WIP Wednesday - In the Beginning!

I think I'm gonna try something new! I've decided to put my writing experience to use again. Though I don't currently have the capacity to work on any fiction, I can certainly discuss what I have been doing - mainly the art that contains more than two dimensions :D

I've been creating 3d art on and off for about half my life. My love of CG art and animation had descended from my love of cartoons and video games. CGI married my love of animation with my naturally attuned ability to understand and use computers. I think the earliest memory I have of witnessing it would be the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast, and some Carpet scenes in Aladdin. Admittedly, Toy Story was NOT my favorite in terms of story and characters, however being one of the earliest blockbuster CG animated feature movies I couldn't miss it. It was pretty mind-blowing to see, but it still remained somewhat of a lofty medium to break into. How would I even go about starting? The thought really didn't register at the time that it was something I could do.

Somewhere around 1996-97 I came across a magazine that had an article about 3DStudio Max. I don't know why but I just ate up every word, every image - and caught a glimpse of the stock character that would later become Olaf. I had to get this somehow. There was just one problem - the software was incredibly expensive, more expensive than most computers at the time. So the idea of getting my hands on it had vanished as quickly as it came. I was relegated to smaller, less-capable programs with limited documentation and a user-interface seemingly designed to dash one's hopes.

Luckily I discovered Poser and Bryce3D that same year and was able to wet my beak a bit. Poser at that time was pretty much just nude male and female humans, with built-in rigs you couldn't change. The most you could do to the bodies was make parts bigger/smaller. But with determination I was able to at least make a green bulky man I could consider an orc, then get up to some shenanigans. And Bryce3D gave me a crash course in environment-sculpting so I was still getting a somewhat well-rounded education.

The next year or so was a mess of trying different softwares, each with their own drawbacks but seemingly few advantages. It was as fun as it was tedious. Fast-forward to my birthday, 1998. I had been saving allowances with the hopes of one day getting my hands on some REAL industry software. It came up in conversations at the dinner table. My mother was always very generous when it came to software she considered educational, and so considering that it may well be the first step into a career she covered the remaining costs for my birthday present. So here I was at 17, with my hands on a brand new copy of 3D Studio Max 2.5, with Biped character motion capabilities.

Boy was I over the moon <3

I still knew next to nothing about modeling, animation, rendering, the whole nine yards, so the entire summer consisted of me stumbling my way through the software. I made a lot of abstracts and interiors for my public art - and a lot of private smut with my green crush and some very primitive recreations of myself. This was all before the age of YouTube, so my education was relegated to thick books, and I have always been more of a visual learner so it was quite difficult.

In college I took filmmaking as a major. Looking back I wish I had taken Computer Animation. I even considered changing majors, but the department head talked me out of it despite seeing my portfolio. I was certainly discouraged, but at the same time the state of our media arts department was so that they favored abstract artists as opposed to those seeking more traditional careers in film and animation (ask my sister, who was a 2d animation major). The department was a major disappointment overall, but I told myself I wasn't doing more than four years of college so I powered through.

One good thing about college were the educational copies of 3D Studio Max and what would be my next software obsession, Maya. It was powerful, it was versatile, and it did some things Max did not. Plus by Max 4 I had trouble running it on my computers so it wasn't really an option anymore. After college, however, I had to procure the software a bit more questionably. Friends' copies mostly. But from 2002 on I grew up with Maya.

Post-college was a mishmosh of rock bands, theatre, film sets and web design. I never really found an outlet for my CG art, so I kept it to myself, blowing the dust off when I felt inspired and putting it away a few months later when the well had dried up. This went on for years - my entire 20s and half of my 30s. But each time I picked it back up I knew a little more. I'd watched YT tutorials, videos, been to the movies and drank up Pixar's latest masterpieces. I never really forgot how to do this thing, and I wonder what I'd be like had this been my focus the entire time. 

Over the years, Maya got bigger, stronger... and more bloated. I watched the program startup time climb steadily up to 5 minutes. It was getting ridiculous, and I couldn't keep getting under-the-table copies. I was earning a living, I ought to pay for the things I want. But Maya was still so expensive, it didn't make sense for me to put so much money into what was still just a hobby. I had been hearing about some other programs for a while, and Blender kept popping up. It was free and open-sourced so I literally had nothing to lose. I made the jump to Blender 2.75 sometime that summer. 

By then, most programs seemed to agree on a certain convention of how a 3d program should operate. Plenty of the UI seemed familiar. But at that time Blender had some pretty quirky mechanics that made it very difficult to get started in. For one, the idea of selecting objects by right-clicking seemed insane. There was even more stop-start than there was when I was first learning Maya. I put it down for a few months, picked it back up again, down, up, down, up. This went on for about a year. But I was getting better. I was understanding it. 

It was late 2016 that I finally decided to post my work (and also to make stuff that was a little more SFW). By mid-2017 I started getting likes, comments, messages, requests for commissions. It really was becoming something bigger, bringing me closer to a childhood dream I had almost forgotten.

Now, in 2020, I am comfortable enough to call myself a veteran. I have over 300 original posts across my various accounts, including several short animations. I'm up to Blender 2.90 and fall in love with it every day. There will be many more surprises in the future so stay tuned, and thank you once again for your support!