Valve Visit

I'm now officially living in Seattle, and between moving and working I haven't had any time to draw for the blog! Hopefully once life calms down a little, my posts will start up again. But things have been exciting...

Today I got to visit Valve, the developer behind the Half-Life series and the Portal games, among other things (Steam, for example). I've been a huge fan of their games since playing Half-Life 2 back in high school, and I never imagined I'd get to visit the company - and not just as a fan, but as someone in the industry (which is still pretty surreal). The main reason for our visit was to test out the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset. It was my first VR experience and it completely blew me away. This video does give you a basic idea of the tech, but VR is really something that needs to be experienced to be appreciated...

At one point in the demo, you try to repair a robot at Aperture Laboratories from the Portal games, and when you inevitably fail (as you're designed to) GLaDOS descends, looks you square in the eyes, and destroys the lab around you... pretty immersive, amazing stuff. So, to conclude, here's a drawing I did a few years back of Chell and Wheatley... because the me who drew that would have a hard time believing that today happened.

-Anna