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!

Tale #30 - The Tale of Art Blocks

Hi, all!

Anyways, I'm still stuck on that stupid art block! Arg! It's quite a fustrating thing sometimes. I'm working really hard to try to get rid of it. Plus side, my photography side seems to be quite active and non-blocked lately. Especially since I was lucky enough to snap a few awesome shots! I mean I managed to get pictures of summer sunset clouds, some dew covered flowers and plant life, and a few of this rainbow I saw. I don't have those shots with me right now so I can't upload them for you, but I do have a few items I was tinkering around with that I will show off:


These are just some vectors I was toying around with. It was more of a think-creativly vector-doodling excersize and not really a finished work. But I'm totally digging the vector trees logo.


This is another vector-based creation where I was working on a sample TCG template for a now defunked project. I guess you can tell this is an older project.


From that same project, logos had to be created for each card-type. Here's a few that I came up with. Again, I have that whole vector feel to it.


And this is just examining details of an earlier digital-creation I posted here on Tales Of A Media Geek. It shows a bit of how I think whenever I create something. I guess you can say that I think with a lot of detail and quite elaborately for not only artwork but writting as well. The thing is, I get such a blast out of doing this too. It's like putting two ideas together to get one bigger, newer, cooler idea. But yeah... that's a little window in to my mind when the creative process revs up.

Anyways, see you all later and hopefully I'll be out of this super bad art block!

Tale #29 - The Tale Of Trudge The Terrible

Hi, all!

Good lord! I have the worst art block ever! I can't seem to pick up a pencil and come up with something! ARG! Artblocks are infuriating! So the best way to get around one of these is to well... step back for a moment or two then start drawing again no matter what which is exactly what I did. However, it occured to me that I haven't coloured anything in a very long time, so that's exactly what I did with the one drawing I came up with and unfortunately it's the ONLY sketch of the day I've got right now.

So before I move on to it, I'm going to put this question out to you - If you ran in to an artblock, what do you do to get out of one? What are your techniques? Come on... don't be shy. I like it when you guys talk!

.... well... on to the daily sketch(es).....




This is Trudge The Terrible (Trojen). Well... he's not SO terrible as he likes to think he is. He's much more like a rather big and very goofy armor-clad teddy bear. So let's all give him a hug!

Anyways, see you all later and hopefully I'll be out of this artblock after the weekend.

Tale #28 - The Tale Of The New RenderFarm Smell

Hi, all!

Anyways, I've been really busy lately and there's an extremely good new reason for it - I got a new RENDERFARM! That's right! I've created a new renderfarm! You see, I managed to get an identical PC to what I usually use for my workhorse (Which is a Compaq Persario using an AMD processor and an ATI Radeon card! Woot! And in case you're wondering, I totally love Compaq and HP. Haven't had a single problem with that company/brand.) which makes me rather pleased. Now I've got the resources to hook them up and create the renderfarm I wanted. So what did I call the new computer to my renderfarm? Well... I decided to name it after someone who was very close to me - Checkers. In case you didn't know, Checkers was my dog who I've had since I was five. I couldn't imagine a time without her around. She was pretty much like my best friend. She passed away at the end of May. So as the very first computer in my renderfarm, I've decided to name it after her.

On another note, I'm also going to be picking up a new Mac in September and I'm picking it up for cheap (Try 500$ CAN cheap!). You see, my friend has only had their Mac for a year and they've just bought a new one, so they're going to be selling this one to me with all the fixings. So what am I going to do with it? I'm going to set up Maya PLE on it along with an evaluation copy of RenderMan for Maya. I figured that would be an awesome thing to learn and learn how to use. Now I already know how to use a Mac, but I've never rendered anything on one before so this should be very interesting.

As for the daily sketches, well... I don't have a lot of them and well... I wanna upload them when I've got a lot to show off. So there's no sketches for today, but I am going to highlight the current projects on my plate:

- Steeleing 6: Piolet, Animator-itis, Starsuit's Revenge (Working title. It's the one with the giant fighting robots.)

- A Day At The Passing Parade

- Trudge & Quill: The Animated Short (Working title)

- That top secret project I keep talking about and for all that I say about it, not much information is out there. XD