I made it!! I'm finally working at an animation company. These are my thoughts back in 2010. I was on a team of about 10 people; two modelers, five animators; and three compositors who were also supervisors. I was a modeler.

When I started, they were using a program called Softimage XSI. I had never even heard of this program before. But I am always up for a challenge. My director, Eddie, sat down with me and showed me around Softimage. He showed me the navigation and some tools. He then told me to give it a try. At that point, I decided to find a tutorial that would help me get acclimated with the program.

I searched online and found a jellyfish tutorial. It took me a couple hours to get through the tutorial and I called Eddie back over. He approved. Now I wanted to know what I was to do next? Bam! My first real assignment. On my first day! He gave me a scene that had the Family Guy neighborhood in it. We were working on the "Road to the North Pole" episode, so my assignment was to put snow on the houses. It took me TWO WEEKS to put snow on those houses. Don't worry. I got much faster over time and was able to add another weapon into my animation arsenal.

I'm helping the guys in Troop 1911 get their animation merit badge. Here are pictures from the first session.