Becoming an animator. How I did it.

I would say I had started becoming interested in animation for games and broadcast from the first time I picked up a controller. It has been no easy task let me tell you. The animation industry is a ruthless and cold hearted one to get into, though once in, you realize why you worked so hard for it.

I graduated high school at the age of 16 and immediately enrolled myself into the Art Institute of Philadelphia majoring in Animation Art and Design. During my time at AIPH, I focused primarily on modeling in 3d Studio Max beginning with version 3.1. I upgraded to every subsequent version following that and even purchased plugins for character animation as they came out (namely CAT, character animation toolkit). I started finding myself having more fun with the animation rather than the model itself and by the time I graduated I had 2 focuses. I had made some really good friends in my time there, having been on a team production project with my homey, Pete and starting to work more closely with Joe Kelly.

However, graduation did not bring glory and fame as I had so naively thought it would. September 15th, 2005, I graduated, quit my job as a hot tar roofer in northern new jersey/new york area, grabbed my buddy Vinko and a box of stuff in my little '91 CRX SI, and drove cross country to where the jobs were. California.

Long story short, heres a quick synopsis of the following 2 years; night shift fork lift operator, barbeque assembler, hot tar roofer. The whole time honing my animation skills in my off time.

It wasn't enough. I needed zero distraction. Perhaps a bit drastic, I decided to free myself of distraction and focus whole heartedly on my trade. I packed up a week's worth of clothes, a 17 inch flat screen tv which doubled as a second monitor, a laptop, and the essentials for reference material; PSP, Wii, DS, games, and a stack of tutorial dvds. I went 12,000 miles to the other side of the planet, and found myself in Fujimi-Machi, Japan as I had already a fundamental knowledge of the Japanese language. There, I could focus, and focus I did. I worked there as an english teacher. I taught an average of 4 50 minute classes per day and the rest of the time, when I wasn't grading or tutoring, I was either animating or studying animation. After a year of work, and daily game development conference calls via Skype with Joe Kelly, we finally managed to put together a real, working, game. We called it "Hire me" and sent it to several companies for their consideration of our work as professional game devs. Joe ended up at Harmonix Music Systems, and I found myself back in california, working at Meteor Games on an up and coming MMO called Twin Skies.

My time at Meteor was awesome. I was in charge of combat animation for the human male and female dagger and pistol attacks, as well as the elven claw and unarmed attacks. I also had 32 monsters each with 2 attacks, death, walk cycle, run cycle, emotes, and many other types. In the beginning there was 3 animators, then we lost one and were down to 2, handling an entire MMO by ourselves and not missing a single deadline. Shortened version; economy crashed, Donna and Adam Powell (CEO and CFO respectively) decided to axe the project and after surviving 4 waves of layoffs, was finally laid off along with the rest of the 3d department. So, it was back to getting some awesome work out for companies to see, and figured I would try my hand at freelance.

I spent day and night, 18+ hours a day and not getting to bed till 4,5,6 am...sometimes not going to bed at all. I wanted to improve. I met Kiel Figgins during this time who turned out to be one of my best friends over time. Not enough good things can be said about this guy, not only about his work but his overall character in general. Kiel kept pushing me to get better. Even when something was awesome, he would tell me it needed more. And I would give it more. I eventually got my first freelance gig. It branched off into another which slid into another. By the time I had a chance to breathe I found myself leaving my gmail open all the time on my right monitor, and Max and Maya open 100% of the time on my left. I built a new computer to keep up with the demand for faster paced projects. My new computer is:

Intel Core I7 920; 6 gigs of DDR3 ram, nVidia GeForce 9800GTX x2 SLI; Intel DX58SO MoBo and a 10k RPM RaptorHDD.

I am now freelancing quite a bit and working as hard as I can for whoever needs good, solid animation.

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To struggling animators: Keep at it. Try your best. Its not easy at first, it took me a long long time to get to this point and I am constantly improving with every animation I do. I have critiqued several up and coming students' works and have no problems doing so for whoever is reading this. If you see something you would like to animate, do it. And dont call it done until YOU are satisfied. "Good enough" is not good enough. Make it awesome. I hope somebody gets something out of my experiences and is somewhat inspired to keep trucking forward, times get hectic, but hard work DOES pay off.

-AJ