Why Am I Here?

My name is Anna and I am coming to suspect that I might just be nuts. I am turning 31 and I’ve decided to switch careers from a perfectly good profession of a computer programmer to a much less secure and predictable one of a visual storyteller. My ultimate goal is to become an art director (or designer) for any medium that requires visual storytelling.

This is how I got this way:
For about the first half of my life, I planned to become an artist. I started to draw pictures in kindergarten, and my parents enrolled me in a secondary art school when I was seven. This was a special program where you studied art for seven years, and graduated with a diploma that made it easy for you to get accepted into a fine arts program in college.

But in high school I felt that I could not just go and be an artist, but needed a more down-to-earth type of work. Since I was not just an art and Russian literature geek but also a mathematics-loving nerd, and since it was the mid-90’s, I decided to study computer science in college. It did not, however, stop me from taking so many literary analysis classes along the way that I ended up graduating with a double major in computer science and Russian/Slavic studies.

I became a full time programmer at my dream job, working for a scientific research lab, enjoying the environment and doing the work I could be fully proud of.

Through all those years my passion for art was sitting on the back burner. Sometimes I would take my sketchbook with me on the subway and sketch little portraits of people sitting across from me. Now and then I would draw a card for a friend’s wedding or birthday, etc. I never believed my drawing skills to be on par with my own standards of professional excellence, so I just left it at that. I took up some adjacent hobby areas such as photography and computer graphics software, mostly Gimp and Adobe Photoshop.

Then one day at the end of 2007 I discovered 3D graphics. This medium liberated me from the limitation of my drawing skills, and, to a large extent, from my time constraints. It also allowed me to realize something about my skills: although my drawing and sketching have not gotten much better over the years, my understanding of composition, lighting and visual narration has improved, and considerably. Turns out I was not just going through the world all those years, I was observing it, and my once artistically trained eyes kept habitually analyzing whatever I saw and filing away the results for future use.

Once I started creating 3D art, I found myself deeply involved with the characters I put into my pictures. I tried to imagine their personalities in as much detail as I could. Every character had a background, a history, an emotional state and the reasons for it. I realized that I was not simply composing 3D images - I was telling a story with each one of them.

Unexpectedly, even my experience in literary analysis came in handy. While reading a script, or an illustration brief, I can analyze the text and come up with ways to portray the most important aspects of it, and make sure that not the tiniest detail gets omitted or misrepresented. If I enter a contest with a clearly stated theme, I know how to interpret the theme and how to accurately portray my interpretation.

My well-rounded geekiness lets me handle even my creative process algorithmically. I can easily break my projects into a series of tasks, come up with the most efficient way to create the piece, prioritize my tasks and find clever workarounds to any roadblocks I encounter along the way.

I arrived to the point where I know enough to realize how little I know, and I am eager to learn more. I am looking for an opportunity to grow as a professional, and diversify my skills. To make a long story short - I am looking for an exciting and challenging job or internship wherever visual tales are told.