Quarterly Update

This post is rated L for LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG.

I think I should update more, I'm finding myself losing larger and larger tracks of time. December doesn't seem that long ago. Hopefully I'm not the only one that feels that way.

Lets see. School's been kinda iffy for me, my math class has me in a tight spot at the moment. Everything else is going swimmingly though. Even my Software Development class, even though one of my team members suffers from a severe case of About-To-Get-His-Ass-Kicked-For-Being-Lazy-itis, and the professor works really hard on not teaching us anything.

The main thing keeping my sane are my friends and STN. Having a chance to get to know all the people I've met over this and the past semester has helped make things easier on me. The hardest thing about this extra year in school was the fact that I had to continue through school without a good 70% of people I've known for a good 3-4 years. But fortunately for me, of all the things I have trouble with, making friends is not one of them. I've made new friends and solidified friendships with others. It's a good thing.

As for STN, I've managed to make quite a name for myself. I've gone from graphics artist to 3D and Motion Graphics artist. Over the winter break I began learning how to use 3D Studio Max and Adobe After Effects. In about three weeks I managed to become good enough to try to fake knowing what I was doing. By the middle of February, I was the man at working those two programs. I started showing the Graphics Director a few things I was working on after the break. They weren't bad, but nothing really spectacular. But as I started getting better I started garnering attention from everyone in the organization. My first major creation for STN came in the form of a new weather segment rejoin graphic that I made at the request of Kyle, the chief engineer. My preliminary idea was done in about two days. I showed it to the Kyle, who fell in love with it instantly. I met up with him and he gave me ideas to tweak it, and so I worked on it some more in the office. By the end of the day, most of the people in STN had seen it and fell in love. That raised my status and made people realize that hey, this guy is good!

After that day, I've been called on to work on new versions of graphics that sre becoming outdated, i.e. ALL OF THEM. All of the graphics on the master tapes that we use are at least 6-7 years old. Rosemary, the chief photographer, showed me where the graphics master tapes are, and told me to review them. If there are any graphics I want to redo, then feel free to redo them. Well, it looks like I'm going to redo all of them. In the end, both myself and STN benefit from this. STN gets a nice new graphics overhaul, and I have enough work to put in my portfolio as part of my resume. Woot-tastic!

My real time to shine came during the second week of February. The 16th and 17th STN was airing Hartford Men's and Women's Basketball games live, with our sports team commentating. I saw a clip of soccer game opening that a few guys that graduated years back had made, and it was very inspiring. And then I saw the soccer open from the previous semester.......IT SUCKED ASS! Oh my goodness did it suck. I had to do something about it. I decided to place it upon myself to make a new one. After I came up with an initial idea, I storyboarded it out and submitted it to the graphics director. After I got the OK, I started working on it. Unfortunately, I only had a week to work on it, and it just so happened that it was a very busy week for me. I only had time to start messing with some ideas. I was hoping to start work on it that Wednesday, but unfortunately I spent that Wednesday trying to get basketball footage for the opening.

I started finally working on it on Thursday. I pulled an all-nighter that night into Friday afternoon. Apparently working in 3D is harder than it looks. That afternoon I had to meet with the graphics director to show her my progress. At that point in the day I had it broken down into three parts, two of which was actually rendered. One of those renders was an early render, and didn't reflect the progress I had made at that point. Fortunately what I had was enough to impress her, and she also gave me a few good tips to make it better. She asked me to show the directors board my progress as well. They were quite impressed as well. Very impressed actually. They really liked what they saw, and it was nowhere near done.

I spent the next 12 hours in the office sorting through footage and throwing everything together. By the end of the night, I had mostly everything together, I just needed to render it. I let things render overnight while I slept. I was very tired by then. The next morning everything was rendered. But I messed up one part so I had to re-render it ~_~. I just let it render again and went back to sleep for an hour. After it rendered, I put everything together in After Effects and rendered it all together. That was the quickest render at 5 minutes. I threw my clothes on and headed to the STN office to hand the finished product over to the producer and chief photog. I handed it in three hours before the show. If that wasn't cutting it close, then nothing is. We put the cold open to tape (actually there were two cold opens, one for men's, one for women's, and a rejoin), and then ran to the Sports Center to get everything ready.

The shows went off without a hitch, and all was right in the world. And everyone was floored about how well the opening came out. They damn well better have been, I spent 40+ hours straight working on that. I missed a night's sleep working on that. It was worth the not sleeping and worrying that I might not get it done in time. It just shows you how freakin' awesome I am. Builds character...or something like that. Ever since then I've been asked by various people in STN to work on graphics for them. I'll be helping out with the 15th Anniversary video putting together lower third graphics and other good stuff for it. Word. It's good to be me. I just hope my hard work can help me get a job after graduation. That would kick lots of ass.

As for right now, I'm on my spring break. I took this time to catch up on sleep, catch up with family, and catch up with doctors and dermatologists that I probably should've been visiting years back. It looks like everything checks out and I'm ok. So I shall continue to raise hell and be awesome as only I can. It's good to be me.


The end.