About me and this Blog
This first blog post will be briefly about my past as a VFX artist and who my target audience is.
How it all started?
One day I asked my brother -who is a software developer- how movies like Transformers were made, where he told me that when he was studying his master’s degree, his university introduced him to a software called Blender. Back in the day I didn’t have any idea what 3d is, let alone never thought about those kind of things. Did some funny animations on Macromedia Flash but never thought about these on a professional level. So I downloaded Blender, watched a tutorial about modeling a house (no materials, no lights, no rendering) and at that moment I knew that I wanted to do this thing- that I discovered- for a living.
Later on I learned that this was an industry with different specialties where people spend months on even the smallest details. I was amazed with what those artists created and found myself sucked into this world that I know nothing about.
Things got interesting when…
The days I wrote about above are not my toddler days where I was playing with toys and found a new toy which is 3d. I studied Finance and had a masters degree in Financial Economics, was working at an investment bank in Turkey where I was born, I was a Forex Dealer looking at charts, trading customer positions, checking risks, marketing, writing reports etc. I had my tie on everyday, had been climbing high plaza towers and working for three years, was thinking on becoming a big trader or a manager in one of those towers until I stepped through the portal that led me into the 3d world. So I did what most young enthusiastic men want to do and left my job. I said “want” because in Turkey it is not that easy to resign and find another job or take risks and try some different things or simply take a break. Also corporate life, especially in big firms like where I worked tends to make people risk averse and conservative. In my three years of corporate life I never saw anyone leave their job to do/become something/someone else.
What have I done?
Tutorials, softwares, new terms, a new life basically started for me. For a full year I set my mind to learning, not earning a single cent. But I loved every little piece of this new profession. My parents supported me that they told me I can try whatever I want to become, but I knew that they always had their doubts. Some of my friends were not believing in my efforts, they told me that I would be back at a bank in less than 6 months. However, I kept myself out of my comfort zone and then the 5 year journey brought me to today. I never went back to the previous job, sure enough there were some times I lost hope and searched for some jobs even had some interviews. But I never lost focus (just like Oenomaus said) and stuck to what I wanted and worked hard. When I say worked hard don’t think I skipped eating or sleeping, it was so much fun for me that I was never bored of learning.
Where am I today?
I am by no means a senior artist who worked on hundreds of projects, I have 5 years of experience but changing professions and seeing some strange, some magnificent, some irritating stuff taught me a lot. I don’t really know what to call myself, yes I am a VFX artist especially an FX Artist who focus on Rigid Body Dynamics, Fluid and Liquid Simulations, Particles, Crowds. I didn’t work on big firms all around the world, didn’t do big movies like Star Wars or Transformers. I am mainly focused on creating and selling assets online, so might as well call myself a stock motion graphic creator, also from time to time do some freelancing to clients from both Turkey and abroad, work in-house in some local studios on TV commercials and movies.
So what is this blog and for whom?
This blog is going to be about my experiences, mostly business side of the VFX industry. About managing my own business, talking to clients when freelancing and in-house, working in synergy with other artists, about what I observed and improved these past 5 years, about awesome and difficult people that I met. There will also be some subjects about artistic side of things. I am not aiming at teaching the reader about FX or software, I am just sharing thoughts, ideas and observations. In addition I imagine that writing them down and reading them in the future will also change my views, maybe I’ll even think that I was wrong. I figure that putting down these stuff will improve me and hopefully you in this field. I won’t be making tutorials, trying to sell stuff, write about the best software or the cheapest plugin or give software advice. There is no revenue for me here, just idea sharing.
Anyone can have fun and learn while reading this blog, this is not about the parameters inside FumeFX or the values to have better viscosity in Houdini FLIP. Even if you don’t know what FumeFX or Houdini is there is no need, there are way better articles and videos about them. There will be chapters about working efficiently, teamwork, problem solving, finding a job, supervision, time management, communication etc. Doesn’t sound much like VFX right? However, I found out these things are super important in this field, maybe more than which software you use or the artistic side of things. Plus, I come to believe that my finance/banking years and education made me analyze the business side of this industry in more detail than the average artist.
