Tale #57 - The Tale of "Fanput"

Hi, all!

A friend of mine emailed me this link and I found it in my inbox that I want to show you and pretty much caught my attention:

Zeros 2 Heros

So what is it? Well... after having a brief look at it, the site focuses on amatures and the resources on trying to get their foot in the doors in the industry. They are constantly looking for writes and artists and will listen to fan imput (or as I call it "fanput.") But this is also a great chance for both the industry and the job seekers to connect.

So anyways, I really had to point that out.

Tale #47 - The Tale of Orientation Day II

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've been a little busy. So the proper titles should have been "The Tale of Orientation WEEK" since I really didn't get back to this until about a week later.

So what happened?

Well.... on Orientation DAY, as our last pit stop, we took a tour of a Bombardier manufacturing plant to learn about the fine business art of Kaisan. However, since most thought Orientation day would only take up until half the day, most people couldn't stick around for the tour. So that left just four students including myself. The tour went over quite well except when we got to the fiberglassing area. Now to those of you who don't know, I have an extremely sensative sense of smell. (I also have good eyes and a great sense of touch, but that's a whole other story best saved for another time.) One of the things about having a great sense of smell is that I can pick up on stuff that most people in my family misses. I can also somewhat taste the smell in the back of my throat too. So on one hand, this can be an awesome thing. But on the other, I can actually have this work against me too. An example would be skunk. It's bad enough that I can smell it, but I can "taste" that smell too and it was god-aweful! The same goes for cigarette smoke. Can't be around smokers either. So bad smells tend to stick longer in the back of my throat and well that completely screws up my sense of taste for a moment or two and I pretty much am left coughing and hacking out my lungs if it's super bad. So as you can imagine with the fiberglass area, it was pure olfactory hell for me. I tried sticking it out as long as I could but I think everyone noticed that I wasn't handling the fiberglass smell too well. Eventually the tour came to an end and I learned much about the plant and the students who came with me.

Now move on to the other days of Orientation Week....

I had to pick up my student card and for some weird reason, this year was student card hell due to the huge line ups. So in waiting, I saw a checkers mini-tournament going on. I was bored so I decided to check it out. For those of you unaware, I hadn't played checkers in years. But when I did, I was pretty good at it. Since it had been a while, I opted to go and play in the mini-tournament. The guy I ended up playing against was the head of Student Sports & Rec. How about we just call him "Rec-Guy" for now. Anyways, Rec-Guy thought he was all that when he came to play against me. I wasn't sure if I had my ubber checker-playing skills left and thought I would be quite rusty. But as I started playing, it became quickly apparent that I can still kick someone's ass at this game. To make matter worse for Rec-Guy, we had an announcer with a megaphone who started teasing him when he lost. In the end, I managed to win a Hot Wheels taxi (which is sitting on my computer desk. You know how cool it is to keep toys and things on your computer desk to flaunt your geekyness! XD ) and a yo-yo. We sorta had a toys-theme going on.

So as it stand, over the course of Orinetation week, here's what I won:

- Bath soap (For being the only one in Marketing to be born in Septemeber. Am I the odd ball here?)
- A Student Union water bottle and pen set
- A stress ball that looks like a globe
- A yo-yo
- A Hot Wheels car

.... maybe I'm just too lucky or maybe I'm just at the right place at the right time.

So then comes classes. Now I was sure that Marketing and Media were pretty much cousines of each other. So I figured they would understand the same sorts of things. But what I quickly figured out was that none of them were Media-Geeks like me. They just didn't seem to understand the humor and I didn't understand why. I also didn't understand why when I brought up some of my computer experiances (it was unavoidable! One of my classes had us bring it up!), I get this weird stare from everyone accompanied with the shuffling away of the chairs on the linolium floor. So here I am sitting there confused. If Marketing and Media were cousines, why was I being looked at funny? This morning in that mental wake-up fog, it dawned on me - Marketers don't NEED to see under the hood and use the computer. They get the Media-geeks to do that for them. So this means that pretty much I'm the only one totally knowning the inner workings of the media end of things. So when I speak geek, they don't understand it. But they do understand numbers, facts and statistics where as I deal with that very little. I've got a rough understanding of how that works, but I need the diploma to prove what I know PLUS add on any extra skills. So now I get why Marketers freak about geek speak. But that also means that I've got to start holding back now. I feel a little trapped by this, but I know that I will get through this. I just have to watch my step now and just be aware of when I start to speak geek. This is going to be one unusual life-experiment.

Anyways, class is about to start and I've gotta get going. I will get some sketches up this week, I promise!

Tale #31 - The Tale of Tutors

Hi, all!

Well... anyways, yes. I have been working on some art, but it relates to something much bigger (as far as this goes, I'll be posting it way later because I'm still playing around with it.) What is it? Well... a freelance media-tutoring service. You see, I noticed around my city that those who are extremely skilled with the media arts don't tend to stick around leaving it media-deprived (If you seen the webpages to our local buisnesses, you'd swear they were created in 1997 when they were really created in 2007. It's actually kinda scary!) But to those who do stay who do have the skills, can't seem to find jobs. It's really kinda weird. You'd think they'd be the first ones to be snapped up in an instant. But the local industry is quite a stubborn one and really dislikes newness or change or really anything different. Introduce "SWFs" instead of "GIFs" for animated graphics to them and you'd scare the willies right out of them. This is where I have the problems getting hired. I mean as you've already seen, I do have skills and I'm always building off of them. But the local industry is really turned off by me eventhough the minimum requirement for experiance here is as low as 1-2 years. Sometimes even less than a year. But yet, here I am with 1.5 years of experiance, 8.5 years of photoshop and 3 years of education in the media arts and I'm struggling badly. But my background is a bit bigger than that. I've also got mechanical skills too from the time I was working with and maintaining aircraft and stuff like that. The local industry really gets scared off whenever I bring that up. And it's impossible not to because it was actual work experiance I've had in the past. It's the weirdest thing but yet, it shows off a little backwards logic on my local industry's part. So I'm stuck freelancing and trying to scrape together every bit of experiance I can. And it's not like I can freely move out of my city either unless I was hired out by a buisness. So in the meantime, what other options do I have? I can either stay freelance and bounce from client to client (Which isn't the worst thing out there either. At least I can get experiance from this. All my clients so far came from the education field.) or do freelance but also apply my skills in more different ways. You know.... kinda broaden the field? Then it hit me. What the other skilled freelancers are doing in my city are also teachers. So that got me thinking - what if I started teaching too? I mean I have volunteer-taught drama in the past and have the skills to do it, so why can't I teach anything now? So the idea of becoming a media arts tutor came to me. There are enough people who would be a bit open minded who don't know the stuff I do and would like to learn it. So I'd tutor them in the media arts so they have a little bit of info and skills to help them out in media.

Cool idea, eh? Well! I also managed to book one of the local Mac labs/computer cafes and scouted out good freeware (similar to real software packages used in the industry only freeware forms/clones of it.) to use for tutoring. My advertising slant? "Awesome Movies Secrets Revealed (That You Can Do Too)." I figured that was a good way to go since everyone likes secrets and like them even more if they can learn how to do them. It has somewhat of a faux-forbidden quality to it eventhough it isn't. So that's my advertising strategy. Hopefully this idea works. If not... uh.... does anyone want a freelancer with 1.5 years of experiance? Will work for bandwidth! XD

Anyways, I'm thinking of posting some tutorials some time as well. I was thinking of putting up some blogger tips. But you know, not the ones you always get that everyone rehashes over and over again saying "make your blog about politics and annoy the tar out of everyone" or the "make your blogs about money tips and look like spam kings/queens." No! I mean actual real blogging tips that you can use so you don't have to go all spammy or all politicaly. These tips will be out there to help other media arts freelancers like me to at least help them out a little bit. I think it would be a nice way for me to give back a little bit and help each other out. Don't you agree?

Anyways, I've gotta get going! See you all later!