Week 16 : Skills resume

Well the weeks keep trucking along, we just passed the six month mark for this experiment. There have been some promising developments but we'll keep them under wraps until something more substantial shows up. In the meantime I wanted to share this video with you

Skills Resume

I never could understand how a resume could be effective at only one page long, it turns out what I though was a resume was really a Curriculum Vitae (CV). To be fair my father always refereed to them as CVs and he probably was the person who taught me how to compile one.

On the other hand, a Skills resume, is designed to target all the buzz words in a job description. Let's say the Job Description is :

• Lead teams of designers, writers and directors to drive the overall creative vision for our games.
• Foster collaborative and successful working partnerships with our clients and departments across the studio.

 So instead of hoping that the HR person would notice the Lead Designer from the list of projects I have on my CV. I would target those bullet points directly.

• Facilitated game design features and requirement for both creative and development team.
• Organized quality assurance for assets shared between collaborating contractors on Disney's Epcot Attractions.

As you see these points are more direct. Point is I am going to start tuning my resume writing process and I suggest you watch the video and do the same.


See you in Twenty Five weeks

Week 15 : OpenCV and PHI

This week I want to show you something neat. There is a number called Phi, the golden ratio that was discovered by the Greeks the Ratio is as follows

(A+B)/A = A/B
Phi turns out to be 1.61803399...

This Ratio was used to build the Pyramids, the Parthenon and is found is good design even today.

So I wanted to see if there was a way I can use this ratio with facial detection. In openCV you can use Haar cascade to find parts of the face

like so

Promising right?!?!

Well unfortunately you are seeing a lot of redundancy and false positives in that images, some of the boxes around the eye might actually be determined when looking for a mouth. Luckily the general face detector is pretty good, and if you use the biggest box you get have a decent start.

By using the face rectangle's height as a starting point I could extrapolate the width of the face with Phi

Coincidentally the line separating A and B tends to lie where the eyes are on the face. So I extrapolated some more.

Here is the breakdown

   Phi A/B = (A+B)/A = 1.618033988749894848204586834

   Outer White lines - Detected Facial Height with Haar Cascades (A+B)

   Teal Lines - Phi derived Facial Width  (Height / phi)  (A)

   Green Lines - Predicted location of eyes  by breaking Height into A + B

   Blue lines - Predicted eye and mouth width (B = A')

   Red + Inner White line - Predicted mouth height  (A'' + B''  = A' = B)   

   Red line - Predicted nose height (A'')

   Purple line - Predicted nose width (B'')

   Teal circles  - Best possible eye locations using Phi in conjunction with Haar Cascades. 

Interesting huh?!?! Most interesting Phi can be used to help find the best rectangle for certain facial features.

If you'd like to see more images check out my Facebook site

Facebook site

Or 

Check out a Presentation I made posted at 

Google Drive Or LinkedIn

See you in Twenty Six Weeks

Week 14 : Applications

Well, with the advent of the leak at the house I have decided to focus my attention on something I can move forward on, applications. That is to say as of last week I submitted my first two applications to TellTale Games, for Interactive Story Designer (the golden job) and Build Engineer. Let's be honest if I can't land a job within these forty weeks this whole adventure is all for naught. I let my boss review the material I was sending, he is a hiring manager, he seemed supportive and used the term 'convincing' so let's hope TellTale's hiring manager feels the same.

As of today I can tell you that I 'may' have passed the first filter for the 'Golden Job', how do I know?
Well I was rejected for the Build Engineer position. Which is fine I am better suited to making game play elements anyway. So instead of looking at it as a loss I am keeping a positive attitude and am acting as thought I made it through round one, I suppose the next round starts with them contacting me.

Meanwhile I also applied to Rockstar's Tools, Game Play and AI programmer positions. Each of these roles I would easily succeed in. As well as applied to Irrational Games, they just have a single programming field to apply to. Heck always keep your options open and aim high, all they can do is say no, but just imagine if they all said yes?!?!

I must admit this is exciting and nerve racking, with each application I imagine how the interview will go. The hard part is the waiting. Granted I am applying just over six months before I am available, but hey after the horrors stories I have hear from the crash of '08 I feel I am right on target.


See you in Twenty Seven Weeks