This Usergroup meeting was held on Saturday, September 9th in room H232 of Collin County Community College. We started the meeting by making introductions around the room and then J. spoke briefly about the different facets of GUILD. These include:

• Community
• Usergroup meetings
• Open discussion
• Education
• Teachers Group
• Training classes
• Increasing the skill and ability level in the Dallas area
• Prosperity
• Bringing jobs to the Dallas market and community

Our guest speaker this month was Tony Hobdy of D7Studios (d7studios.com) where he is the Creative Producer. Tony is knowledgeable in major programs like Photoshop, After Effects, Maya, and Lightwave, along with web development concepts and software, and much more. Prior to D7Studios he owned and operated a web development company which he later sold off. He showed a D7 demo reel that included a Coca-Cola commercial and various animatics including one for an animated movie.

D7Studios is a concept company - meaning they generate ideas and concepts. They then work with production companies in the Dallas area to create and finish a project that originated with D7. As you can imagine, this requires a great degree of cooperation between companies. To bring work to the Dallas area, D7studios has a Rep company based in L.A. who puts D7’s name in front of potential clients.

In Tony's experience, L.A. looks at a studio's production history more than the quality of the work. Big name projects carry more weight than a high quality, no-name project. A lot of things in L.A. happen from a perception, or concept.

Tony finished up his presentation with some general information. He has a firm belief that everyone should know a bit about everything but be very good with one thing. It helps to cut down costs and time when everyone has an idea what the next person is doing so remember to communicate. Time is an important commodity, so managing your time well is a prized skill.

At the end of his talk Tony discussed the different learning curves of major 3D packages currently available. The last piece of information he provided was that concept artists are highly sought, but they need to be able to show an animatic when looking for work.

At the end of the meeting an open discussion was held with everyone in attendance. It was a great time and if you missed it we hope to see you at the next meeting!!