Canada continued

For any who might have been confused about what this 3D photography nonsense is, this might help a little. Theses are animated .gif images, made with our specialized camera that takes 12 shots of the subject from slightly different angles. Normally, we interlace these images (fancy for jam them all together) and put a thin layer of lenses over the top of them to give them a 3D effect.

These are some street performers we met in Granville Island, the little artsy part of town where the studio is at. The are human statues, holding cute poses together for long periods of time. Rob, the guy training us, got them to come in and do a shoot for us, then Igor, our techie trainer, put in the Shrek background.

O Canada?

I had intended for my next post to be about something fun where I could show some artwork and not just ramble on, but alas, it was not meant to be. I'm on a business trip to Vancouver, Canada. I've been brought in to my father in law's newly started photography business as "Head of Computer related... stuff". We do 3D photography, which, before you even ask, has nothing to do with cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses. Actually, its a specially made picture with a thin clear sheet on the face of it (called a lenticular lens) creating a sense of depth. I wish there was a better way to explain it, but there isn't. It's the kind of thing you have to see in person. Anyway, here I am rambling again. The point here is that I am lost in Canada until Friday night. When I get back I will post those pictures I've been promising.

Oh yea. If you happen to be here reading this, comment on something. You don't even have to be nice, just say a little something. Show these posts a little love... they're lonely.

Catching up, part 2

Alright, since my first post I asked a few friends about what they thought about my attempts at blogging. What was the most common response from this group of scholars? "tl;dr"... which for those of you who don't speak geek means "to long; didn't read". I would like to ensure any who may be reading this that it is not my intention to bombard people with walls of text every post. I had originally envisioned fairly short updates on what I am working on in my classes as I progress through school. Really, I would like for those who read this to realize that if I can do it, anyone can. Some of the art I will post I will be proud of (I hope anyway), but intend to post just as much that, well... didn't quite turn out as I had expected. I want to give people a real idea of what the path to working in the games industry is like, because I had no idea. To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure where this path will take me, but I'll let you know as I figure it out.

So, in the last post I left off at the beginning of 2009, my first quarter at The Art Institute. I had thought that in a program where you learn to make video games that I would be about as well prepared as one could get. Why? Simple, because I've played a ton of video games. You can imagine how surprised I was when rather the supply kit they give all the new students didn't come with any games. Instead, it was full of pencils, pens, acrylic paints, drawing pads, even a light box (which at the time I had no idea how to use). The "Art" in Art Institute should have tipped me off. The majority of the first year of the program is spent developing basic artistic skills in classes like observational drawing, beginning design, and color theory. This was the point where I was beginning to think that I had made a huge mistake.

I've always liked to think of myself as a creative person, but was never one to call myself an "artist". I figured that title was reserved for people who were just naturally awesome at their artistic medium. Luckily for me, I've had some great instructors who showed me that Artistic ability, like anything else, can only be perfected through tons of practice. This may sound like a basic concept, but there was a time not so long ago I was sure that you were either born good at Art or not, and that misconception almost scared me into giving up altogether. In a future post I plan to show some of the progression of my drawings to drive home this point of "yes, he can be taught".

That brings us up to the present. I'm now in my sixth quarter at school, and enjoying it more and more all the time. I don't want to give anyone the impression that this is easy, it's actually a lot of work. It's just a lot of work that I enjoying, so I sometimes find it hard to even classify as "work". I know that these first couple of posts have been kind of a general overview of things, but now that I've filled in the back story I can get into more specific stuff. What does this mean for you? Well, hopefully it means a little less of me droning on and a little more fun stuff. Fun, that is what the internets were made for right?

Why am I here?

I've been thinking about getting into this blogging stuff for a long time now. Now, I'm not going to bore the general masses with the mundane details of my daily life, I have something I think is a little more interesting in mind. I want to share the ongoing story of how I am working toward, and hopefully get, my dream job.

So, what is this dream job you may ask? Well, as you can clearly see by the title of this blog, I am a lifelong video game nerd. I found video games at a young age, between about 6 and 8 years old. At the time, in the mid 80's, I was playing some of the first popular systems, like the original Atari, NES, and Sega Master System. My dad even had a commodore 64 I can vaguely remember playing. I was hooked, and have spent much of my leisure time since then playing as many games as I can get my hands on.

I can remember times I would read in game magazines about the people who made the games I loved so much, and how lucky I thought those people were for having such cool jobs, but I never considered it a career I could work toward. My obsession with video games soon turned into full blown case of computer nerdery. As I worked my way through high school I decided that I wanted a career in the computer industry, but as I got older and computers took over the world I realized that I would need to narrow that down at some point. I was sure that there would be plenty of time for that.

This is the point where life happened. After high school, I spent two years in Mexico serving as a missionary for my church (yep, Mormon kid). When I got back, feeling ready to take over the world, I seemed to "fall into" jobs whenever I needed one. These weren't bad jobs, some of them were fun at times, but I did them knowing that they weren't the kinds of jobs I wanted to do for my whole life. Over about a 7 year period I was a bank teller, a truck driver, a paint mixer, a cell phone salesman, and a real estate agent. That last one was really the nail in the coffin of my tour of careers. I got my license just as the housing market got bad, and spent almost a year being really frustrated. While my career direction was foggy during all this time, luckily, my personal life was working out just fine. I got married and had two awesome kids. Having a young family put even more pressure on me to find a career I could stick with.

Now meet the hero of this story, my wife Jaime. Before you even ask, yes, it's spelled Jaime, but it's pronounced just like Jamie. You wouldn't believe how many Spanish telemarketing calls she gets. She had been working as an insurance agent since we got married, and when the real estate gig got bad she stepped up and started working full time so that I could go back to school for that great and mysterious career I was looking for. I started off at a local community college majoring in computer science, whatever that mean, but it just didn't feel like it was taking me where I wanted to go.

After a couple fruitless semesters, I finally heard the news that straightened me out. My sister had started at a new art school in the area in their Interior Design program. One day she told me that the school had just started a program called "Game Art and Design"... and I called the school less than a week later. I enrolled to The Art Institute - Sacramento in the fall of 2008, and started my first quarter there in January of 2009.

Well, let me get the point here. Why am I here? I'm hoping that maybe some of this can help future nerds like myself. It took me a long time to find out that this was even an option for me, and to be honest, I'm not even sure yet exactly where this will take me. I want to share what I know now and what I learn as I make my way through school and finding a career with anyone out there who thinks that making video games would be wicked awesome. Yup, that's about it in a nutshell.

For those of you who may be handy with a calendar, you may have noticed my little history ends about a year ago. You may be asking yourself what happened next, how the schooling is going. Well, I will get to that, I promise, but it's real late. So, I will get to that in the next post, after some sleep. If anyone actually reads this and has any specific questions, relevant or otherwise, please ask away. If my point is to help people I might as well talk about what you want to hear.