Contact

This is me in Telluride, Colorado Ryan R Bland

Texas A&M University
C108 Langford Center
3137 TAMU

imp at viz dot tamu dot edu

About Me

Howdy, I'm an Nth year graduate student at Texas A&M University. I have an undergraduate degree in design and I'm no pursuing a Master's in Visualization Sciences. My plan is to graduate next summer and pursue my professional goals. I love the challenges and variety that permeate the field of computer graphics. Somedays I find that I must play the artist, other days the scientist, but most days I get to be both.

I also am working for a small web studio here in town called Net Perspective. My work is primarily in Flash and ActionScript, but it can range (depending on what is needed) into PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS as well as design work in software packages like Yes, I'm abnormally cool. Maya, Photoshop, Encore, After Effects and many others. I like this job not only because I get to do what I love, but also because I'm costantly learning new tools and tricks as well as how to work as part of a team on real projects with real clients and very real deadlines.

During this fall '08 semester I'm taking 3 courses. Computer Vision is being taught by Dr Dezhen Song in the Computer Science department. It is a useful course for those of you that are just dying to understand the nitty gritty of the mathematics behind projective transformations. I also have a directed study with Dr Vinod Srinivasan to learn 3D game programming in C# using XNA. My goal for the class is to create a fully functional video game. The concept for the game is a "Sim Space Station". The concept will use the International Space Staiton as a model for gameplay. The player will make every executive decision about his or her station including what modules are built and used, what crew members are brought aboard and how their research dollars are spent. If you want to learn more about it, I have a sister site to this one where I'll be documenting my progress and hopefully putting up some screen shots. Finally, I have my thesis hours. I'll be spending my time keeping this site updated, coming up with game ideas, writing a proposal, and learning some new software.