Like any seasoned professional worth their weight in contacts, knowing who can help you when you need a job is vital to your long-term success no matter where you are in your career.  Creating your client list is like new business development; you need to know where the opportunities are when you go to sell your best commodity, yourself.

You may not think of yourself as a business but you should.  You are selling yourself each and every time you update your resume, pick up the phone, call in a favor, apply for a job or consider yourself for a promotion.  Don’t underestimate the power of who you are in relation to whom you know.  Developing your list of contacts and knowing how to skillfully and masterfully apply yourself to developing your relationships is key to being tapped for a job whether you are actively looking for one or not.  Remember EVERYONE is your client so begin treating people as if anyone can be a resource in helping you along the way to finding your next job.

I deem that every people, whether fulfilled bluntly oppressed or subtly manipulated by own rulers, or puppet masters, or pacified by the covertly preselected candidates to “democratically elect” from, sooner or later will awake. As history has proven repeatedly, it is then that they rise, rebel, demand a role in the way their lives and futures are being shaped. We have seen such awakening in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and, to a tiny extend, on Wall Street. Many such revolts are hastily taken advantage of by those who shrewdly manipulate such prospects to clench control for their own benefits or, worse yet, those interests that are vigilantly hidden behind them.

If countries, judged by many as undeveloped, are nonetheless capable of higher ideals, struggle for true freedom, than why we, who deem ourselves as the most advanced, the leaders of the “free world”, avoid to look the truth in the eye and admit to ourselves that we are lost in a desert of consumerism, disposability and materialistic excess, blown every which way by the gusts of shortsighted greed?

Directors Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski talks about the inspiration for the train in their film Madame Tutli-Putli at the PDI/DreamWorks Q&A.

At 20th Century Fox, I Met the Walrus producer Jerry Levitan talks about interviewing John Lennon when he was 14 years old.

It’s a job battle field out there and it calls for a warrior spirit.  Whether you live in the illusion that you possess “job security” or you are swinging from the vine hoping the limb won’t break before you hit the ground, this is no time for the faint of heart. Knowing that your job is a battlefield makes you appreciate the times when you can kick back and enjoy the ride even when you are not always sure where that ride will take you.  These tough times can make or break you but it will take a brave-heart-like warrior who can navigate the treacherous terrain at all odds.  Do you have what it takes to sit back and wait for change or make change happen for you?  Do you have the true job warrior spirit in you?

When it comes to finding and ACCEPTING a job offer we all have our lists.  It may be that your list contains what you would and would not want from your next job much like a list you’d create if you were picking the perfect mate.  But we all have our limits of what we would accept from a job regardless of how great it all sounds.  Even if you’ve been at this for a while, you still have standards, whether you choose to lower them or not is entirely a different matter. I’m not judging you by any means.  Let’s face it as we get older we seem less inclined to be as picky about certain things as when we were eager beavers graduating school wanting to take the world by it’s job-balls!

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, it was 1985 in fact, the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater thrilled me by selecting “Nick Brew”, my first ever CGI animated project, for its eminent annual screening of the best of computer animation from around the world. For me it was a foreword to the world of 3d computer animation.

I do admit, technologies utilized today by computer animation are simply breathtaking. Prospect such powers unveil are truly arousing. They made me itch for the chance to harness them, to will them to accomplish my imaginative feats, make my dreams come true. The insanely realistic modeling, texturing, shading, lighting and rendering are truly astonishing. Synthetic actors, their dynamics, the gestures and facial expressions are almost life like. Today it takes an experienced eye to differentiate a synthetic actor from a real live one. It is amazing. It's a genuine achievement. So what is wrong with this?

Being an outspoken individual I am often asked to project a vision of what I foresee in the near future, what lies ahead for media arts, or new media, or a creative palette of artistic expression? How do we anticipate the future and what will be the role for artistic individuals in its shaping? What kind of creative canvases will the future offer us? How will technology, sciences and their fusion with arts impact our creative powers? How will imagination fit into this brave new world?

I guaranty that there are as many answers to these questions as there are those individuals who are willing to risk sharing their answers to them. Hence I shall speak for myself and no one else. In recent years entertainment has become progressively more immersive and also, what is often referred to as 4D, aimed to impact us through all of our senses, make us experience it with our whole bodies. This is exciting! As interactivity is being injected into these experiences, the visitor, or the user, will progressively be empowered to play an active, creative role in own experience.