Road to Animation

The other day, a friend of mine wrote on his blog about what got him into the animation field and thought it would be interesting to see what got other folks pursuing a career in animation. I know I don't get much traffic on my blog but felt I would share nonetheless, if anything to remind myself why I spent four years in college studying animation.

 
Some of my earliest memories of watching cartoons or other animation consist of watching an old VHS of the original Fantasia. I wore that tape and it's case out so badly for watching it day in and day out; the colors were beginning to fade, the tracking was horrible and the case was a beat-up piece of black plastic with no cover art and the clear sleeve halfway torn off but I loved all the same. Being a big fan of dinosaurs at the time (and still to an extent to this day), I always loved the "Rites of Spring;" it has to be one of my favorite segments of all time!

Like anyone else of my generation, I was raised on Disney movies; I remember going to see Aladdin in theaters and being afraid of the Cave of Wonders sand-tiger. I was a toddler and that's some pretty scary stuff when you're only about three years old! Beyond that, we had a few different VHS tapes: Robin Hood, Dumbo (another personal favorite when I was a kid), The Lion King, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and most likely a few more that I can't remember at the moment. It wasn't too much longer after that when I discovered the great wonderment of CG cartoons, namely ReBoot and Transformers: Beast War; they may not hold up nowadays but they were awesome back then! (Shame on my nerd-cred, but for the longest time I always thought Optimus Prime was always a gorilla, not an 18-wheeler)

 I dabbled around a bit with animation but nothing too major. Growing up watching other TV shows like KaBlam's "Prometheus and Bob" and "Life with Loopy," I tried doing some stop-motion with a couple of action figures and my parents video camera; I wish I still had the footage to be able to show.

It wasn't anything special (a five second short of Solid Snake drawing his gun from his holster, what can I say?) but would still be neat to take a look at now! Speaking of Metal Gear, I do remember playing the original MGS on my Playstation and thinking that the cinematics and the graphics were mindblowing and in my opinion, they still stand pretty well on their own today!

I was always interested in CG, stop-motion, and video games but I don't think I ever really thought of it as being a feasible goal. I didn't really start getting into doing anything close to computer animation until middle school or so and didn't even think about animating as a career until roughly midway through high school!
     Back in grade school, our woodshop classes were taken out a replaced by what the school corporation referred to as "modular workstations;" about every week or so, a student or team of two students would rotate to a different station and learn about different aspects of technology from robotics and construction technology to computer-aided drafting and CNC milling. My first day in the class, I was assigned to the AutoCAD station by myself with no more than a computer with the software on it and a three-inch binder with lesson plans and technical jargon; I dove in head first and loved it. What I was doing wasn't too technically demanding (I was basically creating 2D technical drawings of custom bricks and brackets) but something about understanding the software and creating something from nothing was invigorating!
     I kept taking different CAD classes throughout high school and that's when I discovered the joy of animating; viewers be warned, these were some of my very first animations when I didn't know a hell of a whole lot!

I'd like to think I've improved since then and hopefully anyone who has seen my most recent reel would agree. After high school, I went on to study animation in college; I learned a good deal about the various aspects of animation, met some truly great people that I hope to keep as life-long friends, and had some awesome experiences along the way. I'm still trying to get into the industry but I believe it's worth fighting for. To be able to work alongside some of the people I've met and become friends with in such a fascinating field would be nothing short of amazing. I really do hope to make it there someday.

That's my story (or most of it, at least) and I do think it helps to go back and really think about what got you interested in animation, it might just help you keep moving forward with your pursuits!