The race is on! But not really for another month. Regardless, I realized something today, and that something is momentum. Building momentum is a crucial element towards starting and finishing a project. Once that momentum is built, through excitement, brainstorming, conceptualizing and potentially even drafting, then what? I'll tell you what! Go, go, go! Don't stop!
I've been pondering some ideas for a Valentine's Day iPhone App and come up with a few concepts, then a few more, bits and pieces here and there till I finally came up with an idea that I feel can work in full. My biggest problem is getting past the sticking points, where, I want to do the fun parts of the project, but a less intriguing part stands in the way of the next fun bit. So what am I going to do? I'm going to go full force through the boring part and get to the fun part before I even have a chance to second guess that action, that's what!
I came into 2010 with a notion that goals are no longer necessary for me to be happy, but really, while I agree with that, they certainly do make me happy to achieve, and thus, my goal for tonight is to finish, to completion, my Valentine's Day iPhone Application.
All I have so far are concepts made in Photoshop, no code, no icon, no sprite sheets, but I do have a dream and I do have a goal!
Let the games begin!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Giving Back
I wish I had more to give... but that will change!
Today I decided I will donate 25% of my Interactive Arts profits to an African charity called Music for Africa. Here's a link to their website.
I've never been a musician myself. I tried playing the piano, guitar and trumpet till I realized that I'm much better at listening to music than playing it. Living in Austin, the live music capital of the world, has helped me develop my appreciation for music though. And recently my dad created his first album, which he is hugely passionate about, so that has kind of sparked my interest in helping those who pursue such a beautiful art. Since I lived in Africa for 8 years as a child, I really wanted to find a charity that helps African children find music and share it with their communities.
Starting January 1st of 2010, I'll be donating 25% of all my Rengler Studio subsidiary, Interactive Arts, profits to the charity listed above. Hopefully if the Interactive Arts side of Rengler Studios is successful enough, I can donate more in the future!
Today I decided I will donate 25% of my Interactive Arts profits to an African charity called Music for Africa. Here's a link to their website.
I've never been a musician myself. I tried playing the piano, guitar and trumpet till I realized that I'm much better at listening to music than playing it. Living in Austin, the live music capital of the world, has helped me develop my appreciation for music though. And recently my dad created his first album, which he is hugely passionate about, so that has kind of sparked my interest in helping those who pursue such a beautiful art. Since I lived in Africa for 8 years as a child, I really wanted to find a charity that helps African children find music and share it with their communities.
Starting January 1st of 2010, I'll be donating 25% of all my Rengler Studio subsidiary, Interactive Arts, profits to the charity listed above. Hopefully if the Interactive Arts side of Rengler Studios is successful enough, I can donate more in the future!
Let the Games Begin
This blog has one simple purpose. To track my progress in starting a company from scratch. I will be honest, trying my best to explain all my successes and failures, in hopes that anyone else in a similar position can learn from this and do it better than me!
I'll start with as brief a background as I can.
My name is Ryan Engle and I've had a craving for invention ever since I could say "tool". I grew up as the son of a diplomat, so I moved around a lot as a child, kind of like the military. This gave me a wonderful opportunity to see the world at a young age, and experience some really cool cultures! I feel like that upbringing strongly influenced who I am today, in terms of accepting people different from myself.
We spent a lot of time in Africa while I was a child, which was great, but due to crime and distance between friends, I had a lot of time to fill by myself. Thank goodness for legos! They were so good to me, never causing fights, always there, and great at hide and go seek. I was a messy kid. Then I moved on to techniques and that opened up a whole new world of entertainment and invention. I'd follow the directions, then try to modify whatever it was I was making into something way cooler / much less likely to work.
Once I got my hands on a computer in middle school, it was over. I found my passion. Starting in High School I started taking programming classes and turned into a HUGE nerd. There were very few things as satisfying to me as writing code and creating a new world filled with colors and interactions right in front of me, for free! I first started fooling around with the Half-Life SDK, made a mod for the game called Explodeathon, which included some of my own artwork. I learned 3D Studio Max and Paint Shop Pro in order to make some models and skins for the game. It was a great learning experience.
From there I moved on to OpenGL, which, in my mind, was limitless in potential. I loved the ability to freely create whatever my mind could imagine and have it come to life through user interaction. I became very interested in the 3D side of OpenGL, starting with a terrain editor and moving towards a fully functional 3D engine with collision detection, and eventually per-pixel lighting and visual effects.
After high school I attended Virginia Tech, studying Computer Science. It was fun, challenging, but fun and very educational. I spent a lot of my free time working on my engine and got really into the lighting side of graphics. I was obsessed with creating shaders that would realistically or artistically give a 3D scene the feel of life. That bug is there for good.
After graduating from VA Tech I worked on a research project there, and then moved to Austin, Texas a year later to start my career in game development. It wasn't all I had imagined it could be. I worked for a company called Super Happy Fun Fun, it's real, I promise. There I helped develop games for mobile devices, aka, cell phone games. My first project was on Big Buck Hunter Pro for your typical cell phone, not smart phone. By the time I started, the game was pretty much finished and all we had left to do was port the game to about 140 devices, ranging from a resolution of 400x240 to 128x128 and with memory ranging from about 8mb to 128mb. It was pretty ridiculous and not very much fun. At that point I realized that I had to be doing something creative. Luckily, after that project finished, I was moved on to the iPhone. My love. What a cool freaking device! Like a super computer from 10 years ago in your pocket with a very slick display and functionality. So I was pretty excited about that for a couple months. Then I realized I was still doing work that wasn't really very creative. Programming engine features and such.
In order to keep myself up to snuff on what I was really passionate about, I decided to start a little project of my own, making iPhone apps. The first app I wanted to create was a yoga app for the iPhone that was a guided routine I learned from my parents, and used. That project got side tracked by an opportunity to work with John Assaraf, from The Secret with a company called i-Grasshopper. There, I was the sole developer and had a lot of fun creating applications from scratch, which allowed me to be very creative and use all the skills I had acquired over the last 10 years or so in programming and art. That lasted for about 10 months until I realized that I didn't want to work for a company, I wanted to start my own company.
And at last! Rengler Studios was born in mid October! I'm still in the process of finding my niche, but what I do know is that as long as I pursue my passion, I'll be happy. And really, happiness is all I need to keep going.
So that wasn't really brief, haha, but I tried to keep it as relevant as possible.
I'll start with as brief a background as I can.
My name is Ryan Engle and I've had a craving for invention ever since I could say "tool". I grew up as the son of a diplomat, so I moved around a lot as a child, kind of like the military. This gave me a wonderful opportunity to see the world at a young age, and experience some really cool cultures! I feel like that upbringing strongly influenced who I am today, in terms of accepting people different from myself.
We spent a lot of time in Africa while I was a child, which was great, but due to crime and distance between friends, I had a lot of time to fill by myself. Thank goodness for legos! They were so good to me, never causing fights, always there, and great at hide and go seek. I was a messy kid. Then I moved on to techniques and that opened up a whole new world of entertainment and invention. I'd follow the directions, then try to modify whatever it was I was making into something way cooler / much less likely to work.
Once I got my hands on a computer in middle school, it was over. I found my passion. Starting in High School I started taking programming classes and turned into a HUGE nerd. There were very few things as satisfying to me as writing code and creating a new world filled with colors and interactions right in front of me, for free! I first started fooling around with the Half-Life SDK, made a mod for the game called Explodeathon, which included some of my own artwork. I learned 3D Studio Max and Paint Shop Pro in order to make some models and skins for the game. It was a great learning experience.
From there I moved on to OpenGL, which, in my mind, was limitless in potential. I loved the ability to freely create whatever my mind could imagine and have it come to life through user interaction. I became very interested in the 3D side of OpenGL, starting with a terrain editor and moving towards a fully functional 3D engine with collision detection, and eventually per-pixel lighting and visual effects.
After high school I attended Virginia Tech, studying Computer Science. It was fun, challenging, but fun and very educational. I spent a lot of my free time working on my engine and got really into the lighting side of graphics. I was obsessed with creating shaders that would realistically or artistically give a 3D scene the feel of life. That bug is there for good.
After graduating from VA Tech I worked on a research project there, and then moved to Austin, Texas a year later to start my career in game development. It wasn't all I had imagined it could be. I worked for a company called Super Happy Fun Fun, it's real, I promise. There I helped develop games for mobile devices, aka, cell phone games. My first project was on Big Buck Hunter Pro for your typical cell phone, not smart phone. By the time I started, the game was pretty much finished and all we had left to do was port the game to about 140 devices, ranging from a resolution of 400x240 to 128x128 and with memory ranging from about 8mb to 128mb. It was pretty ridiculous and not very much fun. At that point I realized that I had to be doing something creative. Luckily, after that project finished, I was moved on to the iPhone. My love. What a cool freaking device! Like a super computer from 10 years ago in your pocket with a very slick display and functionality. So I was pretty excited about that for a couple months. Then I realized I was still doing work that wasn't really very creative. Programming engine features and such.
In order to keep myself up to snuff on what I was really passionate about, I decided to start a little project of my own, making iPhone apps. The first app I wanted to create was a yoga app for the iPhone that was a guided routine I learned from my parents, and used. That project got side tracked by an opportunity to work with John Assaraf, from The Secret with a company called i-Grasshopper. There, I was the sole developer and had a lot of fun creating applications from scratch, which allowed me to be very creative and use all the skills I had acquired over the last 10 years or so in programming and art. That lasted for about 10 months until I realized that I didn't want to work for a company, I wanted to start my own company.
And at last! Rengler Studios was born in mid October! I'm still in the process of finding my niche, but what I do know is that as long as I pursue my passion, I'll be happy. And really, happiness is all I need to keep going.
So that wasn't really brief, haha, but I tried to keep it as relevant as possible.
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