Glad you enjoyed it <3

Thanks! It is an incredible place. The "sweet spot" for no-bugs-but-not-winter is aug 28th - sept 17th -- you also get to witness the transition toward winter quite rapidly during that time but can have end-of-summer vibes at the start of a 14-ish day trek. Trip of a lifetime.

Nope, luckily. We do work with a local outfitter that guards the coast for you while you set out on foot, any polar bears this time of year (experienced in the video) are only found along the coast if they haven't already started to hibernate. If they are inland, then it means they are sick or dying, which is pretty sad. Luckily we did not witness that either.

It takes so long to get there!

That's awesome! What a place to grow up.

The grass is always greener on the other side 😊

I haven't been everywhere, but I'm confident Baffin Island is probably top 5 most beautiful places on earth. The fact that you have the entire place to yourself (although I recommend going with at least one other person and a sat phone for safety) is a huge bonus also. Its why I started going there after Iceland and Greenland both started getting overrun with tourism in the latter 2010's.

Yes, I got a Bachelor's Degree in Digital Art and Animation (basically a BFA but more production art focused). If you're curious about my trajectory after that, read on: After graduating I spent a year improving my animation skills while enjoying myself living in New York City with some other poor, recently-graduated friends. After about a year of working nightly on animation exercises geared toward improving my animation reel and targeting the games industry with those exercises, I moved back to the west coast (where most game companies were located in 2007). I landed my first job (a contract working on a PS3 AAA game called "Lair" in San Rafael, CA). After that I worked for a while at a startup called Multiverse. A talented friend from my first job (working on Lair @ Factor 5) eventually ended up getting me an interview at Bungie to work on Halo: Reach toward the end of 2009. I attended Animation Mentor for some higher-quality, animation-focused training from industry professionals (ILM, Pixar, etc) because I still felt like I needed to upgrade my skillset while at Bungie (the animation team there was made up of top tier talent from the film industry and I felt like I needed to become a better animator). Full disclosure, my parents couldn't pay for college and I finished all of that schooling with close to $200,000 of private student loan debt. I always believed that I was going to be working at top-tier studios and so I personally felt like the long-term expense was going to be worth it. Working on Reach at Bungie opened up a lot of opportunity for me, Bungie was a huge name back then and still holds a special place in my heart, also, I had improved my animation skills and workflow a great deal while I was there, taking every opportunity to learn from some of the best animators in the industry. I had interviews at Valve and Microsoft (343 Industries) soon after that job and decided to take a full time position at 343 making $117,000/yr (in 2011, this was still considered a high salary for a full time, non-senior animator in games, for comparison, an Animation Director at Bungie was making around 118k and I was hired as a non-senior animator to start... I was.... stoked about my negotiation phase of the hiring process to say the least). After working at 343 for 13-ish years my salary from Microsoft, including bonuses and stock options was around $240,000/yr (at the higher end of salaries for individual contributors in the game industry in 2019, but it should be noted that living in Seattle is extremely expensive $2500 - $4,000/mo rent, houses cost $800k - $3 million etc). A little while after the end of production for Halo Infinite Microsoft laid-off a huge portion of the team at 343 (myself included) along with 10,000 other Microsoft employees, most of the people laid off from 343 were top-performing industry artists and engineers. No reason was given. That was some of the first huge lay-offs in the game, entertainment and tech industries in 2022-2023 that still continue into 2024. Extremely talented people are a bit worried at the moment because it feels like companies in the United States are getting very greedy and not treating the people that make their multi-billion-dollar games with enough respect. Corporate greed has not skipped over the game industry, they are trying to drive salaries lower while maximizing shareholder profits. This of course is short term thinking from the executives that don't understand how great things are made or how to value those that make those things for them. Still, I have had more than one dream job so far in my life and count myself grateful. I have now started my own creative studio called SKY FOLK from which I provide co-development solutions for the games and experiential entertainment industry.

Thats awesome! Summit lake area is heaven on earth. We go about a month after the flowers/green right when the season is switching over to winter, less bugs for the clients, but they do miss out a bit on the full range of colors.

Thankya :) planning on going back when I'm fit enough. Its a magical place.

yeah that was a fun one. we gave it our all and the company supported it. we had to reverse engineer a seriously challenging-to-work-with engine with little documentation. I still wish the game was more "vast" we had really high aspirations going into it. talented team made sure we were able to ship anything at all.

I appreciate the kind words and the sub! I plan on producing more fun things soon. SKY FOLK (my studio) has been evolving as of late.

@@sky_folk very cool! Can’t wait to see what ya put out next.

It was me! I'm the one! Thanks :)

its really a unique spot on earth, glad you enjoyed it :)

No, I was laid off without a thank you after 13 years of service.

Recently?

thanks! pretty experimental but its fun to make, glad you enjoyed it. :P

I hope you visit it too! Its a one of a kind place.

Oo yeah they are a very similar under the surface geologically I think and have had similar weather for a lot of earth's history I think (I'm guessing-ish). I can't wait to visit Scotland in '24 for this very reason.

30 mile hike out over some pretty rough stuff.

I think it was generally well received but the MP didn't wow people. Some fans absolutely love the story for H4's campaign, others don't. Halo games are tricky games to make because everyone has different core memories of what it means to be/play a Halo game.