What the man behind the curtain is up to.

It’s been long enough. The intention to get back to blogging, probably the most enriching things that the internet can be used for, is not as easy as it the benefit would lead one to believe. It is often the hardest these sort of things in life that have the greatest benefit that go without being utilized, but that changes now with the mother of all instigators, New Years Day.

What’s the topic of the year that is a continuation and solidification of growing interest in the previous year? What else, the ubiquitous topic across the blog-o-sphere; filtering, utilizing and leveraging the mind-numbingly viral growth of open source hardware and software, DIY, Hacktivism, Public Domain, and Creative Commons information to engage in gratuitous amounts of geekery, life/career hacking.

Expect expositions in 2012 on topics in addition to the aforementioned and the regular posts on 3d animation and tech art ranging in this list of interests:

Linux
C-Shell Scripting
Python
Arduino
Use of hobby as a way of making money
Dynamic DNS
Game Dev
Futurism
Virtual Computing

Hopefully shedding some light on some of the fundamentals will blaze trails for others that are interested to get started in the most noble of activities of the modern era, one that is being affected by movements like SOPA; developing and sharing software and media and artist entrepreneurialism.

 

Fighting the urge to be unproductive, I locked myself in the house for the past few days to get some work done on a new character TD demo.  Been under the weather anyhow and didn’t feel like doing much else, not even surf *gasp!*.  Here it is in all it’s beautiful animator friendly simplicity.  I plan on extending this demo with character animation tools.  I can’t wait to get away from creating demos and rendering video and go back to actually programming and rigging stuff!  I have so much more advanced rigging techniques to show and some that haven’t gotten to a finished stage on my characters yet so stay tuned.

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As a budding tech artist myself, having considered myself a full time artist and animator up until a couple years ago when I picked up programming and writing my own tools, This has made a profound impact on me just to see and hear people doing what I do everyday. It’s just as good, if not better than being there to talk to them in person.

Really big thanks to the person who put this together. It really solidifies the meaning of an integral part of the industry that is a bit esoteric to most people. Just ask anyone what a tech artist or technical director is and listen to the varying responses you get, even from seasoned veterans.

What I’ve come to understand is that people that have been in the industry since beta Maya and Max and SGI is that they were riggers and other artists by trade and just as the scope of technology broadened had to naturally be good technical problem solvers. Now, the breadth of gaming technology and workflows is getting so vast and evolving so rapidly that Tech Artists are very valuable especially to smaller companies that can’t afford to hire specialized teams.

Hence, I naturally flowed into becoming a Tech Artist myself the past few years after working at a smaller company for so long and getting tired of working with the software and it’s limited capabilities but vast potential to optimize workflow and make art on computer fun!

If you are a similar artist starting to make your own tools in mel and python for “DCC” then put your eyes and ears on what these people have to say.  It may be one of the only times you get to hear all of these people that work behind the scenes in the public forum all at once!  But thanks to the wide variety of forums on the internet you can communicate and learn with them and join the ever growing Tech Artist collective.