New Phase of Challenges -- Week Ending 5 Nov

I've found it a bit difficult this week to determine exactly the different jobs that Jesse and I (the two producers) are expected to do. It's not that we keep stepping on each other's toes or anything, but occasionally it's been a struggle to decide which tasks we need to completely take over versus on which we meet half-way. The other difficult thing is that because we both ended up as primary designers in our own groups before combining, we've had some trouble establishing what to keep and what to throw out from each of our old ideas. Without establishing a single creative director, our game has gotten fairly ambitious, considering the fact that we only have about eight days of development left.

One other difficulty has been unifying the art style between our two artists. I've taken the helm for the art side of things generally, and it's been a challenge to get two artists of greatly differing experience and ability to produce a unified aesthetic for our game. I've researched appropriate games and styles for a target to match, selected and distributed a strong style, and communicated that vision with the artists, but it still feels like there's a disconnection between the goal and the product.

Frustrations aside, the game is coming along, and a lot of work has been effectively done.

My personal accomplishments this week are as follows:

- Held group meetings to determine the necessary tasks, communication, and workflow
- Kept email and phone communication with our clients to obtain technical information, city images, etc.
- Further nailed down game design, flow, and functionality with Jesse
- Researched, selected, and communicated a target art vision with our artists
- Managed the artists' pipeline and how they work together
- Created and updated the art portions of the Scrum/sprints
- Worked on the new production blog (though Jesse helmed and created the actual blog space)
- Updated my own existing production blog (the one that I had already established for our joint group--though, Jesse's new one is flashier and more exciting) for completeness and continuity's sake

One more full week of development left... Like I've said before, if anyone can make this work, my talented team members can. Wish us luck!

- Troy