June 2, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR MAUREEN ROZENHART IN WA
I have a degrees in multimedia and drafting and design technology
and have worked in for companies that sell and support products for
film/video/game houses. The experience was great and the opportunities
are very broad. Here's a bit of advice and info that may be helpful to
you.
First, note there's basically 3 different areas you could find a
happy home: 1) developing the software for users 2) sales and support
of the software to users and 3) being an actual end-user of software who
would then do their development of video games, cartoons, etc.
I thought I wanted to get into 3D modeling/video type work and ended
getting surprised at what it entailed. 3D took a LOT of working in wire
frame formats and doing lots of calculations to think how big/small,
etc. you wanted things, etc. and ended up feeling like doing lots of
visual programming. (something I wasn't too hot on) It was very cool
for the end results (make sure, sure you check out Discovery's programs
on how they created the dinosaurs for their specials --very informative
for you) but for me it took too long to get those results. What I ended
up getting very interested in was something called "compositing" or
special effects. Special effects works more with existing
film/video/audio clips and manipulates them to look like something
else. Thing of the mummy's face coming through the sand in "the mummy"
or someone's face morphing into something else. The Matrix reloaded is
loaded with tons of that type of effect. I also learned there's a bunch
of very cool things to do with the audio portion of all the things
you're interested in and that all of it was fairly facinating. Another
area that is very important, you may be interested in, is the storage
and delivery of all this media. There are TONS of issues and options
for how to store and deliver all the media you'll be creating. A quick
example there is someone developing a game for the internet has
completely different issues than a game to play on a gameboy or an Xbox.

My advise to you would be to a) get good at math. You'll need it in
3D and programming. b) go to schools with courses specifically designed
for animation such as the Art Institute of California in San Francisco.
There's another one in Southern Cal that's supposed to be awesome but
I'm not sure of the name. May be "Brooks". Here's a url that shows
many animation schools you could research:
http://www.onlineschoolsdirectory.com/Animation.html c) when you start
out in the industry, try getting a job with someone who sells software
to end users instead of an end user specifically. If you work as a
"systems, sales, or support engineer" or "demo artist" for a couple
years before becoming an end user, believe me, you'll know your stuff on
that application. To sell/support a product, you need to know how it
works inside out and how to fix any problems you run into. This is an
invaluable skill when you then go on to work for something like a game
developer and will help you command a higher salary to boot.
Good luck, it's an exciting field.