A New Start!

I think I'll start blogging again. Most of my readers have abandoned me since I stopped communicating two years ago.

Lots of things happened since I went to Australia:

1) Got there.

2) Worked a really challenging project, with a great team that in hind sight had little hope of making it on time and on budget due to scope and schedule.

3)Got moved to a new project

4)Decided to do Animation Mentor to improve my skills.

5)Economy collapses

6)Pandemic Studio, me employer, shuts down it's Australia studio leaving me jobless in Australia.

7)Got new but-not-what-I-was-looking-for-job.

8)Aunt Lisa passes after a year long but unexpected battle with cancer.

9)Loving Animation Mentor experience, going from just wanting to improve my skills to wanting to see how far I can make it into film realizing a life long goal.

10)Quit my job, convince my wife to move back to US even though she loves Australia. (sorry honey)

11)See New Zealand for two weeks with the wife in a Jucy Cruiza and it is the best trip of my life.

12)Sell almost everything.

13)Move back to the US mid-Animation Mentor term.

14)Aunt Linda passes.

15)Slog through Animation Mentor working harder than I have ever worked and loving it.

16)Graduated Animation Mentor

17)Put together reel and tried my luck on the market.

18)Nothing happened

19)Now I can hear crickets which means my reel still needed some work.

20)Came to the conclusion, in my quest for perfection, that my reel still needed work and decided to do one more Polish and Portfolio course at Animation Mentor.

21)Worked as hard as I could for three more months under the tutelage of Mark Oftedal.

22)Came out with what I think is a pretty sweet reel.

I will be sending this stuff out soon and posting on the internet and see what kind of reaction I can get. If it's nothing this time I am taking up a life of mediation at a Shaolin Monastery.

-Nick