Tag Archives: freelance

Jared A. Sorensen, Roleplaying Game Designer – Episode 122

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Tabletop roleplaying and digital game designer Jared A. Sorensen has been a mainstay of the indie scene since the turn of the millennium. He’s probably best know for his roleplaying game InSpectres, about busting ghosts while balancing the budget, but he’s worked across projects across the gaming spectrum.

Jared is one of my classic guests. I first spoke with him for Episode 8, all the way back in 2012, and I’m glad to have him back on to talk about his latest project, a hardcover compilation of his Parsely series of party games inspired by the text-based computer adventures of the seventies and eighties. As of this posting, the Kickstarter for the Parsely book has finished with over 300% of the requested target!

Join us for a chat about nightclubbing spiders, the great screenwriter in the sky, running a game at a planetarium, adjectives and expletives in Australia and the United States and being a travelling mad scientist!

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Evgeni Puzankov, Video Game Narrative Designer – Episode 119

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Narrative designer for computer and video games Evgeni Puzankov works as a freelancer in the video game industry from his home base in St. Petersburg in Russia.

After working as an employee doing scripting and production for video games and becoming a lead narrative designer on Suricate Games’ title Panoptes, Evgeni went full-time as a freelancer in October 2016.

Since, he’s crafted narratives for the Steam Greenlight game The Long Reach and a few more games yet to be announced.

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Fon Davis, Movie Model Maker – Episode 118

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Miniature model maker Fon Davis has worked on over thirty feature films across a two decade career. He’s an alumnus of the Industrial Light and Magic Model Shop and Disney, having produced concept art and made models for Starship Troopers, Galaxy Quest, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. Recently, he’s worked on Interstellar, Guardians of the Galaxy and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium.

Fon founded his own design and fabrication studio, Fonco Creative, in 1997 in San Francisco, and after setting up shop in the premises of Vanaheim Studios in Los Angeles, he bought the whole 16,000 square foot facility out at the end of first quarter 2017, renaming it Fonco Studios.

Join us for a fantastic chat about the importance of a portfolio in the special effects industry (and why Fon didn’t wind up needing one when he interviewed at ILM), the possibilities of virtual reality in entertainment, how special effects folks insert themselves into the movies they work on and the questions from the show’s Patreon backers!

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Zac, a.k.a. The IMP, Pro eSports Team Coach – Episode 109

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Heroes of the Storm fan and coach of Texas A&M Team Maroon Zac is better known within the eSports community as The IMP. A former competitive player himself, Zac is working to get his team of five college students to the winner’s podium of the 2017 Heroes of the Dorm league; not only that, Zac applies his skill in Heroes of the Storm through freelance coaching of anyone looking to better their game!

As this episode goes to air, Team Maroon will be in the final matches of the the Group Stages and Playoffs of Heroes of the Dorm, but Zac has confirmed that they’ve now won enough matches to make it into the Championship Brackets starting on March 18th; if the team wins all four Bracket matches, they’ll be through to the Top Four final rounds on April 8th. The champion team will come away with each player’s college tuition covered for up to three years!

Listen in as Zac and I have a great chat about taking a group of alpha males and making them work together, the time commitments required of a competitive gamer, the sheer complexity of playing a Heroes of the Storm hero, the difference between a melee and ranged flex player and his ambition to return to the college competitive leagues as a player in 2018! Continue reading →

Shelli Varela: Saying Yes to Hacking Possibility – Episode 108

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Host of The YES Effect podcast, possibility hacker and fire captain Shelli Varela has been blazing trails both figuratively and literally for over 2 decades. As well as a veteran firefighter and podcaster, Shelli is a published author of a children’s book and a public speaker, having presented for TEDx twice.

But Shelli has a particular trick that helped her achieve all these goals, a technique she calls Possibility Hacking. Shelli has used it to coach badass women to say “Yes!” to their greatness and live life on purpose, not autopilot. By the time this episode goes to air, Shelli will have unleashed her signature online program called YES University onto the web, and in March her inner circle membership site will be launching.

Shelli and I have a great chat about going from a 108lb. artist to her city department’s first female fighter, the danger of taking on the labels other people’s place on you, how she discovered possibility hacking through reverse engineering her techniques for learning fire fighting and the power of the question: “Why not me?”

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Gamified Geeky Fitness: Tonja Davis – Episode 71

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Tonja Davis is an incredible fusion of geek and fitness enthusiast. She’s not only worked in technology and for one of the biggest business names in the geek world, she’s also taken her own struggles with with chronic illness and injuries – in her own words, “If there’s something you can break, I probably broke it!” – and turned them into programmes to help those whom the mainstream fitness industry neglects.

The business born of the fusion of these loves is Action Hero Fitness, a comic book-themed body and health coaching business that aims to help geeks struggling with fitness. Tonja levers web technology and even online-enabled game consoles to run coaching sessions for people whose health issues prevent them from going to gyms or outdoor fitness courses.

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Bringing Princesses to Life: Sharna, Ever After Parties – Episode 69

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It’s interesting how things tuned out: The recording order of my chat with Sharna, owner and operator of and performer in Ever After Parties, comes out twelve months after she started the company!

Ever After Parties specialises in making make-believe a little more real by bringing beloved characters from animated movies to children’s parties. It’s cosplay in one of its purer forms; it’s no coincidence that Sharna was a cosplayer before she got into performing at kids’ parties.

We chat about Sharna’s love of anime and Disney, going from a princess party company employee to staring her own company at just sixteen years of age (while still at high school) and the support you can get from the most unlikely quarters as long as you stand by your paid play!

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Video Game Freelancing: C.J. “Rhykker” Miozzi – Episode 67

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C. J. Miozzi is the paid player I want to be when I grow up. He’s a writer, graphic artist and voice talent, and he’s built his revenue streams around his love of video games, especially Diablo III. He’s probably best known for his YouTube channel of advice for players of Diablo III, for which he goes by the handle of Rhykker.

We chat about the difference between personalities and content providers on YouTube, the conflict between outsourcing and the desire for complete control, pursuing a career almost completely outside your field of study and planning for the inevitable changes in any modern career, not just freelancing. Oh, and we have a bit of a geek-out about Dungeons & Dragons.

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From China with Life Orgasms: Frank Macri – Episode 65

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Frank Macri has been grappling with the idea of Work since his late teens. He’s made it his purpose to help those who are educated and passionate but still not sure where how they can take what they have and make their lives about their true selves.

Frank is currently working on a book called Life Orgasm, “a provocative guide to living with passion.” You can currently download his free guide, “How to Climax (On Life)” from his website and catch his weekly YouTube show where he vlogs on his experiences in China, to where, as of this writing, he’s recently returned after teaching there for a year just after finishing university.

We had a great chat about going it on your own in another country, looking at failure in a positive light and how the cliched phrases of positivity and self-help sometimes need a little shaking up!

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Love of the Eighties on Camera: Dez Green – Episode 53

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Cairns filmmaker Dez Green pays the bills by shooting video for local artist collectives and indigenous groups, but his passion project is a love letter to Eighties movies and TV called Dimension Man!

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