Sup guys. I finally got around to finishing my portfolio website today! Well it's been finished for months now, I just wanted to sort out a few minor design issues before I gave it an 'official' public release. But I consider it complete now so here, go, spread the word!
chowgood.comAnd since I'm releasing it in the New Year I'd thought I'd give a bit of a retrospective of what, along with the website, I got up to in 2011.
So by far the most amazing, awesome and rewarding thing I accomplished in 2011 was securing a job tutoring Digital Design students at Curtin University. I absolutely loved teaching. Being able to teach people about Flash, animation and 3D modelling has been the most appealing job offer I've ever received. But a lot of the joy from teaching came from my students, who are some of the most talented and enthusiastic people I've met in my life (Besides my friends who were in the same year of Multimedia Design as me, of course). It was easy to teach and go the extra mile for people who were as genuinely interested in the things you were teaching, especially when you love the things you're teaching yourself. I consider a lot of them to be more of my friends now than my students, but I'll always remain their teacher in my own eyes. I'll be keeping a watchful eye over them in the coming years, mark my words. I've been given the offer to teach the same units this coming semester which I'm eagerly awaiting confirmation of. Hopefully this next bunch of first years will be just as skilled and enthusiastic as the last.
I nearly landed a job doing visual effects in Beijing with an ex-tutor of mine which unfortunately fell apart at the last minute. In retrospect this was probably more beneficial to me personally, as I worked on personal projects and managed to travel in place of the job. I managed to get overseas twice. To Japan in October to see my high school friends Kotoha and Naoka. And to Scotland at the start of December to see my relatives and family friends.
The big personal project I worked on was for a competition with 'Keep Australia Beautiful'. It resulted in me completing my first full length 3D animation titled 'This is Kevin' (I don't count the 'end of semester compilation' show reel crap I did back in University as something complete). I spent a solid month working on the modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering and post-production for the entire 30 second ad, and I was fortunate enough to end up taking home the grand prize. The ad has been playing at cinemas across Perth, before some pretty big name movies as well. And although I did walk away with $1000 for winning I'd say the exposure is the real prize. Besides this, there's nothing more amazing than being told by a friend that they saw your ad on the big screen…nothing more terrifying as well. Especially when they say how much they like it. Eeeek.
In terms of my artwork, 2011 has been surprisingly fruitful. Especially with the inclusion of 'This Is Kevin' I've got a lot of finished work that I'm, at the very least, satisfied with. I mean true, as per usual I have a tonne of unfished artwork, both drawing and 3D models. I'll probably upload them as a sketch dump in the coming days. But I genuinely surprised myself as to how much personal work I actually got completed. My DA/Tumblr has been updated a lot more than past years, and I find myself not hating the work as much. I'm actually starting to gain a better understanding of drawing women and painting digitally, two things I've wanted to do for ages.
However even with all this stuff though mentioned above, I found myself bored through far too many stretches last year. There were times where I just gamed constantly and achieved next to nothing, and I don't want this happening again next year.
So these are the thing I want to work on artistically in the New Year to keep myself occupied and focused:
- Draw each and every day to keep my skills up
- Do some life drawing to improve my knowledge of human anatomy, both male and female
- Improve my skills with shading and form
- Improve my skills in digital painting
- Explore Z-Brush and look at creating more characters in 3D for short animations
- Animate more stuff in Flash…just anything really. It's sad how little I use it these days
So thanks for sticking through the wall of text guys. I realise a lot of you probably won't read it all, but I find it helps me stick to my plans when I actually type out things for others to see. Gives me more incentive to follow through with what I say. Expect more stuff soon!
- chowwers