What am I doing with my life?!

Let's get this thing started! For the final term of my graduate study at the CDM I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to work with my favorite Professor, Larry Bafia. The goal of this directed study elective is to challenge my mind and my digital abilities in order to create something that can put myself and maybe even the CDM on the map. A daunting goal to be sure, but something that I am up to.

Starting off I drew up a fancy feature list of a bunch of rigging tasks that I felt I could benefit from learning how to automate them with Python, a programming language that interface with Autodesk Maya. I had some standard things in there like reverse feet, stretchy limbs, pole vectors and other rigging tasks that are common to 3D character generation. Presenting this proposal to Larry, I was met with the following.

"Looks like you're challenging your hours, and not your brain."

Sweet jumping super Mario brothers Larry was right. With my initial proposal I would be filling out a hard skill subset that I've had my eye on for a while, but little else. While completing the list may make me slightly more attractive to a potential employer, it wouldn't do much for my industry or my passion as a whole. Larry suggested that I think about the WHY am I doing all these things.

This question seemed obvious at first, in order to get better at rigging. But, as I have learned in my time here at the CDM, the most obvious answer to a vague question is usually not the best. So I set to pondering while also contacting my industry adviser Eric over at Activision. I asked Eric about the current rigging problems that he is facing in his industry of video game TD work and anything that he would like to see take root or develop in that world of vertices and meshes. I hope to hear back soon.

My initial musings about how to push the envelope of Digital Media with a relation to character rigging and Kinect Development involved thinking about how to generate motion capture from consumer electronics, alternate video capture and facial animation. These are all pie in the sky level thoughts, but it's still early in the semester so I can be allowed to dream big a little.

So I seem to have more discovery to do. While I await response my Eric I am gathering references for what I may be working with, books on programming, Kinect devices, Unity Keys and a fresh dropbox folder. Exciting times at the CDM!