Mapping the world

Today started out slow and pretty much stayed that way for most of the day. I was assigned to an autodesk project where I needed to fix pathes that created the outlines of countries on a map of the world. I spent most of the day working on this and it was a very tedious process. Not exactly the work you look forward to as a designer. Most people didn't arrive until more towards the afternoon. I try hard to listen in to other conversations about project, but most of the time it's hard to pickup on what they're talking about. It seemed like one project that was being worked on really came down to the deadline and they barily finished on time.

I went out to lunch with some of the other designers/animators and found out that most of them were just doing freelance and weren't actually staff. I guess that's how it works in that particular field. It seems like you would get hired and fired pretty quick depending on how much work is needed to be done and the quality/quickness of product you are able to produce. I also found out that one of the girls (i think she's an animator) was a DMA grad student at UCLA for one year, but then dropped out to start work. The people I went out with didn't seem to be the most interesting and they talked about going out to gun ranges and playing video games a lot.

Later in the afternoon Alex arrived, but I continued work on the map project. I suppose I learned a little about pathes in photoshop, but nothing to amazing. It's interesting to hear the conversations about client feed back and how a lot of the time they just don't like the product at all. Alex had a conference call with a client at some point and I kind of wish I could listen in on those types of things. That's what I'm really interested in. The creative/client process. Hopefully as I am their longer more opportunities will arrise.

I really feel the need to learn Maya and After Effects so I can be put on some of the cooler projects. I don't feel like I can ask people to help because they are all so busy trying to make dealines. I really hope I am able to learn somethings, but I just don't know how to go about it yet.