Finally There

For a change of pace, I’m not going to talk about things industry related. Not directly at least. It’s been about two weeks since my last entry, and for that I apologize. But there’s a good reason why. My personal life just pulled a complete 180 on me, and I am now situated in Los Angeles, CA. In fact, my last blog post was being written in Baltimore/Washington airport. Since I got here, I haven’t had the time or the resources (internet) to update, so that’s why I’m a little late.

But after a hectic first couple of weeks I can officially say that I am now a part of the industry I’ve been blogging about for the past eight months. I got a job doing stereoscopic conversion for a company called Stereo D, which is why I made the move to begin with. Now, for those who don’t know, which I imagine is nearly everyone, stereoscopic conversion is directly related to the new 3D craze all CG movies seem to want to be a part of. Basically what I do is take flat, 2D footage and draw shapes around the characters and environment aspects. These shapes are animated to follow their movements, so that they can be roto’d, or cut out and separated into layers, which is what creates the 3D effect.

Now by trade, I’m not a roto artist or compositor of any kind. However, I picked up roto quite easily and am doing well so far at the company. Traditionally however, I'm an animator, and anyone who reads this blog can find my work at http://www.chasecg.com. What I ultimately would like to do however is get my Master’s in Media Design because I want to be at the creative head of my own company someday. Whether I form the company or rise to the top of my own, it doesn’t matter as long as I get there. But I’ve always been interested in characters and story most, so I would like to work in character design and story development. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve created stories and characters in my head, so I already have multiple projects in the lineup.

In the argument of movies versus games, I’d really be fine working on either. What’s great about movies is that they have a larger audience, but I would rather develop video games solely because of the vast scale of world they bring, and the sheer length of story they tell. With a movie, you get two hours, three max. But video games are often praised the longer they are, and can get up to forty hours, or fifty hours before reaching their conclusion. These are immense stories that I want to tell because I have too many ideas to trim them down to a two-hour flic.

Another aspiration of mine is to be a voice actor. Once I’m more settled in, have some money to spare, and am not working an insane amount of hours, I would really like to get an agent and start doing voice work for movies, tv, and games. My biggest goal is to be a Disney villain someday. The 2D kind (no offense to Mother Gothel). I don’t simply want to provide my voice though, I want to provide multiple voices that all sound different. Christopher Sabat is a very talented voice actor who sounds completely different in multiple roles (when he doesn’t sound like Piccolo at least), and that’s what I want to do. I’m always making up characters, and alter-ego personalities, male and female, young, old, or otherwise that all sound entirely different, so I would like to provide voice work for various, “Disney-esque” characters if you will. Characters where the voice makes the personality.

Finally, related to that last paragraph, I would like to have a say when it comes to English dubs. While English dubs have gotten better by leaps and bounds over the years, I still keep seeing common mistakes when a great Japanese dub receives a less-than-stellar English voice over. But I’ll save that extension for another post. It’s probably too big of a dream to strive for my own dubbing company on top of my own game company and a professional voice acting gig, but hey, impossible dreams are the ones that keep us working longest. Either way, I’m finally here in the industry. The first job is the hardest to get, but it does get the wheels in motion. So for anyone that’s still struggling out there, and feels like their dreams will never be attained, they certainly won’t if you just sit around all day and don’t do anything about it. I applied to over a hundred industry jobs, both in and out of the country, related and unrelated to my craft, hiring and not hiring, and I finally got one. And that’s really what starts it all.