Cat & Mouse Game

Another December, another year in which I missed the deadline to finish Sentenced! While updating my website yesterday, I noticed guiltily that I still had the release date down as 2019 in one paragraph. I quickly changed it, hoping nobody would notice, but I suppose I’ve given the game away to anyone reading this.

I AM actually working hard on Sentenced now. During 2020 with my health issues and the coronavirus outbreak, I decided it would be wise to stay steadily employed in VFX longer than I’d initially intended. I ended up taking the position of Lead Modeller on Tom & Jerry, responsible for leading the team creating and maintaining characters on the show, as well as props, vehicles and environments.

This was my first leadership role in VFX, and as you can imagine, taking on one of the biggest shows at the company during a pandemic in which we could no longer work in the office was a real trial by fire. My team size fluctuated from around 5-10 people, and we had to contend with work-from-home conditions, mass layoffs caused by cost-saving measures from the company, and a low morale. We just about managed to keep it together despite not being able to blow off steam at the pub on Fridays, and I’m really proud of the team and the work we delivered on this show. I really enjoyed the experience of leading a team and learned a huge amount about managing, production and coordination on large projects. The first trailer is out now for Tom & Jerry, and I believe the movie will be out in March. Trailer below:

We wrapped on the film a few weeks ago, signaling the start of what I’m very much hoping is the ‘final push’ on Sentenced. I’m still employed at Framestore, but taking a big chunk of unpaid leave between shows to try and finish up the game. I would love to go full time making Sentenced and the numerous other game ideas I have floating around in my skull, but I also have to pay the bills, so until something drastically changes with my income I’ll be splitting the months between my own projects and client work for the foreseeable future.

As such, I’m also setting up a Patreon account for my work. I’ll be posting work-in-progress, early builds and more. I’m not expecting to get much in the way of income from it initially, but it would be great to build up enough support to supplement a full-time career making games. A man can dream. I intend on moving this blog to Patreon (viewable for free).

Find my page here: https://www.patreon.com/samuelgordon

If you want to support the work I do then this will be the best way to do it! (other than buying my game when it launches). I’m currently working with voices.com to get the scripts voice acted for my game, and working on a tutorial.

I think that’s all for now, but I’ll be posting regularly here, on Twitter & Instagram @samthesane, and so on, so watch this space.