The Woodlands, TX - August 21, 2008 - A group of student interns has helped The Woodlands-based Software Company create a new educational program for Texas A&M.
The details of the program are expected to be officially released by the university in September.
"The concept is to take something fairly complicated to explain and understand, and to deliver it to them in an entertaining way," said Vic Cherubini, president of Epic Software Group. "It's a form of edutainment."
Epic is hesitant to reveal too much about the software, which the company designed specifically for A&M, until after the college's announcement. But Cherubini said the program integrates "visual storytelling and immersive multimedia" with a subject at the school.
"This department (at Texas A&M) would like to be the first one to the market with something like this," he said. "But we think (the program) has applications in the other subject areas as well."
Epic Software Group was founded by Cherubini in 1990 after he finished his master's degree at the University of Houston. He was pushing a new concept for the time, using computers as a sales and marketing tool instead of just for business - spreadsheets and computations.
"I launched the company, and we soon saw...people were more interested in our graphics than in our programs," Cherubini said.
In the 1990's, Epic's biggest customers were Compaq computers and several large oil companies. But in 2001, the combination of a corporate merger that transferred Compaq's business to California and the Sept. 11 attack's effect on the oil and gas industry knocked that customer base out. The company had to refocus its energies, first on writing books then working on graphics programs they used, and then back into its animations and graphics.
Throughout that time, as well as, during the recent resurgence in business, Epic has been giving local students opportunities to get practical experience working on its projects. The five interns working with Epic this summer - and the typical summer sees four to eight join the company - have made significant contributions to the project.
Sebastian Andrade, a Spring resident and recent graduate from the Wunsche School, designed several of the 3-dimensional background elements for the game. His work modeling several buildings from the Texas A&M campus fits with his plans to become an architect.
The second of the interns, Joshua Bruhn, is about to enter his second year at Texas Tech, studying to become a computer programmer. His work with Epic had included helping both the quiz and game portions of the program for A&M. Bruhn, a resident of the Woodlands, also worked with the audio productions portion of the project.
A third intern, Jay Riley, worked on video compositing, special effect and 3-D modeling for the project. Riley has also been a part of a public service announcement project the company is working on for NASA.
An aspiring conceptual artist, Adam Smith, another of Epic's interns, brought his 2-dimensional art skills to the project. Smith's work on the A&M project was primarily on the program's lesson sequences.
The last of the local students working on the project was Jeanna Yu, who graduated this year from the Academy of Science and Technology at the Woodlands College Park High School. Yu, who will be attending the University of Texas this fall to study business, worked with graphics and web design and interface for the game.
"It's just a really great concept," Yu said of the A&M project. "I think we should give them a round of applause for attempting something this big. "
