hello
Welcome to the blog of susan davis.
Today is a very special day, not only because it's a beautiful rainy Sunday, but because I'm reworking the website that I created back in 2009.
A little backstory:
I grew up in the Bay Area, California.
In my younger years, my interests included painting, crafting, singing, dancing, and acting. I was better in English and Mathematics than Science, though I did like Physics to some extent. I was very shy throughout school, and mostly kept to myself, except when performing in acting/singing/dance classes. I spent a lot of my teenage years drawing, painting and writing; I especially loved drawing comics depicting silly adventures of my friends and I.
Upon entering college, with the decision to specialize in character design, I was given the choice of majoring in Media Arts and Animation or Game Art and Design; by the advice of the staff of the Art Institute of CA- SF, I started my curriculum in Game Art and Design, with the idea that being a female in a male-dominated field would give me an advantage. Within a couple of years, I learned that I had a stronger passion for animation than video games, so I switched to Media Arts and Animation. During college, I gravitated more to 2D animation than 3D work, though I studied both. My curriculum was intended to give me a foundation of many skills, so my classes included color theory, drafting, sculpture, 3D modelling and rigging, UV mapping, lighting and texture, audio design, motion graphics and compositing, 2D animation, acting and movement, typography, special effects, and more. By the time I was close to earning my Bachelor of Science degree, I'd helped build a couple of animated collaborations, including What Did You Do?, Tek Jansen, and ME-OW.
I graduated in 2009 with a demo reel of mostly 2D Flash animation, a tiny bit of 3D animation, and now-obsolete hand-drawn 2D animation.
... Job placement was not at its highest rate in 2009, especially if an animator with no experience did not specialize in 3D work. It was humbling to return to retail, but I continued to grow major personal and production skills, along with communication, color and design, attention to detail, customer service, problem-solving and mediation, even a bit of management and leadership.
In my spare time, I continued to draw and blog, adding to my DeviantArt, a Journal Blog, a Doodle Blog, a Beauty Blog, a Googley-Eyed Blog, a Creative Writing Blog, and Instagram. I was mostly driven by making art for others, often taking requests from members of online gaming communities like Neopets and Gaia Online.
In August 2013, I gave myself a personal challenge to watercolor an animal with each letter of the alphabet every day, from A to Z. I also discovered "Inktober", a similar daily drawing challenge during the month of October, and it's become a bit of an annual tradition for me now. In May 2014, I attempted to start up an Etsy store, and continued to update my main website. I had also joined a small game company called 2 Bee Soft LLC, where I helped work on an educational adventure game that would spread awareness of diminishing bee populations.
By 2015, I transitioned from working in an art supply store with custom framing, to a sign production store.
Before I entered into sign-making, I spent years working at an art supply and framing store... I became a bit of an art supply guru, and I'd use my awesome product knowledge to find creative solutions to all kinds of queries. I'd also serve as a personal designer, working one-on-one with clients to create custom framing designs. Sometimes that would mean using my awesome good taste and judgement, my keen eye for color and detail, and my deduction skills to play interior designer and turn a child's crayon scribble into a museum-ready preserved post-modern abstract masterpiece. Other times, I would tap into some extreme empathy, body language psychology, and waltz with verbal and nonverbal communicated clues to support the way the artwork spoke to my client. Knowing that the piece meant something specific to the client, my job was not to design around my personal tastes, but to define and satisfy the client's vision. (All this while delegating to associates and framers, charting sales data for later coaching opportunities, excusing myself to ring up quick sales, taking measurements, checking stock, visual merchandising, cleaning up broken glass in aisle seven, fixing a printer jam, gathering trash, cleaning bathrooms... )
... As a production member in a sign shop, I maintain and operate machinery, measure and cut materials, prep, print, and finish material graphics, signs, and banners, and assist on in-house and on-site installations. (I was offered the choice of joining the sales department or the production team, and I opted for the latter, as I prefer creating over selling.) My job is often fun, sometimes dangerous, and never boring. I'm learning a lot in the production pipeline, like how to step back and look at the big picture, and how to work around hiccups in the production plan...
Meanwhile, on the side, I've been doing occasional traditional art commissions. Since my discovery that I am motivated by others, I've joined a collaboration called Canvas and Metal. We just had our first art show/fair in December 2018. Working up to that Winter Art Fair, I painted new art pieces, designed business cards and digital flyers, and helped brainstorm a visually-stunning display for our collected crafts. The sense of community, artistic celebration, and loving support sparked something inside of me...
Today is a very special day, not only because it's a beautiful rainy Sunday, but because I'm reworking the website that I created back in 2009.
A little backstory:
I grew up in the Bay Area, California.
In my younger years, my interests included painting, crafting, singing, dancing, and acting. I was better in English and Mathematics than Science, though I did like Physics to some extent. I was very shy throughout school, and mostly kept to myself, except when performing in acting/singing/dance classes. I spent a lot of my teenage years drawing, painting and writing; I especially loved drawing comics depicting silly adventures of my friends and I.
Upon entering college, with the decision to specialize in character design, I was given the choice of majoring in Media Arts and Animation or Game Art and Design; by the advice of the staff of the Art Institute of CA- SF, I started my curriculum in Game Art and Design, with the idea that being a female in a male-dominated field would give me an advantage. Within a couple of years, I learned that I had a stronger passion for animation than video games, so I switched to Media Arts and Animation. During college, I gravitated more to 2D animation than 3D work, though I studied both. My curriculum was intended to give me a foundation of many skills, so my classes included color theory, drafting, sculpture, 3D modelling and rigging, UV mapping, lighting and texture, audio design, motion graphics and compositing, 2D animation, acting and movement, typography, special effects, and more. By the time I was close to earning my Bachelor of Science degree, I'd helped build a couple of animated collaborations, including What Did You Do?, Tek Jansen, and ME-OW.
I graduated in 2009 with a demo reel of mostly 2D Flash animation, a tiny bit of 3D animation, and now-obsolete hand-drawn 2D animation.
... Job placement was not at its highest rate in 2009, especially if an animator with no experience did not specialize in 3D work. It was humbling to return to retail, but I continued to grow major personal and production skills, along with communication, color and design, attention to detail, customer service, problem-solving and mediation, even a bit of management and leadership.
In my spare time, I continued to draw and blog, adding to my DeviantArt, a Journal Blog, a Doodle Blog, a Beauty Blog, a Googley-Eyed Blog, a Creative Writing Blog, and Instagram. I was mostly driven by making art for others, often taking requests from members of online gaming communities like Neopets and Gaia Online.
In August 2013, I gave myself a personal challenge to watercolor an animal with each letter of the alphabet every day, from A to Z. I also discovered "Inktober", a similar daily drawing challenge during the month of October, and it's become a bit of an annual tradition for me now. In May 2014, I attempted to start up an Etsy store, and continued to update my main website. I had also joined a small game company called 2 Bee Soft LLC, where I helped work on an educational adventure game that would spread awareness of diminishing bee populations.
By 2015, I transitioned from working in an art supply store with custom framing, to a sign production store.
Before I entered into sign-making, I spent years working at an art supply and framing store... I became a bit of an art supply guru, and I'd use my awesome product knowledge to find creative solutions to all kinds of queries. I'd also serve as a personal designer, working one-on-one with clients to create custom framing designs. Sometimes that would mean using my awesome good taste and judgement, my keen eye for color and detail, and my deduction skills to play interior designer and turn a child's crayon scribble into a museum-ready preserved post-modern abstract masterpiece. Other times, I would tap into some extreme empathy, body language psychology, and waltz with verbal and nonverbal communicated clues to support the way the artwork spoke to my client. Knowing that the piece meant something specific to the client, my job was not to design around my personal tastes, but to define and satisfy the client's vision. (All this while delegating to associates and framers, charting sales data for later coaching opportunities, excusing myself to ring up quick sales, taking measurements, checking stock, visual merchandising, cleaning up broken glass in aisle seven, fixing a printer jam, gathering trash, cleaning bathrooms... )
... As a production member in a sign shop, I maintain and operate machinery, measure and cut materials, prep, print, and finish material graphics, signs, and banners, and assist on in-house and on-site installations. (I was offered the choice of joining the sales department or the production team, and I opted for the latter, as I prefer creating over selling.) My job is often fun, sometimes dangerous, and never boring. I'm learning a lot in the production pipeline, like how to step back and look at the big picture, and how to work around hiccups in the production plan...
Meanwhile, on the side, I've been doing occasional traditional art commissions. Since my discovery that I am motivated by others, I've joined a collaboration called Canvas and Metal. We just had our first art show/fair in December 2018. Working up to that Winter Art Fair, I painted new art pieces, designed business cards and digital flyers, and helped brainstorm a visually-stunning display for our collected crafts. The sense of community, artistic celebration, and loving support sparked something inside of me...
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