There was even an incident with a makeshift light table made by putting a desk lamp under the glass coffee table...which wouldn't have been so bad if the permanent markers I'd been using to ink hadn't soaked through the paper and onto my mother's expensive table. I carried a portfolio full of copy paper around with me so I could draw whenever I wanted to, and had pages and pages of sequential frames stuffed into folders. Some mornings, before homeroom, I'd draw a crowd that would gather around my bench to watch me draw, or request that I draw something for them.
Despite all this, though, I still thought I'd end up going into computer programming (little knowing that later I'd end up combining the two). I grew up in a small town outside of New Orleans, and I was a bit sheltered as far as things such as video games and 3D animation were concerned, so I had no clue that I could combine my love of computers with my love of animation...until I first saw the trailer for Final Fantasy VII.
Go ahead and say it; I know you want to. Final Fantasy sucks. Or everything before VI sucks. Or everything after X sucks. Or...well, we've all got conflicting opinions on the franchise. I've lost my loyalty to the Square-Enix machine, regained it, lost it again, clung with tentative hope...but none of that changes that back then, Final Fantasy VII for the original Playstation represented a rather large leap forward in 3D graphics for animation. When I saw the trailer, I didn't think "I want to play that."
I thought "I want to make that."
I wanted to create something that could evoke the feelings well-animated CGI often inspires, be it awe, a battle-ready adrenaline rush, laughter, sorrow - when those animated characters cross the line from mere pixels and renders into people and places that tell a story. So I made it my mission to become a computer animator - even if I took a few missteps along the way. My initial choice of college was made not by their study programs, but by the scholarships available and how far my parents were willing to haul all my junk - so at first I ended up going to a school where I learned a lot about programming and engineering, and very little about animation.
Finally, though, I transferred to the Art Institute of Houston...and the rest is history. A completed degree (where my programming experience stood me in better stead than I anticipated), a few internships, my first job, move into freelance: it all came together. I have a career as both an animator and a writer, both of which allow me to tell stories that evoke emotion from the target audience.
It took me a while to get here, but that's my story. Now tell me yours. Tell me how you came to be an animator - or if you aren't an animator or are still working towards that goal, tell me what made you come to love animation in the first place.
