Still Working on Working

While my posts have been on the back burner quite a bit has happened. I got an awesome job working with IDTech camps during the summer teaching kids a small tidbit of the plethora of information and skills on my belt, not the least of which the actual courses I taught covering UDK, Robotics, Level Design, and Hammer. It was a lot of fun and I know I got a few of my campers to try stuff they haven't and I hope I was able to inspire a couple of them to do something awesome. I even got a chance to travel a little which was nice. Right now my only qualm is that they only needed me for the summer, yes it's a summer camp but gosh darn it, it's too much awesome to keep it contained to summer.

So after a short epic employment teaching kids I once again am out walking the beat seeking out prospects. I've started grabbing for some awesome ones but can't wait too long for a response, gonna keep working my way through my "awesome" list then on to "sweet" hopefully I won't reach the "adequate" list but as time goes we shall see. I've even had a couple of places I hadn't expected hop their way onto the awesome list thanks to family, as well as one being pitched by a recruiter.

Update up and coming

I've got a small vid I am getting ready to put up that's a fly through of an old class level. Wanted to have it up by today but I had made a few mistakes getting the UDK file set up to render, took me awhile to get it all figured out. At least I will not be making the same mistake with my next renders out of UDK. Working on updating seattleshadows hopefully I'll be able to get it looking a bit more unique not quite so cookie cutter.

Oh boy I am off to a great start

So I have just found out today that for the past month since graduation all of the emails I have been sending out to the studios I have been wanting to work for, while they have been receiving my emails, I have not been receiving responses. Apparently when I brought SeattleShadows online my Go Daddy email was redirected to the new server but I had assumed that the Go Daddy email was still working since I was sending without any issues until this morning when I signed up for a new Polycount and I didn't receive the forum registration email. It's quite a realization when all of the people you have been trying to get a response from haven't gotten back to you not because they are too busy, but because you messed up. The programmer in me is freaking out right now demanding to know how I could have overlooked this. So I'll be working on resending all of the studios I have contacted in the last month to apologize for not receiving their responses(if any) and request they resend them if they have the chance.

On the work front I have discovered another thing for me to work on, Self motivation outside of the workplace. While I do fine in a classroom or studio setting, when I am at home I tend to slack off a bit falling behind on my work. The instructor I am currently interning under has given me some pointers and guidance to go along with my own couple of ideas to improve on my out of studio performance. I have started on several of the meshes for furniture for the SeattleShadows project but due to the aforementioned issue I didn't get as much done this week as I would have liked but I am hoping to fix that over  the weekend..

Busier than I thought

Well the internship is giving me a great amount of information, and practice. Last week I made two shields:

While I initially thought I wasn't doing too bad taking a week to get that far hand painting two shields after not digitally hand painting anything, I knew I could do better and so did the instructor. So three days later;

and then the day after;

While the second shield shows how much faster I am getting, it has also shown how rough my linework and shapes are. I will be working on a few more paintings and textures to try and refine them between tasks set before my by the instructor I am interning under.

Man

Well I've started as an intern at Full Sail. During my time I'll be working on my texturing and environment work. Right now I'm working on a couple of shield textures. Hopefully I'll be faster as I go.

It begins

Ok started sending out my resumes and stuff. I'm still working on fancifying the website and starting on my first couple of assets for Seattle Shadows. My desktop hard drive failed and I am starting to get it back to a useable state since reinstalling Windows. Lost the weekend but I think I'm moving along pretty quickly.

Getting there

Got the website up and running finally. It's alittle basic but I am going to work on some assets for it in the coming week and try to pimp it out as I am working on the actual short I will be promoting it on. Feel free to check it out at seattleshadows.com. Right now It pretty much just my portfolio and stuff but like I said, work in progress. I am still trying to refresh my old programming skills from about 2 years ago but I am starting to gain momentum as I work.

 I'll be working on one of the characters for the short as well as the interior environment first. I figure tackling one thing at a time instead of everything all at once would be easier but one extra shouldn't break the bank either. Plus being able to rig and pose the character in the environment he will be seen in should be a nice way to start letting the word out.

Shifting

Ok right now I am working to move the professional info to a cleaner location with my own website. I am going to keep up with this but I don't think it has that good of a set up with my blog being the first thing prospective employers will get to see so I am breaking out a domain I have been sitting on for last couple of months. Once everything is moved over and pointed in the right direction I'll update all of my contact info and stuff.

Well I have been reminded of the importance of frame padding today when I had to go through all of my animations to make sure they will import properly, shortly after it was suggested that I re-render about half of them. So yea I'll definitely not forget to put padding on my frames next time. Anyway I think I may move my stuff to a different site after some of the other suggestions my instructors gave me. I'll definitely try to avoid one with ads but if necessary I'll have to until I can get some premium hosting.

Progress

Ok I am going to have a finalized draft of my resume up in a few hours and shortly after that I'll have an animation reel up for everyone's viewing pleasure. Forward and upward!

Too much all at once.

Ok well right now I'm starting to think that I'll be busy pretty much for the rest of my life(hopefully).
I've been working on a cover letter for a company I would love to work for, rendering out the animations and stuff to compile into a quick demo reel to post on Portfolio so when I do give out this address they will have a few animations to look at, pulling together and updating some old environments, and I've started a "secret" project that I hope will be a nice piece. So yea we will see how all of this stuff turns out.

Still here!

Ok, so been working on completing the final bits of material for my last month at Full Sail and I've started working on an ambitious project I am hoping will be a short that pipes the interest in a few people.
Right now I am working on converting a few pages of a story into a short script. I figure once I have a little bit of prepro done and figured out how I would like to convey the story, I'll contact whoever it is I need to contact to see about securing permissions to show it off. If I can't do the whole short at least I'll have a few assets for my portfolio.

Ok back with a vengence

Alright I'm once again trying to pull out the stops on this thing. This time I have a bit more of a push to keep with it, especially since I am almost done with school and I had intended to have quite a bit more in here by the time I was finishing up with my degree.

So anyway, new pages! Now instead of posting everything here I'll be posting Work in Progress for things I'm working on and Portfolio for things I have completed. I will probably try breaking them down even further for each project/time frame but for now I'm just going to keep working on structure and hopefully keep things easy to navigate.