Who I am

Hello there!

My name is Joshua O’Donnell, but I like to work under my gamertag, Eisritter.

In this page I lay out the person I currently am. How I got here, what I do best, what I enjoy doing and seeing, and, because it is such a central topic these times, my views on generative AI.

My Path

July 24th, 2001:

Born in Annecy, France and start to life in the French Alps, going through primary and middle school there.

I spent a lot of time exploring interests in these years, of which my passion for football and playing the piano stuck, alongside a burgeoning interest for game design (spurred by conceiving levels for Mario games in the school yard) and Japanese culture.

Thanks to my Irish and German parents, I have grown up speaking three languages without pause from the moment I started uttering my first words.

Autumn of 2020:

High school graduation under COVID conditions, and university life in Würzburg.

Covid was a societally significant event for everyone, and I would consider myself under the luckier bunch during this time. I successfully graduated from high school with honours after a peculiar last semester.

While perusing university programmes, I came across the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg’s unique Games Engineering programme, which piqued my interest with the promise of an all-encompassing curriculum to study the development and optimisation of video games from a technical point of view…

…and the rest is history. Four years later, I successfully graduated from the programme on August 26th, having learnt how to be a functional adult all the while, on top of a head-first immersion into Volleyball through friends.

2025-26:

Master’s Degree in Dublin.

The elbow grease in my applications paid off, as I was accepted to Trinity College’s master’s programme in Computer Science, centred on Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Throughout this intense program diving into the deepest aspects of rendering, modern technologies, and the present and future of extended reality (XR), I grew professionally with a by now well padded portfolio of university projects, each more complete than the other.

The change of both scenery and pace, with this degree demanding a higher level of quality and involvement exposed me to a wholly different university experience, with a more diverse set of colleagues in origin and skills from which I could take away a lot to understand my professional directions and aspirations.

Summer of 2016:

Move to the Munich metropolitan area, following my parents’ transfer of workplace to start high school in a new country.

These first four years in Munich were very formative in finding myself and understanding who I am. The change of scenery and culture made me gain a lot of perspective, and the very unique German school system helped discover more interests (e.g. for architecture and literature) and further my existing ones.

2024-25:

Gap Year to reflect

Following my graduation, I did not feel fully ready to start a career, and wanted a break from university for a year.

The plan was simple: Work for 4-5 months, travel around the world, and prepare for a graduate degree in 2025-26, and it couldn’t have gone better. After four months working in a hotel restaurant, I was able to stay in South-East Asia for 10 weeks, experiencing a whole new side of life, all the while applying for top universities in Europe to further my education.

2026-?:

To Infinity and Beyond?

With this latest chapter soon coming to a close, I am in the process of growing my wings even further by founding a career I believe in.

The future has never looked more uncertain for society as a whole, and I am excited to take on a new challenge in this history, with full confidence that I will be able to rise to the occasion, whichever this may turn out to be.

Skillset

Programming languages:

C#

C++

Related Work:

  • VR Library

  • Murder in the House!

  • ElectroBuilder

  • both Game Jam projects

Related Work:

  • Ocean Outlaws

  • Eis-Engine

  • Minotaur’s Maze

  • Stochastic Barnes-Hut

Git

Blender

Related Work:

  • All projects except VR Library were made using git

Related Work:

  • university course on asset development & animations

  • Sporadically involved in other projects for corrections or simple asset creation

Unreal Engine [5]

Related Work:

  • Futuristic Racing!

  • A Rude Awakening

  • Carnival Games

SQL

Python 3

Related Work:

  • university course on databases

Related Work:

  • Many assignments relating to machine learning, computer vision and AI decision-making.

OpenGL API

Related Work:

  • Eis-Engine

  • Minotaur’s Maze

  • Stochastic Barnes-Hut

Software Familiarity:

Principles of interest:

AI Decision-making

3D-Animation

Related Work:

  • A Rude Awakening

  • Animation course at university

Familiar Concepts:

  • Keyframing

  • Control Rig usage

  • Motion correction

  • Inverse Kinematics

  • Animation Retargeting

  • Facial Animation

  • Principles of Animation

Virtual Reality

Related Work:

  • Carnival Games

  • VR Library

  • Master’s Dissertation

  • University course on Extended Reality

Cybersecurity & Privacy-oriented applications

Related Work:

  • University course + paper on Cybersecurity and Online Privacy

Related Work:

  • Ocean Outlaws! (Behaviour Tree + A*)

  • Futuristic Racing! (Driving Behaviour)

  • AI module on Pathfinding, MDP and Reinforcement Learning

Unity

Related Work:

  • VR Library

  • Murder in the House!

  • ElectroBuilder

  • both Game Jam projects

Procedural Content Generation

Related Work:

  • Bachelor’s Thesis

  • Futuristic Racing

  • Sporadic generation of e.g. terrain or cubemaps

Extra-Curricular Interests

Gaming

Strategy Games

    • Civ V, VI, and VII (2.000h combined), 2K/Firaxis

    • Factorio (300h), Wube Software

    • Age of Empires [II] (80h), Skybox Labs

Sports

Football/Soccer, particularly with tactical depth

Arts

Manga & Comics

    • One Piece, E. Oda

    • Blue Lock, M. Kaneshiro and Y. Nomura

    • Haikyuu!!, H. Furudate

    • Fullmetal Alchemist, H. Arakawa

    • Les Aventures de Tintin, Hergé

    • Astérix & Obélix, R. Goscinny, A. Uderzo

| Paris, France

Hué, Vietnam |

Sports Games

    • FIFA / EA Sports FC (1.900h combined), Electronic Arts

    • Rocket League (750h), Psyonix

[Indoor] Volleyball

Literature & Writing

    • Dune, F. Herbert

    • Percy Jackson series and spinoffs, R. Riordan

    • Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

    • Eragon series, C. Paolini

Music (practising & listening)

    • J-Pop (Natori, Ado, YOASOBI, tuki.)

    • Reggaeton (Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, J Balvin)

    • Rock [as a super-genre] (Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dire Straits, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Queen)

    • Practise: recreational singing, piano (taught) and guitar (mostly self-taught)

| Athens, Greece

Travels

| Granada, Spain

| Singapore

…and with a long bucket list left to complete :)

Story-driven Games

    • Detroit: Become Human (40h), Quantic Dream

    • Red Dead Redemption II (100h), Rockstar Games

    • Life is Strange 1 & 2 (30h combined), DONTNOD

    • Danganronpa Series (100h combined), Spike Chunsoft

Alpine Skiing &
General Winter Sports

Cinema

    • Good Will Hunting (1997)

    • The Imitation Game (2014)

    • Manchester by the Sea (2016)

    • Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (2002)

Architecture & Urban Design

| Liberty Island, USA

| Gullfoss, Iceland

| Himeji-Jo, Japan

| London, UK