ETC alum Ben Miller ('10) sent an email announcing the release of a new iPad game, Superfugu.
SUPERFUGU is a wild underwater adventure, filled with fun, friends, and danger! Animated by Avatar’s Academy Award ® winning Animation Director Andy Jones, with ocean science narrated by Hero of the Planet Dr. Sylvia Earle. A mysterious enemy invades the Reef and it’s up to you to take control of the hilarious, bad-to-the-bone pufferfish Fugu to save your friends. Collect golden coins and beautiful fish species, escape killer sea snakes and deadly sharks, and become the superhero of the Reef, the first Habitat released in this breakthrough adventure game!
Much success to our friends at Wemodmia, the game looks beautiful!
ETC student Dani Belko sent me this story about the team's adventures this semester in Barcelona, Spain
In August, 4 ETC students (Dani Belko, David Françus, Rebecca Grabman, and Matthew Stewart) traveled to Barcelona, Spain to work on a project at La Salle University’s Media Dome.
The team is working with Hewlett-Packard’s Barcelona branch to help develop new ways to interact with their 3D printer.
For more information on the project, visit the team’s website.
The Media Dome
The Media Dome hosts a Master´s program very similar to that at the ETC, the main difference being it is only one year long. Like the ETC, the Media Dome students come from different backgrounds and cultures and work together on multimedia projects for real clients.
The ETC has partnered with the Media Dome since 2009, when director Oscar García Pañella first came to visit the Pittsburgh Campus. He remained State-side as a visiting faculty member for one year -- attending classes, advising projects, and taking advantage of the things CMU has to offer -- before heading back to 
Barcelona. Since then, the Media Dome has opened its doors to ETC students looking for project work with a little international flair. Oscar, along with Emiliano Labrador (both pictured to the left) are the all-star advisors on all of the ETC projects that go through the Media Dome, and go out of their way to help support this amazing educational experience. This is the second ETC project in Barcelona, the first being Project ZOOXXI and definitely not the last! (For more information on the Media Dome, go here)
Life in Barcelona
Along with visiting some of the big tourist sites, such as La Sagrada Familia and Las Ramblas, the team has been trying to take full advantage of their time in Barcelona. Lucky for them, there have been a lot of great events going on!
One of the first big events that they attended was the La Mercè festival which celebrates the Roman Catholic feast day of Our Lady of Mercy, or La Mercè. Now this festival is not just any festival: It consumes the city for 4 full days of eating, drinking, free concerts, wine tastings, live shows, parades, giants, and -- most importantly -- fire. These pictures were taken at the infamous Correfoc, or fire run, where giant dragons and monsters parade down the street displaying an assortment of sparklers and small fireworks.
The team has also been able to go to several theatrical shows performed in Spanish and Catalan, various music concerts, and movie festivals. One weekend in October, they went to the 2011 Sitges Film Festival, which hosted horror and science fiction/fantasy films from around the world. In addition to all-night movie marathons, one of the highlights of this festival was the Friday night Zombie Walk. This walk is so popular that professional make-up artists set up free stations to help bring life to the living dead.
The semester in Barcelona has been a very enriching and fulfilling experience. The team is not only learning about Spanish culture and the Spanish language, but also how to work on a project with an international company. They have repeatedly had to face challenges posed by language barriers, as well as cultural differences in the work place. Over all, everyone at the Media Dome and Hewlett-Packard has been extremely friendly and wonderful to work with, and the team is looking forward to finishing and presenting their project at the end of the semester.
This semester many students are taking advantage of the Global learning opportunities at the ETC and some are also pursuing other exciting musical opportunities as well.
Rachel Berkowitz and Sherry Chow are not only working as part of the A-Wall project with Microsoft in Redmond WA, they are also part of the Microsoft Orchestra. Both Sherry and Rachel have been practicing with the orchestra and have even gone so far as to rent a piano to ‘exercise the musical part’ of their brain while working on the ‘tech part’ of the ETC project. Rachel will be playing Bruckner Symphony No 4 with the orchestra on March 14, 2011. Way to go Rachel and Sherry!
Mark Bethune is rarely seen without his guitar. He has even gone so far as to record a video in what looks like a dry cleaning store. It is no surprise that while on Co-Op with Super 3D in Beijing China, Mark is also exercising his ‘musical part’ of his brain. Mark recently played an acoustic set at Jianghu Bar in Beijing. Click here for an article written in the Global Times. Chalk up another world venue for Mark’s musical tour!
ETC faculty member Jesse Schell is quoted in "New Scientist" in an article about gamification. While you need a subscription to see the article on line, it is great to read Jesse quoted liberally on the recent integration of game dynamics into any medium such as website, community and school etc in order to drive a positive response, participation and engagement from a target audience.
Faculty member Chris Klug is quoted in an Pittsburgh Post Gazette Article Game maker declares war in federal court
Michael Agustin (ETC '07) gets great coverage for his company GameSalad, Inc. in an article in ReadWriteWeb. GameSalad has grown to be the largest and fastest growing third-party development tool for iOS games with more than 3% of all iOS in the App Store created using the tool. To read the full article, click here.
ETC Alumna Laura Lantz ('09) and current student Mike Honeck are mentioned in a Pittsburgh Post Gazette Article Local performers form a different kind of circus
