The Game Plan

EDIT/UPDATE: Taking a term off from teaching and going to push hard on upping my skills. Of course in Maya effects, but also in other areas... here's the plan. Right now, 3dsmax, Fume, Krakatoa, Fracture, and Maya are my main focuses.

Nuke :: working knowledge - advanced
    currently : none
    plan : Gnomon Nuke DVD's or just have some guys at work show me the ropes.
General Compositing, going through "The Art and Science of Digital Compositing" <- great book

3dMax :: general good working knowlage
    currently : Got 3dsmax, doing some basic tutorials to learn the interface
    plan : Assortment of Gnomon DVD's (not sure yet which ones)
Fume :: advanced
    currently : got it, not working.
    plan : mess around with it, have my friend Ian Farnsworth  show me a thing or two
Krakatoa :: working
    currently : none
    plan : online tutorials


Maya
advanced lighting; rendering in Mental Ray
    currently : good
    plan : Gnomon DVD's and read "Introduction to Computer Graphics" by James D. Foley

Fracture (Maya Plug-in): advanced
    current : some tutorials
    plan : use it at work (got it) and get really good with it.

Houdini :: not actively 
    current : decent can get around and do what I need to, but I'm slower right now in H than Maya

The overall plan is to get 3dsmax, Fume, and Krakatoa into Asylum so I can use it everyday on shots that would benefit from it. Thats the best way to learn it, but have to start by showing some cool examples of what I can do with it first.

Comments enabled!

Finally figured out why comments weren't enabled.

Halo ODST

It's not much (what I did) but in 2.5 days I made 2 of the alien ships explode with smoke trails. The easiest one to point out is the crash right before the fade to the future of that Marine or whatever master chief kind of guy he is. Anyhoo, cool trailer/short thingy!

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/852871/bungie-project-2/videos/haloodst_liveaction_trl_090409.html