The story so far....

Ok, so a little background about me. I found out I loved to draw in high school, I went to an arts college in the Midwest where I found out I wanted to be an animator. That was ten years ago. Soon after, I started pursuing animation with a passionate fervor. I went to a school that had a specific animation program called Columbia College in Chicago. From that experience I was able to get a clean-up and sometimes assistant animator job at Calabash animation where I worked a short time making Lucky Charms and Trix commercials and even a little bit on the movie "Space Jam."

Eventually I decided to move out to California. I completed an internship with Colossal Pictures. But my timing was all wrong. A few weeks after I finished training as an assistant animator, they laid off the bulk of their animation department, myself included.

After that, I got involved animating for CD-ROM educational products for kids. Production schedules were ALWAYS tight and the technology was always limiting, but the pay was great. More importantly, I really liked the freedom and creativity that it provided me in comparison with working for a big animation house. I was designing characters, doing storyboards, designing games, art directing, writing scripts, you name it. I got to wear a lot of hats and became proficient in just about every step of the art production side for these projects. I became incredibly proficient in Flash, After Effects, Director, Photoshop, Illustrator, you name it.

As the years went on, I animated less and less and art directed other artists more and more. Soon, I became restless right as 2d animation work was becoming scarce. I wanted to get back to my original love, animation, but I was fearful to leave my steady job. This is about the time that Monsters Inc. came out. Although I was very impressed with and fond of Toy Story, Monsters Inc. impressed upon me in a very profound way. Suddenly I could see myself getting away from my first love, drawing, and getting into 3d animation.

I really wanted to learn Maya as it appeared to me as the most artist friendly piece of 3d software I had seen to date. I think that was around Maya 3.0 when the "Bingo" marketing piece came out. Since then I dabbled in attempting to learn it, but the teaching materials were so poor (or my attention span too short) that I would soon give up every time.

I took some classes at San Francisco State, but soon after, I joined the graduate animation program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I took classes for about a year and a half there and was getting very frustrated. I was having trouble finding help in reaching that next level. It took me awhile, but eventually I came to conclusion that the program wasn't right for me.

So when I heard of this program, Animation Mentor, I thought, "Hey, why not?" I was looking primarily to learn about the pipeline and animation practices used in the big studios. I thought I knew how to animate and that I just needed help with the technical side. I couldn't have been more wrong! Being part AnimationMentor has served me the largest, tastiest slice of humble pie. I have learned more about animation in the past six months than I learned in the past six years of working. I realize just how much I don't know about animation and I'm completely excited about that fact. I love the structure of this school, but more importantly, I'm blown away by the level of enthusiasm, camaraderie and amazing animation that my fellow students are bringing to this program.

In an effort to be a part of and contribute more to the community, I decided that I will start this blog. Also, I will be starting a new website to showcase my latest work done at AnimationMentor. In my humble opinion, my new work makes my old stuff pale in comparison. I will be posting my past assignments soon and sharing with you my thoughts on my current work on a weekly basis.

So please stay tuned and thanks for your interest.