Personal Branding

This is something I wrote up as a guide for a friend who wondered about how to create a web presence. I am by no means a professional, but over the past year or so, I've put a fair amount of time into my personal brand.




First off, create a very professional email address with the name you want to create। mine is orosz।rachel@gmail.com. it's easy to remember and makes me easy to find. I made sure my name is in all of my website domains as well, and that all my sign in names for all these site bears my name.

Then create a blog or other personal website. Update it with your best work. Did really well on a homework assignment? Figure out something cool to do with code? Blog about it. Progress on a personal project? Update on your site! If you can figure it out, have someplace people can download your most current version of your resume. Check your website for a way to be authenticated with google if you feel like bothering, it will make your website come up higher when people google your name.

Create a professional twitter. This is VERY different from your personal twitter. Your personal twitter should have a name that only you and your friends know. Update it about professional things. Some examples from mine are:

"Staying up late working on a proposal, but I have a very cute cat distracting me.... must... resist... CUTENESS!"

"Spent the morning sick, I have a fever, and half of the material of the presentation changed last night.. But I can still rock the pitch!"

"Spending more time picking out a new hairstyle for this character than I ever do for my own."

Notice how they relate to my work, but still show my personal flair. I bring to my twitter what I bring to work, a good attitude and strong work ethic. It can be a VERY therapeutic break to tweet quickly about what your working on. Just remember though, people can see this.

Create a linkedin, use it like a very professional version of facebook. Get connected to all of your professional contacts. Upload your resume to it. Ask for recommendations. This is your internet resume. You have more flexibility here, but I promise you it won't be as pretty as your real resume.

If you have videos, make a youtube account to post them.

Make a personal logo if you have the ability. If you aren't really sure how to do it, try playing around with the letters of your name to make a cool symbol. This is how I made my logo, and I'm an artist. Pick a color scheme that looks professional. I recommend to non artists to use a website called Kuler, it will allow you to make a color palette that looks good without much effort.

Last but not least, now that you've made everything, go ahead and take your logo and color scheme and implement them in each of your websites where it is tasteful. As you are doing this, look for the appropriate places to connect all of you sites.

Make sure to pick one of these are your main hub for everything.

*TIP! If you have a business card you like, take the cue from that too make your web presence. If you don't, when you make your own business cards use the same logo and color scheme as a starting point.
**Use your logo in the header of your resume's and cover letters. It's a visual that differentiates you from the crowd.

So I hope this was interesting to some of you! This is all based on my experience with web presences and from what I've learned from professors and online.

Speed Modeling Challenge

My major had a speed modeling competition today, and we had 3 hours to model and electric guitar. This is what I came up with!

Attached Ear

I attached the ear to the head. Tomorrow I'm going to start working on the hair, and I am satisfied with the head (finally). Might do some more tweaking later, but now a new hair do is a priority.




On the left is the before, the right is after (after tweaking and repositioning ear).

For those of you curious of how most of this looks all together

I modeled this cool ear using this tutorial. It was easy to find his image reference online as well! Was pretty easy, took me maybe 2 hours following the tutorial very closely. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v​ =QcYrUHRIqsE

Siggraph Advice

So earlier this week I posted some advice in the SIGGRAPH student volunteers forum for a first timer to the conference. It was really well received, so I thought I'd share it with you, greater internet. This post was in response to some specific questions, but I'm modifying it to apply to any new conference goer.

1. What do you suggest I do in advance to prepare myself better?

MAKE A WEBSITE! GO NOW. An Electronic Arts Art Director I spoke with last year dismissed anyone without a website as not being "serious". So get one up now! Even if it's a crap one, have one. You will build on it later, even after the conference, and if you become a conference junkie like me, you'll build on it each time before a conference. Just have a short blurb about what you do, and some examples of your best work. Don't feel bad if you only have a few to show either, it's better to show 2-3 of your best than a whole bunch of crap.

BUSINESS CARDS. Spend time designing business cards, and get them printed. Even if you don't have the time/money to get them done, you can actually get business cards made for free, you just need to pay for shipping. The freshman on my game dev team got 250 and only had to pay shipping, and 250 is more than enough to last you through the conference. (vistaprint.com)

BUSINESS CARD BOOK. One of the best things my Dad did for me is give me his old business card book that he used to carry around to conferences, and a personal business card holder. In you business car holder, you'll keep enough business card to last you until you can run back to your locker to grab a refill. When you get a business card, give them one of yours, and tuck their's in the back of the holder. That way you have a safe place to keep them. Be sure to write on the back of their card what you talked about and specific details about them and how you met.

At then end of the day, take all of your business cards and put them in your book. You should take this time to review info you wrote on the back of the card, and maybe add some more information about them. This will help you write follow up emails after the conference, which are crucial for retaining these contacts after the conference is done. Keep your book at the hotel, and your holder on your person. If you have the former on you during the day, you might misplace it (happened to me one at GDC, thankfully I traced back my steps in time to find it). With the latter, it is extremely handy to keep your cards neat and crinkly free and right at hand.

RESEARCH THE CONFERENCE. Look at the schedule, find out which events your REALLY want to attend. During the conference, you won't have time to see everything so you need to maximize your time. Other SV's are pretty good about swapping shifts, but the earlier you do it the better. If you know exactly what you want to see BEFORE the conference starts, you have a leg up when it comes to swapping shifts.

Also research parties, if you are able. This really help me at GDC. I got me and my friends invites into parties BEFORE we even go there. Look up forums like CGsociety, or online place where industry professions go online to chat, they tend to have some of the latest party information. Also keep an eye out for facebook groups that focus on party conferences. The Fellowship of the GDC parties group was a god send for me, and my main source of party information. There previously wasn't a specific group for SIGGRAPH, so you know what? I made one, League of Siggraph parties. If you've been to a conference a few times, chances are you can make one of these groups yourself as well (Props to Oded Sharon, mastermind behind the fellowship). If you don't have time to do party research, don't worry, just keep your ear to the ground and ask around at the expo floor, and you can find parties.

SLEEP! Get plenty of rest before the conference. I am the type who like to run around like crazy before and sleep on the plane before the trip. DO NOT DO THIS. While a personal leisure trip can handle you being exhausted the first day, from the first moment of SV orientation you want to experience EVERYTHING. So sleep.

FIND A LOCKER. Having a locker at the conference is AWESOME. As SV's at SIGGRAPH you have access to lockers in the SV lounge. I brought a lock that had a changeable combination, and my roommates and I shared it. At least one of my roommates would have an early shift, so we had a locker every day. If you aren't one of the lucky few to be an SV, try calling ahead to the conference to ask about what storage they have available.

2. Are there other rookies at my level that attend?

Yes. There will also be people who haven't TOUCHED maya yet. People come from all different backgrounds. Some may be game designers, others programmers, and then there are the animators and computer graphics artists. You probably know more about something than somebody else there. Plus plenty of rookies attend, and it's better to get to the conference as early in your career as possible, the experience just makes you grow in your craft so much. They even have special session JUST for beginners. The main thing you need to attend is a love for Computer graphics and everything around it. You'll fit in just fine.


Most importantly, just enjoy the conference, every minute of it. It's a great experience that will make you appreciate the field your entering into even more.

Summer Project

So life seems to have settled down finally, so I'm getting back to some side projects. Most of my former projects from this year have been wrapped up, and I'll do a post later giving an update on all of them (I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seat with suspense.

Right now I'm revamping and old model, affectionately called "Swashbuckler chick" or sbc for short. She is meant to be rigged and used in a kinect motion capture system a friend of mine is working on. Currently though, her upper body was not suitable to be rigged, the edge flow is terrible. So today my task was to improve it. Heres how I started:

The main goal of this task is to have the pectoral geometry flow over the shoulder and into the back so it will deform properly. This is the result after a light afternoon of work.

Mission accomplished! There needs to be some changed made to the form, but the massing model I used to create this mesh will make getting it back to the form I want fairly simple. I used a combination of the split polygon tool and collapse edges to get this result, and some techniques I learned from a gnomon disk way back in my first year, I believe it was high poly creature modeling?

I would like to add more muscle definition to the abdomen, however, it will work for now, and trust me, the face is in more need of immediate attention. But that's tomorrows task.

*model created in Maya 2011

Reflections

So I have gone a little MIA on this blog recently. Continuing to work on the paper for Production Pipeline on the RIT special effects project. Writing it is giving me alot of time to reflect on how the project progressed through the year, and I've been able to pin point my mistakes.

I should have gotten in touch with the major studio sooner, and sought out faculty to serve as a spokesperson to give the project more legitimacy and authority than a lone student. We where well into preproduction of the project before informing them that it had even started. I was definitely overconfident of receiving a mentor from the company.

Another issue on my end was over delegation. Initially I had planned on being involved in a limited capacity, as I was already deeply involved in 2 other projects as well a being President of RITgraph. Kirk did a wonderful job on the project, and went above and beyond in his position as technical director. But I feel that some tasks that I ended up relegating to Kirk I should have retained so that I could do my tasks better. My contributions became redundant, and I worried that trying to get involved would be cumbersome to my teammates rather than helpful.

I have learned alot from this experience. Communication is key to a projects success. When ideas aren't communicated properly, work is done incorrectly, which can be a downfall to a production if it isn't caught on time. This isn't the only lesson I have learned however, but to write them all would be well, the paper I'm working on.

Quick Update on Golf

Imagine RIT went well, and a full update will come later.

Amblyopia

Soon, soon I will update. So much has happened.

Production Pipeline 1

RIT Special Effects Project

Week 1

Co-ordinate with Talent, Kuk Sool Won Black Belts. Co-ordinate meeting session between creative and talent to gather reference materials and do initial choreography.

Week 2

Search for video editor. Found a martial arts choreographer, got him to attend shoot. Research and draft talent release form. Co-ordinate talent for shoot. Supervise and aid shoot.

Week 3

Researched film festivals and competitions we could submit the final film too. Unfortunetly the only fit we had was Siggraph.

Week 4

Looked into the form for Imagine RIT. The proposal was lengthy, and talking to kirk the team did not seem terribly interested at presenting anything. After I had a established this I had looked further into the form and we where much further past the deadline than we thought. Read through this years Siggraph to establish what we information we needed to collect the form

Week 5

I created a copy of this years siggraph festival form so we could pre emtively fill it out for next year.

I researched what documents should be created at the end of a project. The most useful one that I could find was a Technical document. We could use that template to create a nice record of the project.

Week 6

Mostly Spent trying to help Kirk track down MIA Sound Artist

Week 7

Started search for new sound artist. Alerted the professors in charge that she hadn't responded to us in 4 weeks and we hadn't seen any work from her yet (yes ironic I know). Worked on finding new sound artist. Currently working on contacting the recommended color correctionist from the Film Director.

Week 8

Current plan, Finish up documentation, start gathering all materials, finish them

Week 9,

Not entirely sure what work is left

Amblyopia Trailer

So I have Finally finished (mostly) the Amblyopia trailer for work. My boss wanted t for GDC. It's nothing fancy, and it was my first time really getting into Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I Learned so much from this project, and while video editing is not what I enjoy, I really like that I've started developing a new skill. I'm sure understanding the basics of these programs will come in handy.

check it out here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA4C0tvUIaQ

I think this would have taken me much longer if I hadn't used tutorials from Lynda.com. They didn't have everything I needed, but it helped me get started. Definitely worth the money. I've been teaching myself Microsoft Project as well. I'm going to keep the subscription for most of next quarter. I want to learn the ins and outs of Excel, Power Point, Project, Word, and any program involved in project management really. Haha maybe I'll just go crazy using the programs, making myself flowcharts for laundry, org charts for my family and roommates, and gantt charts for cooking. Actually I could see making a gantt chart for some of my recipes to be useful. I wonder if i can get Project to switch from days to minutes?

Either way now that the video is done I can breath a little. Hopefully in the next few days I'll write a post with everything that has changed with my projects. They are getting pretty exciting. If all else fails, I'll write more while I'm on the plane. Keep an eye on my website! I'm going to be added more content soon! I want to make a section for my traditional art and update my 3d section.

Anyway thanks for reading my frazzled tired post.

-Rachel

ARGolf Website

The Website recently got a makeover. The content is still a work in progress, but it looks so much better! Check it out!

http://doji.cs.rit.edu/golf/

GDC Prep

So we're getting ready for this big event of the quarter, GDC! Thankfully it's over spring break, but there is so much to do.

Personally I've been working on updating my website, rachelorosz.webs.com. It's still a work in progress, but much better than before. I've also been pushing through with my resume and cover letter. I should actually be finished with all these things this weekend, and they should be ready to send off to companies.

Here are the project updates

Augmented Reality Golf Project

The Team and I created a fly through of our first level for GDC. It looks great, though the smaller assets didn't make it it. It's going to be shown at RIT's booth at GDC.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RITargolf#p/a/u/0/YadM3wE6dnM

This is hosted on the official Augmented Reality Golf Youtube channel, which is where we'll post all official videos. Next quarter look out for the new trailer and some actual game play! I'm really glad it turned out so well.

The new version of the website should hopefully be up by friday, at the very least monday. Kyle has been great about getting it working, it's such a pain. The team really needs someone dedicated to it who has knowledge of how it all works.

After GDC I'm officially leaving the project however. Unofficially I'll be helping Maddy, my replacement, when she needs it, but I really have over stretched myself, and I need to focus on graduation. Thankfully I've been training her all year, so it'll be left in capable hands.

Amplyopia Project

I've been working on a trailer for the game. Have I ever mentioned I'm NOT a video person? I've run into alot of problems, starting with Xfire. I will never again use that program to record footage. It crashed after effects every time, and the only solution I had to get usable footage was to really compromise the quality. I want this done by monday, so you guys can guess what my weekend is going to look like.

By the way guys, if you ever need to learn any kind of software, I recommend lynda.com. I've been using it to teach myself aftereffects and premier pro. Worth the money, has everything you need to get started. I'm going to be using this to teach myself so much. Weekends off? Who needs that! Optional training? HECK YA! Spring break I'll have a little bit of non work fun... I promise....

Side note
Isn't it great when you enjoy your work? It might be hard to tear youself away but man, it makes life a lot better!

RITgraph

Still going, still chugging. Last week I did a info session on being an Student Volunteer. I'm always surprised how much my members like that talk. I did another one at the start of the quarter, but the attendance was low (first week back of winter quarter, it was inevitable). Those who attended enjoyed it though, and so we did another one (a little closer to the SV deadline).

Kirk Lansman, our events chair organized our 4 week workshop series, which I think have been moderately successful. I'm hoping next quarter to have him set up more of these to help get attendance up. Winter Quarter is just impossible for clubs. We're VERY close to having our charter though, we just need information from our faculty adviser.

Special Effects Project

We're in contact with the studio. They're recommended changes to our project, and we're working on a proposal so we can get an official adviser. More info later


Anyway, those are the important updates for now.

Till next time,

Rachel

New Year... OF AWESOMENESS

So as you guys probably know by now, I'm probably not going to be posting artwork anytime soon, I'm focusing on being a producer. To be honest, I just prefer managing people than doing the actual art. It's really fulfilling to be able to get a group of people together to create something way more awesome together than we could have separately. So let me update you guys on the various projects I'm managing.

Augmented Reality Golf

http://doji.cs.rit.edu/golf/

We've got a RIT developer interested in our project. We need to revamp the website and create an alpha by the end of the quarter, but if we do that he'll try to get sponsors for us and drum up some cash. I think this game has a good chance of being sold, not to a wide market, but sold none-the less.

Everything is running according to schedule, except texturing. That is our biggest slow down, and I had to pull one of the fastest texture artists to do graphic design work for the website. I reorganized the structure though, and we might have a returning artist to the team who's willing to do texture work. The only issue with him is that he'll have to work remotely until next quarter.

In other news I'm going to GDC! Yup, because the golf project is going to be apart of the RIT booth on the exhibition floor, and I'm going to help exhibit. If you guys are planning on going let me know! I'm really excited, and I really want to see how well I mesh in with that crowd. It'll help me make my decision on what Industry I want to go into.

Amplyopia Project

Using UT to treat lazy eye

That project is coming along. I'm on co-op this quarter doing 30 hours a week for Professor Bayliss. 20 of those 30 hours are dedicated to this project, while the rest is setting up projects for her and improving relations between the programming and art departments. I'm trying to set up a small team of artists to work on the project for credit. Goodness knows I can't do all this art myself (nor do I want to), but it's way to expensive to pay as many artists as we'd need. Only time will tell how well I do that though.

Special Effects Project

With advisor from mystery studio

I have a production internship possibility with an animation studio I respect. When I met with the recruiter, he told me that if I set up a multidisciplinary Special Effects project, we could get an Advisor from the company, who would have video conferences with us and actually visit our campus. I've set up the team, and I'm set to be the producer.

We're going to do procedural destructible, as well with other special effects. The animation is going to be a bull in a china shop. I'm really excited. We're going to have programmers write a plugin for maya, a sound fx artist, animators and 3d artists doing stuff like particles cloth and rigging. My plan is to help the dev lead by managing the project and keeping records using MS Project, and to keep in contact with the studio.

RITgraph.

We're STILL working on our charter. It's being way more annoying than I thought. We're going to have 4 weeks of workshops though, and we're still going strong. I changed the time for this quarter however, and it REALLY hurt attendance because there was a lot of confusion. I'm working to change that though, with better advertising and organizing. This is DEFINETLY a learning experience.

Thats it for my projects.

Stay Awesome Guys!

-Rachel