OTF's Blue Publication April 2013
As I'm sure most of you probably already know, Tanya spent much of her time, despite also tending to a child, working to get King's Landing launched. Our own Cameron had the idea to let the people ask the questions they'd like to know about the process of making King's Landing, rather than the usual interview format. Her answers are below:
Trinity: how many times did you have to slap that trinity chick? she cray cray
Tanya: Less than I expected I would have to. And I felt bad slapping her for doing all the work.
Deus: Of all the time spent on the GoT room, how much of it was spent in pajamas eating cheetos?
Tanya: Perhaps 30% in pajamas, and 0% on the cheetos. I don't type with orange fingers. I actually get dressed in the morning and stay dressed until after I put the child to bed most nights.
SyNii: Just how bad was that SyNii guy to work with?
Tanya: He was challenging, but I think it was good to have him on board. It is important to have people of varying backgrounds and opinions, not just yes-men on your team. He and I both learned a lot on this project, and a lot of it was from working together. I think he'll have an easier time on future projects, now that he has been seasoned.
James Gilfoyle: What was the biggest challenge you faced?
Tanya: The banning of a certain member threw the biggest wrench into our works. Just what I want a month before my intended launch is a major dramatic episode that takes my team's focus off of the project. It took about a week to sort things out, recover, and get back on track. For a time I thought, we can't do this. I'm gonna have to do the rest of this by myself. Thankfully that didn't happen.
James Gilfoyle: What would you do differently next time?
Tanya: I'd make my deadlines absolutely clear. I'd spend less time chatting, more time working. Many nights I stayed up until 1am but wasn't actually working, just felt I had to stay up that late as penance for my project. And I would make it absolutely clear who is to do which avs .. ahh heck, just give them all to Trinity again. Everything was completed on time, and there isn't too much I'm eager to go back and change yet.
SyNii: What was your favourite bit to work on in the project?
Tanya: I enjoyed the idea-generating parts in the beginning. It was all fresh and new, we were just dreaming and writing some of these dreams down, ranks and colours, bartenders and themes. And even back then Michael and I were arguing, geez.
I also enjoyed getting to play with photoshop in making the pips.
SyNii: What part of the project gave you the most worry, like 'This is not going to work..we can't get this done'?
Tanya: Michiel gave me some anxiety, as I sorta forgot to give him a deadline until he only had a few weeks left. The way he works, he gets something 80% done and THEN presents it for opinions. It meant I had to wait a while to see anything, and I just saw the days ticking closer and closer to our launch party.
But when he'd present things, they'd typically be brilliant and he wouldn't actually need that much feedback, just a thumbs up to continue and a few little tweaks. I was blown away when I first saw the login, and again with the chat top, which arrived only a day before it was due. YIKES. It's fortunate he's so good at what he does.
The least challenge was definitely Ohm. He's a lot like Andrew Maxwell: smart, hard working, and difficult to get a hold of (mostly a time-zone issue). He pretty much got everything done quietly then was all, "Yeah, here's your chat, right on time."
SyNii: Did you have a kind of 'EUREKA!' moment, if so, what was it?
Tanya: It was at the beginning with Synii, when I realized this could be done, that we really could build our Game of Thrones chat. And when Trinity turned in her first assignment (and everyone else's to boot) I figured it wouldn't take too long either.