Monday, May 07, 2007

 

Updating. FINALLY. (And, how many times have you read this? Hee hee.)

My first post in a month.

I had planned this update as an explanation of why I’m here in Santa Barbara County, CA (details on my exact location forthcoming). But, I am on an extremely, comically, cartoonishly limited schedule, so I’ll keep this focused more on the condition of my endeavor, which I’m excited to say—

IS NO LONGER ON LIFE SUPPORT.

Those words, I have yearned to say with candor for the past nine months. It’s rough to do business in a region where competition is thick, concentrated, and unforgiving. It’s rough to do business in a region where support is not as plentiful as one might surmise—Houston’s VFX industry, despite massive reports to the contrary, is not as robust as the professionals already based in the region would have you believe. There’s one big VFX studio there—VT2—and they do mostly commercials.

Southern California needs no introduction, when it comes to places to be when doing VFX work. The only other comparable place (I use “comparable” loosely here) where support for VFX artists and franchises are plentiful is Vancouver. Vancouver comes to mind here; it has strong ties to the worldwide animation industry, not to mention it’s just an awesome place to live if you’re working in the arts.

But Vancouver still can’t touch SoCal.

And that’s why I’m here, back almost to where it all started for me, nearly five full years after I began writing about animation for Suite 101 (the remainder of the articles, I still have to post), more than five years after I received my acceptance letter from Brooks, five years after I left my massive children’s (and young-adult) library behind with my mom, of 1100 books, to become independent for the first time in my life 3000 or more miles away from home. A unique challenge, aspects of which ultimately proved too great for my inexperienced brain to properly process and execute.

I’m talking of course, not of the challenges of running a business, but of attending and ultimately graduating from college. I did not graduate. But, I am working professionally, which has at least made me more successful than some of my peers (don’t read this the wrong way—I’m not bragging in the least and I hope to someday see them on the up-and-up, which I know I will if their work in the classes I took with them is any indication). On the other hand, some of my peers are much more successful than I am, which is a testament to their networking aptitude and savvy.

Nevertheless, I feel great that my team and I were able to overcome the logistic challenges of transplanting an entire operation from an area we initially bet the farm on in terms of its favorable market conditions to an area where its supportive qualities are beyond dispute—this initiative, by virtue of its execution without the occurrence of any major negative incidents, can be labeled a success.

We still have a very long way to go, but what a long way we’ve been and what accomplishments were wrought along the way. As Jeff Harris once wrote, “This path was always connected to the bridge I've been crossing all this time.”

Until the next post, which is coming very shortly.

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