Now,There’s A Challenge . . .

Second guessing yourself may slow down progress in any endeavour. But it’s a sure way to step back and look at the big picture, look for flaws in the design, or backtrack with the methods.

Oh, if only my co-workers and friends realize what a fraud I am when it comes to my skills. At least I admit that. No it’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing, but most of the time it’s all about teaching myself with the tools. My tenure with animation nearly drained me of creativity, the redundancy turned to complacency and in my mind, if I had not decided to do something different, I would have turned sour and dormant, a warrior that stuck to swords and shields while the world armed itself with smart guns and GPS.

Now, I see myself as an outsider, but I can’t help but be attached to my colleagues at work, in whatever job I have held in the past, and at present, as a graphic specialist (motion graphic artist, but it sounds way better). And most of the time, co-workers turn out to be good friends. We interact only at the studio, but they will never know how much I value the ribbing, taunts, masked insults  and overall camaraderie.

At some point we were just shooting the bull, in a manner of speaking when freelance jobs worked its way into the conversation (pun unintended) and I asked Conde and Mike if they could throw me some, you know, given the state of economy and all that. And what could have been a simple answer became a big challenge for me : improve the skills and get some raket (what we fondly call freelance jobs nowadays)

Now, an acquaintance might say “Sure.” and forget about it, but this challenge made the proposition more interesting. I’m not a wizard with Adobe After Effects . I’m still learning to use SketchUp. I know I could create stuff with Photoshop, and so much awesomeness with a pencil and paper – but, there’s a challenge.

Remember, I was talking about reinventing one’s self on the previous post?

Well, there you go, no better time than now.

 So I went to my usual web haunts – SFFF and MBFF and immediately looked for something I can use, and hopefully give something back. Something our local industry and government fail to comprehend – it’s called sharing.

My Ae skills are rudimentary, barely basic and utterly simplistic.

Now, there’s a challenge.

And lest I forget, this whole reinvention things has been brewing for weeks now, but it was Sally, that wonderful woman who seem to hit me silly and unawares every time, who finally convinced me to do something.

So I did.

But I take caution, and extreme care not to storm into this with eyes half closed. This is nothing like improving the way I prepare and cook lugaw by adding some mushroom bits or putting the onions first instead of the garlic. Instinct is good but we need methods. Lots of it.

These are rare times when I seem to come to a deadend, and a hand just snatched me up to go over the wall and continue walking. Friends do that. Good friends will even shove you and complain that you’re too slow.

I’m not. I’m just relishing the good feeling while enjoying the sights, is all.

Moving Things Around

I have had this idea that I have to create another blog for my illustrations and this will remain as my sounding board. It seems the right thing to do, to separate these things.

So now, some posts here would have to be  moved to scrEaMing mANgo on Blogger. All the stuff  related to my drawings and illustrations, with some of the writing involved.

Not that I am going to leave my WordPress blog. Heck no. I’m just putting things in the right perspective.

Nicottaenneaous Caffeineiac Musings