The dream has come to an end…for now

It has been a while since my last post.  In that post I was extremely excited about landing a new job, as a digital artist at Digital Domain.  I did end up finishing my training, which was hard and a little scary at times, but I passed and was put onto the stereo floor working on actual movies!

It got a whole lot better from there.  While working on the stereo floor, I found the love of my life, Chris (or more like he found me).  We sat across from each other and he always tried to talk to me.  He brought me to a river one day, and put his arm around me for the first time then asked me out.  Saying yes was the best decision of my life.  We had a wonderful life together in Port Saint Lucie.

In the fall of the following year Chris was given the opportunity to work in the animation department, doing what he wanted to do, rig animated characters.  Shortly I followed his lead and left stereo as well, but I went in the  VFX department as a digital compositor.  Less than a year at the company I had been given the chance to do what I had only dreamed of, compositing my own shots in an actual movie.  Stereo was a great beginning, but it was just a stepping stone to what I felt I was meant to do: create my own visual effects shots.  It was hard work, but I loved every minute of it; staying at work until 2 a.m. the night before a deadline, working seven days a week, skipping my lunch to get a shot finished…  it was all worth it to see the shots that I had put together on the big screen.  The film, Rock of Ages, wasn’t bad either.  I am thrilled that I was able to work on such a funny and entertaining movie.  Making people happy and letting them forget their troubles and worries for a couple hours is one of the reasons I got into this industry in the first place.  That was the highlight of my career.  After that there was a lot of downtime in between working on projects for the Mets and breakdowns of different shots.  I enjoyed all of it and didn’t want it to end, but sadly it did.  While I was having the time of my life, the company wasn’t.  There were a lot of financial troubles that I didn’t know about; I don’t think any of us artists did.  We went into work one day and they told us to go home: they were shutting us down.

I ended up having to go back home.  Chris got a job at Rhythm and Hues, but then they laid everyone off and now he is stuck out there.  Hopefully he finds a job soon.  It’s been about six months and I still haven’t found anything, and not because I haven’t been trying my hardest but I’m in the same situation as before Digital Domain: not enough experience.  I thought that my year and a half professional experience would count for something, but most companies still want that pesky three year minimum.  It doesn’t help that the industry is not in the best shape right now either.  Well who knows, maybe I will find that dream job again.  Until then I will just have to keep working my hardest and dreaming about when that day will come.

Hard work really does pay off

So, I actually did it.  I found a job in my field.  No one’s more surprised than I am.  It’s not that I don’t think I deserve it, it is just that there are so many good digital artists out there and I was lucky enough to land a job at a wonderful company.  All of my hard work finally paid off.  All those long hours and late nights staring at a computer screen were not for nothing.  For over four years computer generated imagery has consumed my life.  Art has been a part of my life way before that.  Ever since I was in the first grade and I found out that I could draw.  I drew a bird all by myself and ever since then I have loved creating art.  In the third grade I decided that I wanted to be an animator.  I wanted to follow in Walt Disney’s footsteps, and who’s a greater role model than the man who created the mouse?  My goals went astray sometimes, but they always went back to animation.  That was until I found out that everything is now done on the computer.  You see, I wanted to create hand drawn animations.  I stuck with my dream even though technology was taking over.  We didn’t get our first computer until I was in the sixth grade, so it was something new I had to learn.  In college I learned to love creating art with the computer.  My second year I came across the art of compositing.  I knew that compositing was what I was meant to do, so I decided to concentrate on that.  I worked hard on every project and I never gave up.  If I didn’t know how to do something I asked my teacher or I researched it on my own.  I set my goals high and I didn’t stop until I achieved them.  I didn’t have a life, my school work was my life.  I lived in South Florida for three years and the first time I went to the beach was the week I graduated.  I locked myself away and concentrated on achieving my goals, and it worked.  I now how an amazing job and I am truly blessed.  Now I just have to concentrate on finishing my training.

Life After College…

How do you get experience for a job when all of the jobs require experience?  It’s the big catch 22, isn’t it?  Finding a job is a lot harder than I thought that it would be.  I thought that I could get in easily enough with an internship.  I thought wrong.  Apparently there are a lot more talented recent graduate compositors than I thought there were because I haven’t been accepted into any.  Plan B was to apply to smaller more local companies, but wouldn’t the smaller companies already have all the people that they need?  All I need is that one company that gives me a chance, a chance to show what I can do.  I actually want to work.  I want to make a living at what I paid all that money in school to learn.  I know that if giving a chance I will succeed because of how hard I work at everything I do.  I keep hearing that it takes time and I will find something, but when?  When will it be my time?  Everyday I keep hearing about all the successes that people around me are having.  I’m happy for them, I really am.  I just want my life to start.  I want to make something of myself.  I guess all I can do is wait and see what happens.

Media Mashup: The Future With Technology

Script

 News Anchor

 Welcome to CBS news.  The story lately has been the massive crime rise throughout the world.  Crime has been skyrocketing ever since labor reducing products like the PES machine were invented.  These machines have put millions of people out of work and have caused them to go to extreme measures to survive.  Let us go to a feed out of Hong Kong.

 Here you can see a man walk right up to another one and bring him to the ground.  Here one stabs another in the back.  People have gone crazy during all of the destruction around the world.  They are attacking each other for no reason at all.  Watch this as another man swings at this passer-by for no reason.

 Witness

 I was just standing on the sidewalk when I say this dude come out of nowhere and slug this guy right in the face.  It was brutal.  The guy high tailed it out of there.  I decided to get out of there myself.  Don’t want none of that.

 News Anchor

 It has become too much for the cops to handle that they are now forced to take extreme measures to try and prevent these criminals.  Hopefully they can take action and get these weapons off the streets.  The people that have been brutally beaten and stabbed are now recovering in their local hospitals.

 This has been a CBS channel 11 news report.

Fine Art Criticism: John Whitney’s Catalogue (1961)

John Whitney was an American Animator during the mid-1900s. He created many animations and visual effects throughout his life.  His animations were created using a mechanism from a World War II M-5 Antiaircraft Gun Director.  His piece, Catalogue was a collection of all of the visual effects that he had created up to that point.

Catalogue consists of many forms that interchange into each other.  The shapes move in a way that is pleasing to the eye.  There is constant movement throughout the piece that conveys a soothing feeling for the viewer.  Each element seems to change into another element.  This pattern goes on throughout the piece and keeps the viewer wanting more.  The colors are another aesthetically pleasing part of the artwork.  They compliment the interesting shapes.  The colors he uses vary throughout the piece.  The majority of them are brighter, more neon colors, which causes the shapes to pop out of the dark backgrounds.  They also fade and transform into other colors.  This helps sell the soothing movement of the shapes.

Whitney’s work is amazing when you think of the time period that he created it in.  This stood out to me because Catalogue was finished in 1961 on analog equipment.  His work paved the way for the computer animation that is done in today’s digital age.  His work illustrates that something inventive and eye-catching could be done using low technical equipment.  It proves that the equipment isn’t what makes a good artist. It is the artist them self that makes the work beautiful and worth looking at.  This piece stood out to me because Whitney created the device that he used to create his real piece of artwork.  Not only is the finished product a piece of artwork, but the machine he created it on is one as well.

Gaze Theories: Cindy Sherman’s Doll Clothes (1975)

In Cindy Sherman’s 1975 short, Doll Clothes, she takes a humorous and imaginative approach as she shows what a doll must go through to find clothes.   The scene resembles a child’s play book of a doll and doll clothes.  The doll is on the left side in a plastic pouch, while the clothes are on the right in their own plastic pouches.  The doll wakes up when the book is open and is frantic to find out that she is not wearing any clothes.  She comes out of her pouch, crosses to the other side of the book, and begins to try to find something to wear.    Even with her discomfort, she still takes the time to try to find the right outfit that will make her look the best.

What Sherman is cleverly doing in this short film is illustrating the idea that we are said to encounter when we go to the cinema.  This idea is the idea that we are watching, or “gazing” at something that we shouldn’t be gazing at.  The viewer is put into a male gaze.  The doll in the scene doesn’t know that we are watching her, but the camera fixates on her.  The doll hasn’t given her consent to the viewer, making the audience voyeurs as she tries to find some clothes.  It gets even worse at the end as a spectator in the room undresses her again after she had reached her goal.  The culprit again puts her back in her plastic pouch as the viewer remains watching.

The piece has a bit of comedy as the doll tries to accomplish her goal.  The doll not being real gives the piece a speck of unreality with is much needed.  The viewer can’t relate because the doll is not a three dimensional being.  This adds to the humor and lets the piece become a form of entertainment.

Living Life to the Full

Misery, loneliness, and suffering.  It doesn’t have to be.  Your time is limited.  Don’t waste it.  To know and love God.  Believing that purpose comes from what he sees as our primary reason for living.  It’s all over much too soon.  Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.  Celebrating all that you are and all that you have in your life right now.  Having a song in your heart is vital to living a full life.