Year of the Dragon

So a couple of interesting developments in the last few weeks. The HD on my primary laptop died and essentially made me have to re-do a large majority of my portfolio including most of my 3D pieces. Fortunately I can get most of it back and re-organized. The video is my most recent addition. It's a simulation of a waterfall. It was tough getting the waterfall to look natural.  Think all in all it works pretty well.  A lot of people probably don't know this about me, but I'm a big anime fan, and it might be seen in my style of drawing since it incorporate elements of anime. I'll admit that anime is an acquired taste, but it really is an entirely different animation concept since it frequently deals with serious situations rather than quirky humorous situations. My current favorite is Naruto, even though it's formula has been used before. It never fails to amaze me how good it looks and to know how much work went into producing it. Especially the crowds.  It's widely used technique used to fill in space, but it boggles my mind to think that animating a single character is tough enough, but to do several dozen characters is just amazing to me. On the flip-side, I had the opportunity to also watch American Dad season one, and compared to Family Guy, it really isn't as humorous or as well drawn. Anyway, been looking into some local studios for possible employment but so far accumulating the info has been really trying.  I'll keep yall posted.

Dawn of the Dragon

So I'm back again.  Did some job hunting over the last few days, and for my purposes the pickings have been incredibly slim.  Ohio isn't really know for having a lot of animation positions so I guess it's to be expected.  Nevertheless, I'll need a job almost immediately after I graduate. Freelancing has so far not turned up a single lead, which I guess isn't much of a surprise given that I'm still attending class and likely won't have a completely finished portfolio until then.  This time I'm giving my thoughts on a game and a movie. I recently saw the trailer for the much delayed Duke Nukem Forever, and I think I'm in the large majority who were disappointed, just from the sole reason that it took so long to develop. I knew from the onset when it was announced that it would be released soon, that if it was anything short of phenomenal, that game fans would tear it apart, and rightfully so because of how long it took to develop.   The most striking failure to me is that the graphics just weren't as impressive as they maybe should've been.  In terms of quality, it was really average, which I suppose can't be helped given how many advancements have been made in the gaming industry in the time it's been in development. I also had the chance to watch The Legend of the Guardians: the Owl of Ga'Hoole, and I was pleasantly surprised at how realistic the renderings were. I can't think of many CG features that were anywhere near as realistic. The textures alone had to have been time consuming.  A couple of times I couldn't tell the scenery was CGI. The camera had to be pretty close for me to tell. Only real folly was the scripting. It just didn't make sense to me.  Otherwise, it was a decent quality piece.  Here are a few pieces from my design portfolio. I'll probably add more later.  Still working on a few 2D pieces. TTFN!

Eye of the Dragon

Okay so I'm back. The problem of living in Ohio is that it has a really small design market, so finding worked even remotely related to my field has been next to impossible. Most of the more pertinent  job postings I've seen thus far are near the Great Lakes or Ohio rivers, more specifically Cleveland and Cincinnati.  While relocation for a job is almost a given for me, I don't fancy the idea of remaining in Ohio longer than I need to, just because the career opportunities I can find here really aren't what I had in mind.  Freelancing is more likely the only means I have of finding work, but even there the offerings are still slim. In other news, I reaffirmed my love for old fashion animation with the Nightmare before Christmas and I still firmly believe that to be among the best animated movies of all time, because I can appreciate the amount of worked needed to produce a full-length stop motion film.  I seem to remember a producer for Robot Chicken stating that is can take up to a week to produce ten seconds of footage, which is just mind-boggling to me. On opposite side of the coin, I had the opportunity to watch Alpha and Omega and the reviews were well-founded: it was bad.  Wolves given human names is bad enough, but I seriously doubt we'll ever see a wolf surfing on a log.  Aside from the bad script writing, the other thing I detested was how phony the fur textures looked. Really killed the realism for me.  That's it for now. Later!

Mark of the dragon

So this week I opted to begin freelance work.  Since it's unlikely I'll be able to get an internship before I graduate, I'm using this time to get professional work experience.  I'll be honest, it's a lot hard than I thought it would be, but a part of me steeled me to the trials of being a freelancer.  Design is a very hard line of work unless it's a salaried position. My plan is simply to weather the storm until I can gain enough experience to begin my real job search.  Speaking of,  I think I've settled on Nickelodeon for my future employer.  I think I would have a better fit there since my ultimate goal is to work in TV.  Seems my thoughts on DreamWorks was spot on. I recently watched Megamind and it's going in my list of "shouldn't have been done."  It just wasn't funny and I couldn't find much of anything good to point to.  Conversely, I'm actually looking forward to Cars 2. Pixar has a history of putting out quality movies. In fact, I don't think they've had a dud yet. Wall-E might be the possible exception, but that just my opinion. Later for now!