Digital Dave

Before heading into the independent realm I worked in the visual effects industry with a Disney owned company, ImageMovers Digital. Today one of our final projects hit the big screen! We had an amazing crew of artists, developers, support and managerial staff that made the company, not only thrilling, but a unique place to work. It’s surreal to say I worked under Robert Zemeckis and I really hope he is able to find a way to bring our other projects to the screen.

Incredibly passionate, dedicated, and extremely talented. The people I worked closely with in engineering were extremely bright and I’m humbled that I was able to work with them. There will never be a place like ImageMovers Digital.

Over the past few months I have been getting my mind, and environment, oriented for what was to come. My prior studio ended up closing it’s doors in December after Disney made the decision earlier in the year to shut it down. As much as I love the bay area it just is not in the cards for now. My wife and I loaded everything up to move back to Kansas.

As it stands the Wichita area is not exactly a technology hub. Sure, there are technology needs, but I have little desire to work in COBAL… Kidding, of course. The type of work in this area is not interesting by any stretch. The Kansas City area is pretty solid (with Garmin and Cerner for example), but we decided that if we moved away from the bay area it would be so we could be closer to family. In addition, I would spend the time to build my own stuff.

I’ve always wanted to do my own thing and/or be part of something fresh at a startup.

So here we are. I plan to knock out some contracts while continuing to build upon iGotIt Games. At this point, all doors are open. You might even see me work on building a web-based company or even a furniture store… Who knows!

For a first job out of college I must say I landed on one of the most interesting career paths. The movie industry is a very, very interesting industry in the way software development is produced and controlled. I have to say that I learned a lot. I was fortunate in that I wasn’t stuck on one project, but I moved to several large projects within our department. This company was a start-up controlled by a much larger beast — which one would think would lead to reassurance and comfort. Despite a normal earnings we were ultimately shut down due to a philosophy change. Which is fair – it’s business.

So now I sit in an interesting position. My first year here was largely getting accustomed to how things work; development, the movie industry, terminology, tools, people, systems. Let’s see what I can take away from this experience:

• Worked with our build system based on Buildbot
• Wrote unit tests for one of our major studio tools (python)
• Investigated UI testing packages and getting the studio to adopt Squish (which has been great)
• Investigated a new build system, Hudson, for our unit/ui testing (our buildbot setup was fairly rough, the build engineer and I were the only ones confident enough to touch it)
• Integrated UI tests and unit tests into our build system
• Integrated 2 features into a major studio tool used for viewing movie clips generated by artists
• Fixed several bugs in 4 of our studio tools
• Helped put out a lot of fires

During this time, I had the will to spend time working on independent development in other areas after getting home at 7pm.

• Learned Objective-C, Cocoa, iPhone OS frameworks, SQL Lite
• Developed Spin & Shoot as a first project
• Created a tool in C# to assist in data entry for the Spin & Shoot database
• Developed Project Void
• Developed a website for a local business back home, nothing fancy (html,css): http://www.pmtsap.com
• Wrote a small application for a buddy
• Created a couple of prototypes for future iPhone work

I would say that if it wasn’t for my independent work, I would be pretty screwed since I was learning a lot of a wide array of things.

I’m in the process of figuring out what is next. I can say that I have little desire to ever work in the movie business. It is great for artists, not so much for developers that really want to change the world. I ultimately came here for the experience, not to make a 30 year career out of it.

What’s next?

I’m interested in a few things right now.

Joining a startup is something I am considering. My impact will be much, much greater and I already have the burning desire to start a company on my own whenever the right business idea or partner comes around. So this could be a great learning experience.

iOS development (iPhone/iPod/iPad) is very, very interesting right now. I absolutely love the devices; the style, interaction, functionality, usability.  And programming for these devices can be pretty fun.

Web development (css/js/java/python) is where the world is. We all revolve around the internet. I have extremely limited experience here, but I am very interested in learning more. Thus far I’ve only really experimented with ExtJS.

Tool development (c#/.net) is fun as well. C# is one of the obvious languages I jump to when I need a tool developed to supplement another technical need. I could see doing this full time and having a blast with it, but my experience is limited.

I’m going to get on the trail and begin searching hardcore.  So if you’re hiring, feel free to get in touch.

Resume: http://folio.david-mcgraw.com/dlm_resume.pdf

So we finally got Spin & Shoot submitted to Apple over the weekend.  Let’s hope the review process goes well and we can get it on the store.  Megan and I are pretty excited to have a completed project under our belt.

I’ve created a launch website if you’d like to check it out here.

As for the next project, I’ve been designing away for the last few weeks on paper on a couple of projects, and I finally put together a prototype of one of them, Project Void (tentatively named), on Sunday.  It feels really good in my opinion.  I showed it off to somebody at work and they had seemingly good feelings about it by way of giving me ideas on what to do and praising the look and feel.  I’m going to shoot for a very clean and slick interface with this game.  And yes, this will be game – a casual puzzle game.  I’m excited.

Spin & Shoot took nearly 1-2 months to complete over a span of 6 months.  I had a LOT going on through the development and I am hoping that I can just crunch on Project Void and get it out of the door in 1 month (optimistic).  It’ll likely take 2 months.  I’m getting married next week, Megan is going to be out here, so I’m going to have to be very crafty with my development time while she adjusts to her new environment.

Oh, yeah. Marriage… Here we come! (Yes, I’m pretty excited).  Megan still hasn’t even seen Northern California!

I’m pretty excited about this event that is going on in 77 days.  If you’re not aware, I asked Megan to marry me December of 2007, and time has finally come up on us to get the party started.  Most of everything is set and planned, side from just a couple of things.  It felt like yesterday that I said we had 100 days.  Time is flying.

So what have I been up to? Work. Which is probably reason #1 as to why my week goes by so damn quick.

And an independent iPhone project. I’m at the point where I need to get it into some peoples hands so I can come down to a final decision on if I’ll post it on iTunes for free, or sell it for, likely, $0.99.  It’s a drinking game that is designed to be played at a bar with friends.  You can consider it a catalog of drinks like the cocktails application, but with a slight variation to it – namely, the game/competition factor. And no, I don’t worry about the history of the drinks…

In other news.

The campaign to promote the movie is going to get on the road, err, tracks soon.  Read the buzz here: Train

Not that it wasn’t expected.

So this is my fourth week with IMD.  I’ve had my hands on all kinds of things, from the build system to an array of tools and systems.  I’ve written some integration testing scripts, learned all kinds of linux tricks, read a lot of information, sat through a few classes, messed around with some broken C++ and Python code, fixed some Python code, watched pieces of the movie, and… The list goes on and on.  They’ve kept me relatively busy.

The clips that I’ve seen look phenomenal.  But I guess I hold a bias now?  Bleh. It’s sweet.

Working from 8:30 A.M to 6:30 P.M sure doesn’t give me a lot of time to tinker with any hobby projects. I normally crash out at 10:00 P.M, so I’m sure I could wake up 5:30 or so to work on something.

This past weekend I put PyQt on my system and began writing a pathfinding application.   That happens to be a weakness at the moment that I need to tackle (PyQt).  Hopefully I can get some work done on it and post my results/source.

I also spent some time brushing up on some linear algebra.  In college I only took Calculus and another math class that gave me a slight introduction to linear algebra.  If I have any hope to get over to help the R&D side of IMD, this is a critical element.  Luckily I work with a bunch of geeks now, so I can’t imagine that one of them wouldn’t like to share some knowledge.

I’ve been wanting to watch some of MIT’s opencourseware videos since last year, but things were understandably busy.  Now I actually have weekends and nights to focus on these things.

This also brings up another point of interest… I’ve been thinking about what university I could possibly attend for my masters degree and what kind of topic I would like to research here in NorCal.  Both are at a stand-still.  I just don’t know.  Berkeley would be sexy but I doubt that I have a chance there.

But that brings up another issue that I’m still debating.  Do I want to go the MSE route or MS route?  My mind is all around a MS.  I have a year until I gain my California residency, so I have some time.  Hopefully I can spend some time exposing myself to some of the 3D technology.  I’m sure there are a ton of problems revolving graphics.  This school dilemma could be a post in itself.

Well that was an exciting week.  Not that the prior sentence alone could justify my excitement.  I am extremely happy and fortunate that I was blessed with this opportunity.  In a California economy with 10.5% unemployment, and 1.95 million people unemployed, I find this unbelievable.

So the week involved a lot of training on Disney, IMD, and the union.  I also spent a lot of time learning about a few of the many, many systems that make up IMD’s pipeline.  So far things are going great.

I even got my first coding assignment (started on Friday)!  I knocked out the first task and nearly finished up the rest of the tasks (will finish those up on Monday).  It involved writing some integration tests for a new tool we will be releasing.  Linux and the shell are still very new to me,  but I didn’t let that get in the way and knocked it out.  The good thing is that I learn very fast when I’m hands on, which they’ve taken notice to.

So I’m the second ATD to join the team.  What makes this cooler is that they are looking for a third.  Why is that cool?  A few reasons, but primarily I won’t be the lowbie anymore.

None of this is new information, but if you’re not aware, our first feature is A Christmas Carol.  Jim Carey plays a ton of roles in the feature, and by all accounts it looks like it’s going to rock (seeing some of the renderings, and clips which blow my mind).

So!  Our work area is extremely intriguing.  If you were not aware we occupy two old aircraft hangars on the old Hamilton Air Force Base (decommissioned in ’74).  This is beyond awesome due to my history with the military.

This is what the hangars look like.  We actually have the hangar with the flight tower, which is epic.

This is the hangar (7) where all the artists and animators hang out at.  Why I didn’t take a picture of hangar 9 (where I’m at), I don’t know… But you can see it in the reflection at least!

Guess who our next door neighbor is? Ok, I’ll tell.

2K Games! *peeks into the windows*  ;p

But yeah, the area is rich with history.  Hit up Wikipedia or Google and look at some of the old images of this place.  It’s pretty sweet.

Social networking has taken a huge leap forward.  No longer are we dealing with seemingly static pages like LinkedIn and any job searching site, but we now have a newer and brighter tool – a miniature chat room in our face – Twitter.  News rooms are already adapting live streaming into their broadcasting.  Live stream of what your friends are doing just went live on Facebook.  It looks like this live-streaming concept is really catching on.

If you haven’t seen Twitter yet, I highly recommend you visit http://twitter.com and tinker around.  You’re sure to find it engaging to follow people with similar interests as yourself, which is exactly what got me into it.

I was in the depth of my job search when I joined Twitter; my goal was to make myself visible beyond Dice, LinkedIn, Facebook and my blog/portfolio (Monster and Career Builder were useless).  I was trying to open as many platforms as I could, knowing that it was going to be a rough ride to find a job due to a.) the economic slump, and b.) wanting to get out of Kansas. The direct nature of Twitter makes networking much easier to accomplish.

One day I saw a random tweet from an individual claiming that they LOVED their work at Six Apart in San Francisco. I was familiar with the company from my career research on them in the past.  Jokingly (but seriously), I sent out this tweet:

Not long after I sent that message I received a few DMs from another follower in my network.

Later that night I also got a DM from the individual that I initially sent my tweet to, asking for my resume.

I jumped on the IMD website and began looking at the careers page.  The follower from my network and I passed a few e-mails between each other.  He gave me some more information about IMD, like what they do and what kind of work he has done there.  Needless to say I was hooked and I sent out my resume for him to pass along.

After several conversations with IMD’s recruiter, a phone interview with one of the production engineers and an on-site interview with 4 members of the team, I was contacted on March 6th with a formal offer.  I announced my epic win to the follower who helped me and he threw this back:

and…

“I just got you in the door.” With that I was able to take advantage of the opportunity provided this time.

This train is moving, and without a doubt it helped me get to the next level of my life.  Through the last 6 months of job searching, I did not find one individual that was in my network that did not try and get me employed when they saw I needed help, but those positions didn’t match up as well as this most recent.  People are generous and they want to help, but they can’t help if they don’t know you are there and in need.

These doors are all over the place if you are willing to search for them and to use them.

Take this for example. I just recently found a new Twitter page called Job Angles (http://twitter.com/jobangels) that I was going to abuse if this opportunity fell through.  Their purpose is to find people who are searching for jobs or people who are aiding others in their job search, and to make them visible to the 3000+ followers. A grass roots movement!

So challenge yourself and say hello to a random person on Twitter, or graciously lurk around and make yourself visible by presenting your thoughts like I did.  Regardless, Twitter is a powerful median to express yourself and to easily be found by others. Take advantage of it.

I am still determining the start date start March 23rd; but I am now a… *drumroll*

Production Engineering Assistant Technical Director

at

ImageMovers Digital

a

Disney Company

How wild is that?  Words can’t express how excited I am about this opportunity.

What opened the door to this opportunity?  Twitter. Believe that.

Well, my feet have been on the ground for 2 weeks now.  Things are going awfully slow, but they are moving.  I’ve had a few opportunities, one being a perfect one in my mind.  It will allow me to program in Python and C++ (!), and learn/do a LOT. As they put it, they need a “Front-Line Fire Fighter.”  Ironically enough, I’ve been pretty close some wild front lines, and this place is on an old military base.

I’m still waiting to hear back from them.