New Chapter

2011 has been my year of learning hard lessons to say the least.

As I woke up yesterday to backup all my latest work I've created over the last couple months, my computer was humming. I didn't think much of it, I went to transfer files, got an error and thought I better restart the computer. Stupid move. When the computer was trying to restart, it was clicking, humming and practically singing to me. When my desktop loaded my main drive folder icons were missing. Luckily I have some great friends that are always able to help me with computer issues. This time however, not so lucky. Today I went to a "specialist" he opened up the drives in a clean room, came back out and said they were unrecoverable.

If he would have been able to recover them, it would have cost $1500. Which at the moment I would pay whatever to get everything back. I can't believe how stupid I was to allow this to happen, just a few months ago my only external stopped working, I just got that fixed last week. I kept telling myself over the weekend to backup. But I waited till Monday morning. Stupid move. In the past I've always been religious about backing up all my files, for some dumb reason I hadn't done this for a long while.

I lost everything, my new portfolio, the new 200+ storyboards I had been working on for a new short, and excited to show off for the Animation Collaborative, new animated pieces, 3 years of photos, all new projects for my company, all of my Tough Mudder video and animation I was creating. My library of reference folders, blah blah. I lost it all. I'm going to search for another "specialist". But things look grim.

I was also fortunate enough to land a gig animating for Idol Minds but because I'm leaving for AnimC I didn't feel right getting trained up and leaving only after a month. They felt the same way, it would have been contract work until the end of the year and a very fun game with lots of creatures to work on! :D

So now, I need to buy some new drives to replace the broken ones, consider getting a laptop, figure out if I should take my cintiq, try and find a place to live, reinstall everything and start backing things up properly. And getting my credit card approved for more money ;)  With all that shit I couldn't be more excited to be attending AnimC and starting a "new chapter".  It's almost like it was meant to happen for me to literally start over.

I'm still in great health, have great people in my life, and couldn't be more excited to learn from the best and be around incredible artists. This is an investment for me and one day it will all payoff. Look for new work to come in the following months!!

Oh - and if you are reading this, and telling yourself I should backup my work, let this be a reminder to back everything up! And not be stupid like I was. :)