About Myself

I started my journey towards computer animation at a young age. I was fascinated with films like Toy Story and Ice Age, and my fondest memories were going to see animated films in the theater.  My love for computer animation was not limited to films alone, I also enjoyed gaming on Nintendo 64, with classic characters like Mario and Link, and my PlayStation 2 where my brother and I would play games such as Ratchet and Clank, and my all-time favorite Jack and Dexter. From there I thought it would be a great career to be able to make such games and films and get paid for it, but I believe I lacked the hand-drawn artistic skill that was required. It wasn’t until I entered my 2nd year of middle school that I got any hands-on experience with computer graphics programming. The first program I learned was Scratch and Click team Fusion, two visual-based 2D programming systems. I learned how to manage scripts and basic coding. From there I got fascinated with combining 2-D programming with 3-D visuals, leading me to Blender. For the majority of my freshmen & sophomore years in high school I would spend my free time working with blender to create simple 3-D models and films. I would read all the books available in my town library and try to absorb as much information as I could. I also enrolled in a digital imaging course, which help me learn Photoshop, illustrator, flash, and after effects. And my teacher was glad to help me build my skills in 3D graphics. I also got my firsthand experience with Maya in my freshmen year when the computer art departments switched from Carrara to Maya for their 3d graphics. After completing the basics of digital imaging, I took an independent study course for digital imaging which was supervised by my digital imaging teacher. I would also try to save my lunch money and try to get ever issue of 3-D world magazine, and read about all the different techniques Studios were using. My digital imaging teacher helped me build a portfolio that I could use to apply to School of Visual Arts. From there on I tried to find the aspects that I enjoyed the most about computer animation. My passion came to me my sophomore year after it fuddlingwith so many bad auto rigs that I decided that I wanted to learn rigging myself, so I watched a few YouTube tutorials and got the gist of rigging, and I was hooked! I was even more impressed when could hand off my rigs to a friend of  and they could come back with a beautiful animation. From there on I knew I wanted to rig professionally, so I spend my time to break down the rig’s that I enjoyed the most and see what made them so great. I also enrolled in an advanced rigging and modeling course taught by Ignacio Barrios and Jonathan Lin, where I learned to rig are production level being able to adjust the rig to animator needs. I also found out how to analyze a model and locate problem areas and how to the convey the problem areas to modeler and to make adjustments to create the best deformations possible. Over the summer, under the suggestion of Ignacio Barrios, I taught myself to code most of my rigging operations through simple python codes. I hope with these skills and my other expertise I am able to find work as a character TD or Rigger or a 3d generalist. .