Accidental Coder Part 5: China, Round One

Read Part 4 here!

It was late summer of 2010. An intense wave of humidity wooshes over. Welcome to Guangzhou.

A driver picked Uncle G. and I up at the airport to take us to our accomodations. I try to make some small talk with the driver but we have trouble understanding eachother.

We arrived in a large residential community, which is actually in the city of Foshan. My senses were on fire taking everything in - the greenery, architecture, dialects, everything felt very different from home. There was a sense of freedom.

The first thing we did after unpacking was head over to a restaurant to meet a couple other folks. We had some dishes I've never seen before. The flavor was explosive. I was going to like China.

Come Monday it was time to go to work. The residential community had a shuttle bus system that took us to the city center.

I meet my team lead, Xiao Feng, who has an Art and VFX background. He starts showing me some of the auto-stereoscopic stuff they've been working on right away. Auto-sterescopic is basically 3D without glasses - it's pretty trippy especially when you see it for the first time.

The first assignment was to compose an auto-stereoscopic image out of 8 images taken along an interocular axis. The tool that was recommended was Photoshop. Regretably I was not yet confident enough to wield my newly learned coding skills, so I manually and painstakingly combined the images. The composed result was then printed and a lenticular sheet was placed over and lined up to finally achieve the stereoscopic effect. I was proud - and Xiao Feng gave me a thumbs up.

Over the next few months we got into auto-stereoscopic video production - I did not contribute much but it was fun to learn. Around October, Xiao Feng, Uncle G. and I went on a business trip to the Shanghai Expo (2010). I think Uncle J. wanted to us to build character, so he had us ride on one of those old, slow trains. It was gritty, loud, and cramped - don't get me started on the toilet situation.

Just as I was getting comfortable in China, I received notice it was time to go back home. I thought it was for a short break before new projects started up. While I didn't accomplish anything extraordinary, I got along with most of the team.

I flew back to Vancouver. Days became weeks and I didn't get a call nor was I proactive enough to ask what the situation is. Another stain on my track record. Oh well. I really needed a win and progress my coding skills, and maybe earn some cash at the same time. So I decided to partner up with a friend to make an iOS game.