Today we were given a tour of Glass Egg, a rather popular digital media drawing studio. They’ve done the animation for games like Lego Fortnite, Forza, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and more! The tour began with an information and Q/A session, where we learned that they have partnerships with some games/companies for over 20 years, how long it usually takes for certain commissions(ex. a singular car takes up to around 2 weeks), and we saw the games from when they were an American studio making board games for franchises like Frog and Toad!

I have never really seen a process like the one to make gaming graphics, where they have to follow a model(the commission) and be very precise with the measurements. As we walked the grounds, I watched the screens of some of the artists; some were making human faces, some were making fingers, some were making décor, some were making cars, and I’m sure that there is plenty more where that came from. They were also doing various minuscule details on the commissions, which is so cool and always something that could be more appreciated. It was fascinating watching them at work, making visuals that I have seen before or will be seeing in the future when those visuals’ games release. While I wish I could’ve taken pictures of such a thrilling scene, we were prohibited from doing such since some of the work being done was for partnerships/games that have not yet been announced. The studio had three floors, and on each floor, the workers are grouped into teams based off of what projects they are working on. Seeing the environment in which they work in was also interesting, as it’s not a super uptight, professional environment – the workers all seemed very comfortable(many were wearing leisurely clothing and had their shoes off) and very at-home. I think this sort of environment pairs well with the employees’ skills and work ethics, which altogether makes Glass Egg a very successful, sought-after company.

Following this tour, we had pho for lunch, with coconut water straight from a coconut as our refreshing drink! We then went to the hotel to change clothes and headed to Trigger Boxing, where we were having our Pitt x UEF sports day. They started us off with running laps around the gym(none of us expected this haha), we did squats and pushups, and then we put on boxing gloves and they had us do 4 rounds of hitting boxing bags as fast as we could. Because I had no idea what I was doing, I felt and probably looked a little stupid, but it was a good laugh between me and my friends. Then a few of the Pitt students did a boxing match with one of the actual boxers from the place – he was going very easy/gentle on them. After those matches were done, we proceeded to team activities, some of which included spinning in a circle 10 times and racing on these bouncy deer things(I don’t know how to describe these – kind of like if you were bouncing on a large bouncy ball or yoga ball, but they were shaped like deer with antlers). We were all very sweaty by the end😅.

My friends and I ended the day with a little bit of shopping, since we have an excursion to a province in the heart of the Mekong Delta for the weekend. It was so fun, but I was so tired and very glad when we got back to the hotel.