Ryan Zuber

Visual Communications 03 Graduate

UMBC Graduate 07 Visual Arts-Animation

Howdy!, It's great to hear from you, and I've heard that you've got spiffy new diggs at Joppa Hall–that's great news. I've been doing pretty well. I graduated, which is good, and am currently working at the Imaging Research Center at UMBC doing computer animation. I received an Imaging Research Center Fellowship as a junior and then was accepted as a student intern at the center. When I graduated, I was awarded a post-graduate fellowship at the center and have been here ever since.

I've created animation for a local feature film, 3D work for video game projects, and for the past year I've been making 3D animation for the Goddard Space Flight Center. Needless to say, I've been having a great time. Below, is a link to one of the projects I worked on while still a student. It's the only one with it's website still up, but it was pretty neat. It was a sound sensitive immersive environment and was accepted to the Symposium on Arts and Technology at the University of Utah. My professor and I got to present it at the conference.

You can see it here: Ryan's Cool Project

One of the things that I really liked about HCC was the sense of community among the students in the department. We worked late on projects in the computer lab, stressed over deadlines, and helped each other out. By the end of a semester there was a core group that was like a little family. I also felt free to experiment and explore concepts and techniques that were a bit outside the parameters of a given class. That's how I got started with 3D stuff in the beginning. There was no real class until later. But the software was there so I started messing around with it and incorporating it into my projects. I really enjoyed that freedom, and it was something that the skill, enthusiasm, and personal attention of the faculty had a lot to do with.

Thursday, September 13, 2007