Mrs. Farrin, my computer-programming teacher, saw how interested I was
in the graphical aspect of computers and allowed me to use my program-
ming class to teach myself art! She even went as far as calling the software
publisher, Autodesk, and acquired an educational version of the program
for me to work with. During the course of the next year, I signed up for
three computer classes a day, and continued to learn the package and work
on my portfolio.
During my last semester of high school, there was growing interest in dig-
ital multimedia among the students. As there were no CG-oriented art
classes for people to take there, Mrs. Farrin and I created a curriculum that
included Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, and several morphing tools. When I
wasn't helping out as a teacher's assistant during class, I would work on my
own projects.
After a few months of hard work and experimentation, I had a portfolio
that I thought was worth showing around. Looking back now, I can see
that I did almost everything wrong, though. It was just like every other Star
Wars fanboy piece--bad animation, no shadows, no textures, and way too
many lens flares. I'm still surprised that it got me a job in the industry.
Q: How did you learn to do 3D modeling and animation?
A: My first job in the industry was Quality Assurance (QA) for a company
called Visionary Media Inc. Being in QA means that you play a game all
day, and try doing things to make it crash. The game was called Firewall,
and although it shipped only in Taiwan, it gave me enough time at the
company to prove that I was able to handle any task thrown my way. At
the time, VMI was bidding on a new game called Star Trek: First Contact.
When we got the contract, I was hired on as an artist.
First Contact was a first person shooter using the Unreal 3D engine. My job
was to model the interior environments of the USS EnterpriseE for various
missions. The level-building tools for the Unreal engine were very different
from the professional 3D packages, but they did teach me a lot about light-
ing. I set up an average of more than a thousand lights for each level.
I taught myself basic color theory through trial and error, experimenting
until an environment looked good. During that time, Autodesk released its
new 3D Studio MAX product, and our studio got a promotional copy.
I spent many nights there teaching myself MAX.
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