DAVE School - Production Diary – Condominium (Code name - Project 801)
Client – Paradigm Productions, Memphis, Tn.

I believe it was Booker T. Washington who said “Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.”



This is particularly relevant in the visual arts community where, except for those intimate with the process, the final product is usually all that is ever seen. Few witness the complexity of our craft.

If all goes as planned, the final product receives accolades worthy of intent; the client or viewing public reacts accordingly, backs are patted, in some cases money is exchanged, and we all move on to the next effort.

Recently, I had the honor and opportunity to lead a team of very talented 3D Production Artists on a school sponsored project geared to taking us to the next technical level, and teaching teaming techniques on a complex “real-world” effort. I would like to walk with you behind the scenes and introduce you to those behind the curtain that rapidly matured from individual talents with individual focus into an efficient collaborating team, and share with you some of the pains and gains we found along the way. I would also like to highlight the incredible guidance we received and identify those whose efforts inspired us to push through to completion.

We are fortunate to be at one of the premiere digital animation and visual effects schools in the country appropriately called the DAVE School (http://www.daveschool.com). Creators Jeff Scheetz and his wife Anne have put together a program with a team of world class instructors geared to taking proven creative talents to the next level and prepare them for the demanding and fast paced environments found at professional visual effects production studios around the world.

The DAVE School, located at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fl., has a program with 4 focused blocks of instruction each geared to a specific area within a professional studio workflow. Block 4 is a special and unique session where the entire class works together to create a 10 to 20 minute feature segment under real-world deadlines and situations. In other words, when you come to the DAVE School, you actually get to make movies.

In block 4 production artists also get special attention and guidance from respected and talented Academy awarding winning special effects artists Lee Stringer, and Ron Thornton who along the way, have collected a list of accomplishments so long that precludes listing here. Each one is an Icon in the visual effects community, and the fact that they are resident instructors here at the DAVE School should be reason enough for any aspiring artist to check out their program.

For our class though, Block 4 seems miles away because, if my math is right, we are only about half way through block 1. This sounds like we are just starting out, and in a way we are, however, the pace and quality of instruction has taken us to a place where few schools, and students get to go this early in the process.

As a class, we have worked very hard to get the opportunity to work on a real-world project with an experienced and professional production studio called Paradigm Productions (http://www.2dimes.com). Paradigm is a respected studio located in Memphis, Tennessee specializing in architectural illustration and visualization which leads to us on to our discussion.

Our instructor for Block 1 is William “Proton” Vaughan. For the few who may not already be familiar with William’s work, not only is he an accomplished artist, character modeler, writer, and moderator of the very popular 3D site “Spinquad” (http://www.spinquad.com), he is commonly referred to in the 3D community as the “Lightwave Evangelist”. Partnered with Newtek (http://www.newtek.com), the respected creators of our 3D tool of choice, William is uniquely qualified to guide us through the intricacies of learning methods necessary to drive the powerful, world-class suite of tools called Lightwave 3D. We also not only study the application, but through William’s thoughtful teaching methods, we learn the cognitive tools, and problem solving processes that allow a fluid transition to any of the other world-class tools and applications like Maya, Softimage XSI, or 3D Max should the opportunity arise.

About a week before project liftoff, William had provided just enough background to effectively tease us into submission. Anticipation was growing, and during many of the hallway conversations around DAVE, many of us were trying to guess what the project could be. Whatever it was, we knew it would be great but also knew it would be challenging.