James Stephens,
Animation BFA, Senior Spring 2024,
Anticipated Graduation Fall 2024
What inspired me to pursue animation was my interest in game development. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia and worked in a factory setting like most of my peers, but as a hobby, I enjoyed building mods for one of my personal favorite video games, Fallout 4, on the Bethesda Creation Kit, a modding toolkit. This eventually led me into learning about Blender 3D. After about a year of tinkering with the two platforms, I decided to sell my house that I remodeled and use the proceeds to go to the University of Tampa. I saw way more opportunity in Florida and my family was planning on making the move there too, so I joined them.
At the University of Tampa, I had tremendous help from professors such as Dana Corrigan in learning the key principles of animation in 2D settings as well as being introduced into the more technical side of HTML5 Canvas coding from Santiago Echeverry. This is where I really learned my strengths in scripting and computer logic. As a result, I furthered my studies by reading books on Ai theory such as Foundations of Prompt Engineering by Jon Adams and Computer Jargon by Kevin Wilson, in-order to further my understanding of an ever-changing technical field.
My weakness is my traditional drawing skills. While I have good creativity and good dexterity overall for computer parts swapping, when it comes to my drawing skills, I make a lot of mistakes before getting the drawing right which makes my progress slower than I care to admit. This weakness made me lean towards 3D since I could blend traditional artistry and technical expertise together. The way I have overcome this weakness is by using references, guides, and various corrective tools built into various drawing software applications. I hope someday to get more comfortable with professional drawing, but my main focus is 3D, so I do not get too hung up on one skill type, but I do not forget to develop that area either.
I can see myself in various fields, not limited to only game development. My factory experience, and asset modeling would make me a prime candidate for architecture firms, product advertising, and VFX. Ideally, I want a position where I can show my creativity in the digital world and grow as an individual within a company. I would like to bring forth to the table my best self and be able to expand my horizons so that I can be prepared for any challenge that comes my way. Overall, I like to understand how things work, and tend to focus on unraveling mysteries so that I have a full comprehension of whatever it is that I pursue.