for incoming students
For my thesis project, I embarked in a more challenging direction that was way left field from what I had been doing my past 4 years in IMM. I was always interested in music and scoring for interactive multimedia but for the first time I decided to create a game and not only a game but one that was played using the xbox kinect to control the avatar. At first it seemed to be a reach but the more I worked on it the more plausible it became. I had many bumps in the road but eventually it all came together pretty well. I already had prior experience in music production so that was the easy part. The game design aspect was where I needed some help.
A lot of help in my game came from others and I was always open to ideas as to how the game was to be played. It was honestly the game changing factor once I started letting other people help me design the kinect rhythm game. I think that utilizing all the resources around me, especially the office hours of professor Fishburn, ended up giving me way more progress than I could do alone. Of course youtube tutorials came in very clutch at times but nothing could replace face to face experience working on the same project as it encouraged me to think about problems I was facing differently.
To work on something all semester, it has to be something you are interested in. Me, personally I was fascinated by how the music would control the game as opposed to accompany the game. This made me more motivated to work on it weekly and the more progress I made, the more motivated i became to finish it.
I had to discipline myself though and the first step to that was knowing myself including strengths and weaknesses. This was mostly the first semester for me honestly. Understanding how much I want to do vs how much I can actually do and how I could accomplish this. I decided to make a time table for myself and set more short term goals throughout the year which honestly felt great every time I crossed a checkpoint.
During this whole process I was landed an internship at Lakehouse studio recordings and working at the Mayo Concert Hall and the TCNJ Studio in AIMM. I also applied for jobs in my field as well as seek out professionals that were interested in the skills I’d acquired over the years. Balancing all this was the true test for me but I looked at it from a positive mindset. The way I see it, if I can balance all this, then I could balance the responsibilities that come with being out of college and know how to manage my time in the best way.
