The website that will inspire you

[thejedi]

Hello, everyone
Here is my website, and it will inspire you in your own productions

Henry Mbata - 3D Modeller, Animator Visual Effects Artist

There is a state of the art gallery that is sure to give you some very creative ideas
You can access it by going to Henry Mbata's Gallery
Thank you so much for your visit

Henry AKA The Jedi

[CU441ES]

Wow, you arent modeast at all :P

[thejedi]

thanks man

[geldslaw]

I had a look at your site and you've done well, really well, you should consider including your non digital skills, your concept art; drawings and paintings.

I would also include showing some of your models with and without textures, showing their meshes so your modelling skills can be appreciated. Also should categorise perhaps your models between low poly and high poly.

You have no character animations, so I am assuming when you say you're an animator, your refering to your ability to record an animation with all the key frames and inbetween being done by a program?

I also see that you have no architectural visualization work and I think this is a mistake as its a good means of making a stable income, to be able to model low and high poly architectural visualization work and do animated walk throughs.

With your aftereffects skills mixed with your max skills you could also if you wish create some samples motion graphics for program idents, and stings?

looking forward to seeing more of your work, oh and by the way, everyone who uses modelling packages are self taught, how else could anyone learn it, you can be shown something, whether from a book, helpfile or video, but you have to practice it yourself, so all learning is self taught. I would remove that description of being self taught, it might impress friends and family, but it insults professionals, who run courses and services to assist those who currently work in industry. Pixar and Dreamworks for example teach their staff their systems and they make incredible movies.

Are you saying that because you're self taught and these companies teach their staff that their staff are not as good as you? Do you see the problem you will run into by having such wording in your profile. What matters is that at end of the day, who ever you work with, how ever they acquired their skils, is that you can work equally as a team, so why alienate yourself?

hope my comments are well recieved, speak to you soon, keep up the good work

[thejedi]

Thank you so much, geldslaw, for a while there I thought I was getting Priceless advice from the Star Wars director, George Lucas. You tell of areas where i need to improve upon so vividly and realistically that I can even give you an Honorary degree on communication. First and foremost, I must thank you and the rest of the staff at Enjoy CG for providing artists like us with such a diverse community where we can truly express ourselves and tell our stories like never before. Little did I know, until you told me, that one can make a stable income from Architectural works! I don't know what I should do to repay you for building me into something better than what i was a few days ago. As for your website, EnjoyCG.COM, what i can say is that please keep up with the good work, and please keep providing quality content for the rest of the cg world.I have a business idea which involves selling training dvds on after effects and 3d max online. If you have the time and ideas, I would appreciate your response. Thank you so much once more

Henry AKA The Jedi

[geldslaw]

to be honest you won't make any money from selling training cd's, but the business potential for what you have to offer is immense. there are many aspects of the cg industry you can make money from. but to successfully make money you cannot do it by yourself.

I would suggest finding a college and asking them to hire you the rooms so that you can teach in the evenings and weekends 3ds max intensive courses, all the training materials are there for you to use.

you only need to pitch it at being basic, intermediate and advance

if you structure all courses to be 6 hours per session and 4 sessions for saturdays you would effectively have a training program spanning three months for all three levels.

if you could get a room for the evenings then you can teach the 3 different levels on three different nights a week also.

this all gives a you a complete turn around for basic intermediate and advance to be taught 4 times a year.

you would have to do market research to work out the pricing, as long as you remember you're giving introductory lessons and they have to produce the work to show you that they are working in their own time then there will not be any reasons why someone should fail the course and blame you.

you'll effectively eventually will need to have people who can teach the classes for you, so that you can hire more rooms and teach the other packages you're good at.

By using resources already in place, like a school or university you do not have to worry about the overheads, get everything you agree on with someone as far as business is concerned written down. people get funny and jealous when you start making money but if they're is a written agreement you're at least protecting yourself.

once you have a few people up to speed with the modelling and you have given them projects that assess their abilities and award them a certificate of accomplishment. if they're any good you could use them to work as a part of a previsualization team, it'll be slow at first but as the work is coming through you over a period of time and you'll have to do a lot of networking you establish a strong foothold and start generating a decent income based on commission.

hope that helps you get going

[thejedi]

Thank you so much for your suggestions, man, but one other question, you say there are many areas on the cg industry that one can make money from, if you can, please inform me of such ways, because my dream is to own my visual effects studio. You really do seem to be an expert in this field, if you have any ideas, please fell free to contact me

[geldslaw]

listen, you have to do your own research, I'm not charging you a consultancy for being an adviser to get you started. I'm a trained development consultant, I look at people or business services, well I used to, and would make recommendations on what could be improved, another word for what I used to do is Operational Research Analyst or bean counter.

unless you have the vision to see how to exploit the market you will never grow, learn from others, look at why, how, when, where and whom

[dollmaker]

there is something wrong with the car you did on your website...