I graduated at the end of 2004 with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Computer Animation from Miami International Academy of Art & Design. When I had started, the school was called the International Fine Arts College. It was a great experience as this school attracted talent from all over the globe. I met and collaborated with people from all cultures and all parts of the world.
During my time in school, I focused on design, film making, modeling, compositing, creating characters, scripting, and making stories. I liked box modeling vehicles and characters in Maya. I enjoyed syncing audio to animations as well.
I really enjoyed being creative and ideating stories from scratch. As I finished my Masters degree, I focused more on camera tracking and compositing 3d animation on top of real life footage. For my thesis project I created a facial rig with a UI in Maya for my 3d character, Slob and used it in my final production. Slob is based on a personal assistant you can purchase that creates havoc, but also has its unique hidden benefits if you can deal with the mess.
I’ve worked on a lot of other technologies and programs since college, but this part of my life has greatly helped me in my journey of storytelling. I’ve learned since college, that telling a story well when selling an idea or product is far more effective than just trying to use flashy graphics and fancy special effects. I still use Maya on projects where 3D is involved, but much of my 3D environments are now being built in Unity with the help of packages and shared assets. I remember back in 2004 when CGChannel.com was huge and when everyone spent most of their time creating their own assets for their productions. You can now save a lot of time by utilizing what others have already created, and that’s a huge relief!
