jakeStephens

I am a creator. The world I live in is a palace of creation, a place of beauty and ingenuity, where ether meets substance and spirit meets flesh; where conviction meets passion and excellence is a way of life. I have a wide array of talent, and my only regret is that I cannot master them all, and yet I will try. I am proud to call myself a “jake of all trades” (or @ajekofalltrades).

Change is inevitable, but permanent, positive change must always be accomplished through conviction and hard work. I am a firm believer in Joseph Campbell’s words, “Follow your bliss” and my bliss is creation in all of its myriad forms.

My work background is in IT.  I started with a weird stint as a PC warranty repair tech and found out that I was really intuitive when it came to troubleshooting (you try and juggle Windows 95-era IRQ sharing and see if you can get your scanner working with your printer and tell me how it goes).  I stopped my warranty work (you drive 29,000 miles in 9 months and tell me if you want to keep doing it) and started working in a local shop with great people. I learned a lot about computers and honed my skills as we grew, becoming the go-to for designing and deploying servers and networks to our clients.  Eventually, our tech department, which I was pleased as punch to head up, managed hundreds of local businesses. I later took the leap into the NPO sector to head up IT for a local business, where I managed their network (and maybe done a few other things) for a while.

A few years back, with encouragement from those i love, I started my education at Full Sail as a Graphic Designer.  It seemed like a good way to change careers, since I loved working in PhotoShop and Illustrator in my spare time (hobbies # 36 & 120) and after getting three Course Director’s Awards it was looking like a slam dunk.  Then, as fate would have it, I had my work published in “The Aviator” (poetry, photography, digital work), Full Sail’s student publication…and because I had to okay my own work being shown there, I got a look at what other students were doing via Full Sail’s Tumblr.

I think it took me approximately 2 days (with paperwork and associated waiting) to change my enrollment to Computer Animation.  The Irony is that I’d wanted to do 3D since I graduated high school back in the days “BI” (i.e. “Before InterWebz”) and 3D had been one of my favorite hobbies (hobby #92) for a lot of that time.

(Just so you know, a pirate copy of 3DSMax 2.5 that took FOREVER to download from FTP in 2.88MB chunks at 33.6Kbps, didn’t run all that well on a Packard Bell…even with the overdrive chip that pushed it to a whopping 100MHz)

After a couple of years and much hard work, holding down two jobs (what can I say, I always have to keep busy), performing and stage managing in some local plays (hobbies #86 & 222), doing all of the other various and sundry nerdy hobbies I do (including, but not limited to hiking, kayaking, writing and performing music …and drinking gin), I received my Bachelor’s Degree (Valedictorian, baby!) from Full Sail University in Computer Animation, specializing in Digital Compositing. As a huge nerd, I can say safely that I love pretty much all parts of the pipeline, but I really enjoy hard surface modeling, animating, lighting, rendering, and of course, Compositing.

So yeah, I also enjoy being loquacious (hobby #3) and writing cheeky copy (hobby #6). Thousands of silly emails can’t be wrong. Well, are likely to be wrong, but still be funny.

If you want me to prove I make music I can…and sometimes, like I said, I write poetry. Just sayin’

Thanks for dropping by. All this? It’s a work in progress. Never quite as perfect as meeting new and interesting people. Drop me a line. jake….(at)….jakestephens.net.