Very Short Version
I write, animate, teach, and usually find a way to make a fool of myself while doing all three.
I write, animate, teach, and usually find a way to make a fool of myself while doing all three.
I make shit up. The medium varies. Sometimes it’s written fiction. Sometimes it’s in animation. And other times still, it’s in illustration and design. And sometimes, sometimes, the shit I make up is useful and well-researched. I like to do them all… and I like to think that I’m actually pretty good at it. Hopefully, that’s validated by the fact that I’ve been paying my bills for over a decade by making this [good] shit. Also, I’m big on open source and open content… so I often share my shit with you.
I do a lot of things. Mostly I make stuff up. I write, animate, and occasionally teach. I have heavy entrepreneurial tendencies that run nearly as deep as my creative ones… so I have a constant fascination with producing creative content with as much control and independence as possible. Naturally, I’m a big proponent of open source software; very nearly everything that I produce is made using Free and open source tools.
Using those open source tools, I ran my own small, independent animation studio for 8 years. And in the course of that, I had the privilege of managing mid-sized international production teams on ridiculously tight deadlines (4-7 minutes of CG animation in 2 days)… and that’s the stuff we did for fun. I’ve transferred some of that experience in writing to two separate books, Blender For Dummies (now in its 4th edition!) and GIMP Bible. The rest of that experience I continue blurt out a bit at a time during my weekly[-ish] podcast, the Open Source Creative Podcast.
For 9 years, I’ve had the privilege of applying my understanding of these tools in one of the most unique combinations of art and engineering that I’ve ever been involved with: protecting currency from being counterfeited. That’s right, I designed and animated kinetic effects on paper money to prevent people from making copies of it. Or as I like to put it, I helped fight bad guys with art.
Currently, I’m traveling the country with my family, helping studios and toolmakers integrate Blender into their production pipelines while also working on my own creative projects. I spend the majority of my time drinking coffee and trying to be awesome. The former I’ve pretty much gotten down to a science. The latter… well, every now and again I succeed at that one and make it look like it wasn’t an accident.