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11/25/2008 04:57:00 AM

From Typing to Special Effects

Posted by Lorgen Shadoufang

I'm a fast typer.
Typist?
Typist.

There we go.

I'm a fast typist. But it's nothing to brag about (there are a lot of better typists out there). I only said that because I was taught by my parents* that typing efficiently was necessary in my future careers. Turned out that it really became very useful.

So, what I did was take our blue typewriter with me to my next door cousin's place, and typed away with a friend (Adrian Callejo) who also brought his own typewriter.

There we went at the front yard: Type, type, type. qwerty, qwerty, qwerty... jkl;... the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog near the bank of the river (or was it "near the river bank"?) several times.
Lots of times.
(And we probably even had some discussion about maybe the fox got stuck in a well with the dog (and a goat?)... and they had to choose who to jump out first by standing on one of the other's back.)

[You have to read this now as if I were whispering:]

And then suddenly one night, when I closed my eyes, I saw keys inside my head, in all the blackness. I found myself looking at them, figuring out where each letter was, if the letter "F" was really beside "G" or maybe it was "J"... and hitting them slowly.
And I said to myself, "Wow... this is great. I can see them in my head. I'm learning without the actual typewriter."[Here I stop whispering] (And I think I laughed a bit. :')


That was maybe when I was around 10. Now, over 15 years later, I still go back to that technique, although I'm finding it more difficult now. While my learning by visualization** back then was spontaneous, now I had to force myself.

Now, I've decided to focus on doing digital visual art: graphics... design... animation, 3D, and special effects stuff, and there are oh, so many buttons and commands, and scripts, and menus, and... whew! on oh, so many programs that I just don't know what to visualize at a certain time.

I guess all I need is focus.***
And, admittedly, more real-time experience.

------
A lot of times, though, after hours of playing Resident Evil, Starcraft, or Morrowind, images of those wonderful events still lingered in my head. I ran away from Ganados, cast spells, fired lasers, and went ASDW 'till my brain says, "All right, you addict, game's over."****

__________________
*My Father was an officer of the Philippine Air Force, and he had to work on a lot of documents; my mother was a teacher-turned-Guidance-Office-Head who obviously was required to work on even way more typed documents.
**I'm sure there's a more precise term for this.
***I'm sort of a jack of all trades, which isn't that good in some cases. Such as this.
****No, it doesn't really say that.

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