Despite all of my efforts to get a job at a hardcore graphics studio writing shaders and coding up the cool GPU effects, I managed to find myself in a slightly different field. After several tiresome weeks of sleeping on couches in New York City (many thanks to my sister and friends), I got an interview, and very shortly thereafter an offer from Oddcast in midtown Manhattan. So, since the end of June, I’ve been writing ActionScript for an interesting type of Flash application. Oddcast’s business is totally centered around an in-house 3D face technology in which a user can convert a photograph from 2D into a 3D projection-mapped avatar. This character can then speak, emote facial expressions, and do all sorts of moderately entertaining actions. The codebase that I work with consists of a custom Flash 3D API (unfortunately no Papervision or Pixel Bender shaders as they’ve been doing this long before such technologies came into play (although coworkers and I are pushing for it), text-to-speech, microphone, phone recording capabilities, and of course common social network integration goodies such as Facebook Connect and Clearspring, to mention a few. Most of our projects are viral marketing campaigns where clients range from small companies to very large brands, just like any multimedia advertising studio.

All in all I suppose life isn’t too bad. I live a bit more than 10 blocks from work, once a month we hold an office meeting in which we relax, talk about the latest company sales and development, and celebrate birthdays with chips, cake, and seasonal microbrews. I’ve had a great time living in NYC so far, met some interesting folks, and hope there is much more to come.

Check out some of the projects I’ve launched so far (with many more on their way):

AudioPal

PhotoFace 2 Demo