Life After Disney

   Welp.. I don't work for Disney anymore.  The current direction they are taking involves no internal game studios..  so what happens next?   I believe I run around in a panic and show people what I am really good at in hopes of landing some work for the future.

   I've been at this for 20 years.  Well actually 19, but I will round up because I'm still going at it.  I picked up a small, but stressful gig using Animation:Master in 1997, and hopscotched my way into a decent 12 1/2 year run at Disney Interactive Studios.   I am very grateful to have found friends there, and work with them on such great products.

   It's not every day that your boss convinces a billion dollar company to hand over the helm for 5 years and be successful at it. When DIS shut down,  I joked to people that we had the cure for cancer, free energy and world peace on our servers. Now that its closed up shop nobody will ever know what fantastic ideas we had brewing.

Well... almost nobody. We still have our talents and our demo reels.  Here is my latest demo reel:

   I chuckle a little, because the last time I made one of these to get a job was back in the mid 90s. Each applicant had to have everything recorded to VHS cassette tapes. You needed a boardroom table to display your paintings, sketches, and prints. You had to go to Kinko's to find the best quality resume paper and manila envelope to present.  Now look how far we've come! Chances are, you're either reading this from the comfort of your home computer, on a cell phone sitting at a bus stop, or in the bathroom. You can cross reference, ask questions, and double check facts on me within minutes of reading this.

Ain't life grand?  Now its time to get back to the job search.

The Apatasaur playground

I visit my brother Matt a lot. He is my technical sounding board, runs MK1 Manufacturing and is just a plain crazy scoundrel to hang out with; You'd like him.

  One day a few years ago he asks me,"Remember back when we made dinos?  I want to make a dinosaur swing for the kids." What he was talking about was two decades ago.  He and I and my other brother James had built 40 sculptures for an outdoor museum up in Ogden, Utah. We were teenagers and didn't know much of anything other than resin and fiberglass is strong...oh and everyone in the 90's could stick-weld.

   So to me his statement wasn't that we should, but what can we do better now that we've mastered computer design, CNC machining, woodworking, electronics, 3d modeling...basically all of the things we didnt know that were inaccessible at the time that had slowly become our hobby and professions after 20 years.   I thought about it.. noodled a few sketches and figured, what the hell..

I started the model two years ago.  We  started construction in January '2015. We tightened the bolts on it to 12 tonnes of concrete in June,  and by july, had a platform to play with.   My brother and I like to tinker. over the next year added all the RGB lighting and bluetooth speakers and clubhouse and slides and climbing nets for the kids to hang out to their hearts content. 
  
But the most fun of it is all of us adults swing on the swings chatting and dreaming about the future just as much as our kids do.  

As it all turns out, the kids didn't need to go outside to play. We did.

Welcome to GumRoad

I have a few friends who are using the site GumRoad.com to sell their tutorials.   Amazing friends who are 1000% more talented than I am.   Since lulu was shut down and  also subsequently Bytecommerce, I have been processing video sales by hand, and running emails back and forth to make sure everyone got their links in order.  running data by hand is very discouraging and amidst the stress and jobs, it gets less motivating to complete the next big thing,  but now, I can say that I have found what seems to be a reliable service that can distribute my  messiah tutorials in a way that everyone is happy and promptly served, and I can focus on what I do best: making stuff.

please let me know if the links work proper (or if there are issues) either through email or setuptab.com.

LearnWings3d
Learn:Messiah Animation Tome
Learn:Messiah Rigging Tome

Here's to excellent creativity for years to come.
-JoeC

Rigging and Animation Tomes available!

good news!  I've tested all of my old data in messiah V5 and compiled it into two tomes of knowlege
Rigging Tome
Animation Tome

Those of you wishing to pick up the rest of the series cheaply,  use coupon code decgift  in the discount field.

Now everyone should be up to speed when V6 comes out :)

recovering from lulu....

lulu.com  has decided not to carry a certain product type anymore and focus on book and E-book publishing.
Let's just say that my entire video tutorial library was part of the 'certain product type' and now my links to lulu are empty.  So I have set up a new account with www.bytecommerce.com and am serving them myself through another provider.  
It has been 10 some-odd years since I had created a webpage...  the last program I used was called Web Dwarf.  I have given Google Sites a chance, and I really like the ease with which I can put up webspace.  It's certainly not as easy as a blog, but Google products are integrated, and I can cross reference media and galleries.
So.. if you all want to take a look at the sparse offerings at www.joecosman.net, a short page will redirect you to my google site... where you will also be able to 'buy it now' on the tutorials that *were* on lulu.  drop me a note if you have any questions or difficulties getting the videos.

Ch6: Effects

a simple explanation of how to use and layer Messiah effects on an object for complex deforms.

Rigging 1 foot re-explanation

It's strange how things come back to haunt you, even if its not your fault.  I have had my instructional videos out for 8 years now, and the only complaint I have gotten has been this tutorial video not yielding the same results for other people.
It turns out that some default settings had changed in messiah over the years, causing some headaches with my learning materials. But there isn't anything wrong with the project files or video at all.  Here's why: