Aaaha, you got scared
Just what was intended
No worries, this is not some sick Hollywood violent values copyPasta. I feel this project more like some
sort of Inception + Silent Hill 1 (the game) minus lame shootings and adults acting like .... in american films (somewhat).
My disappearance was due to risky shift in my life - i am now a ComputerScience/ Robotics student in local university. This year i started my
quest and struggle for computerScience education in my 30s. For the second time in my life, juuuust thanks to chain of
lucky circumstances, i am in a university at this age of mine. When i quit three years ago my job as 3D artist in a company
(for which i worked 4 years) due to nightmares and ugly race to the bottom of the ending chapter in that company's existence,
having good understanding of poor CG market where i live and realities, there was a real plan and even preparations done to
enable my studies in UK University of Hertfordshire, in 3D Game Art course for 3 years. There was quite a summoning of all my
miserable savings and money sums from close and friendly circles to make that happen in stages, as we planned it to happen.
Folks kind of believed in me and supported idea of me becoming more technologically skilled artist in abroad universities.
What's even more crazy is that i got accepted my portfolio and application, passed IELTS exams, had booked a room in student
apartments and got as far as the days of August 2016 .... the last remaining deadline days when i had to put my signature on
important papers, which would turn me with my own blessing into ... a debt slave for some financial middle-in-between-parasite
firm for the rest of my life
i said this won't happen.
You can laugh your bellies off, but its true that, as it turned out to be, the most important PARTS of the papers i really sat down
and read like 6 times in final days, after soooo much time (close to a year) invested in all other preparations
That is/was my second most, most bizarre planning step arrangement in social maneuvers.
That there will be a need of a credit of sorts to be taken - yes, that was understood. My crowdfunded finances would allow me, at
best, to pay for student apartments and food for 3 years max, and focus on studies. It is when i got so far as in a last days cared to
read legal papers additionally on that firms site and some from UK government education regulations and taxes, plus some internet
articles on student loan bubbles in UK, i realized how ..... almost life itself asked me whether art means so much for me that i am
ready to put a calmness of my sleep for the rest of my life at the mercy of UK loan collection firm clerks and few button clicks?
The answer was a clear no. And that was it. The same day i got sudden idea out of nowhere to check what is going on in local
university and somehow without hesitation i knew it had to be a computer science field - the only natural extension to my interest
from 3D computer animation to something related with computers/math/scientific creativity. And then hit the light - i learnt that
in computer science faculty there is even now a new three years bachelor course in robotics/ basics of artificial intelligence! Don't
know how but it hit me directly that i wanna be there right now. The costs of studies would be something like 1/5th of what it
would cost if a UK adventure would be chosen.
Long story short - having a quick slightly bizarre phone call-talk with a girl from a local firm dealing with applications to studies abroad,
a not so cheap champagne gift to her for efforts, after taking one year necessary preparatory courses in physics, math and programming
before university full-scale studies, and having this unique opportunity (one of theee best ones in my life so far) to get away with this
from working drudgery - after all of that i am now officially a robotics student in my second semester studying for free because of my
good records and marks from my high school diploma and previous three years of university studies (we have tuition free universities)
Our Riga Technical University is not the bottomest and last university in the world, it's records are ok and more or less plausible in Europe.
There happens even some CERN folks guest-lecture seminars for anyone interested.
In this bizarre leap of faith, a very very ironic one, it seems that i am back where i left 10 years ago - in 2008, the day when i decidedly went
to directorate of faculty and made my statement of my willingness to quit my studies due to my interest in creating my own animated short
film and becoming an artist (both of which i did by the way). This is madness of some sort.
Now i am happy, and so does my 'investors' - government got me covered, there are no loans taken and no agreements signed with loan firms
, computer science studies are hard, cool and so interesting, i felt
the same like when i was discovering 3dsmax step-by-step, tutorial-by-tutorial for myself back than when juuuust getting into 3D! Now its
for programming and physics, and math this time
I have only one missed lecture in previous semester! Math and algorithms science is like art in itself, believe me folks.
Now i am not that fast as young folks of 20. Never imagined that i will start applying to myself this "aaahh, the age is coming".
Now i do. It is really hard to get on time, but i manage to do it. I have only one relax day and its ok. In my 30s i know what a privilege it is to
even attend university - it is lucky adventure for me. Youngsters do yawn at math lectures but that is theirs problems. They don't know what
it is like to slave-labor for 8th day work week to meet clients deadlines so you get wage and pay nearly half of it in taxes. University life is
like a paradise to me after everything.
My quest for IT education is my new means for my future survival now. I know it will also be a horror show on its own to break into employment,
meet the realities of programmer workdays in companies and even to become professional up-to-date skilled computer scientist, especially with
my already old (but not obsolete, ok?) brain. At least now i have no illusions as to what expect.
My new art now looks something like this (sorry for non-verve; its just this time)
----- see the image below ----------
So...? What is with my art after all of this, you might wonder? Well, yes - ... i do have to tune in some sad notes here. It wasn't that easy
for me to recognize that art will probably never be experienced or practiced by me on intensity that i got used to. What did i do full year during
attendance of specific preparatory courses before jump into university, did i draw anything?
Yes!!! Quite a lot! 3D was abandoned though right at the moment when i realized that i have to care for renderings no more. I drew quite a lot on
paper, there is even something like half-completed story-board animatic (unpublished but in a patient-strategic-step progress). I knew this was my
last year in my life (September 2016 - September 2017) when i could afford to do something art-related during daytime.
It is just that it happened so that i took my time off the computer as much as i could and computer art was done considerably lesser. I added in my
signature my portfolio which i needed to enter contest for place in UK university - who are interested may check some of my works there.
You may folks relax and be sure i am not selling you my art - there is no commercial value and never will be to my portfolio anymore
It's just that it is there. But i will be adding there new stuff when it comes. I even now feel so great that whatever art will be from me it will be
purely by me for me for all with no capitalism in it.
Carefully i will be doing art because there is so much i would like to draw and get done until my last day. Since i decided that there is no need for me
to compete for CG skills, new tools, drudgery to know last rendering engine, ZBrush all the hi-poly frenzy and drudgery anymore, i can afford to shoot
and aim for lame keyframes, low-poly PSX era graphics and until my pension day, even while being a programmer, still step by step try to do in a matter
of 40-50 years during some Sundays or Saturdays a low-poly view-port only rendered full-movie cinematic on an old version of XSI 7.01 on any computer
where i can install it
So far art doesn't conflict with university since i learned how to discipline myself and allow to do any only and when all hometasks and lab-works are
done. And i found out that it really means quite a rare moments, some moments here and there like that rare Saturday, some pencil drawing in a bus
or lecture break. Artist in me i am pretty sure won't go anyway fatally, he is adjusting and staying with me
And Verve! You folks can only imagine what it meant for me to bring this swamp image into existence. I discovered that .... just by opening Verve, with
no training, and actually pretty fast (for me) i can get image done. This one came in about three to four hours.
This is not the only verve-paint that i have created, there is something more. I just struggle how to present those because they kind of go into probably
what could be considered to be among one of two THE most important, long developed and longest term and depth art project. Probably i will just snap
them here at some point. They are 100% verve.
Well, Heartcrab is one thing, accept it as it is. We will see not only dark stuff from me, i have some jokes in my head as well