Building Communities – Writing and Graphics with Heather Craik

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Writers – to me – have always been incredibly interesting people. Writers come from every class, from humble and practically impoverished to scandalous and aristocratically wealthy.

No matter what kind of person, all writers are united by some strange compulsion to write. And by writing, I really mean creating and building and organizing and making sense of things. This applies to technical writers doing battle with engineers as much as science fiction writers working on the next 6000 word space opera. Or poets doing whatever it is that poets do. (I’ve been told I’m fundamentally a poet, maybe I’m too close to the flame to see it. I’ll attest to the heat.)

The bloggers I most closely relate to are writers at heart. Figuring stuff out. Building stuff. Creating stuff.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I wanted to interview everyone in Carlos Velez Pre-writing challenge. Next up is Heather Craik, from Scotland, that country north of England. Heather is a writer too, and writes on her blog The 3D Student, hosted on shadesofadream.com.

(Note: Heather is just now recovering from being hacked; getting restarted is always a little bumpy.)

WiaW: Why did you decide to start blogging?

Heather: Essentially I’m blogging to create a resource that I’ve never really seen addressed anywhere else within the 3D industry, at least not in its entirety. I want to make somewhere that people – hobbyists, beginners, those in the industry – can come along and learn little tweaks and tips that’ll help them work better, or even share tips of their own. Somewhere we can create a real community in a more structured setting than a forum, and where we can really raise issues and talk about them as a whole.

Courses do a great job of teaching you a broad range of skills, other tutorials can show you how to create specific things or general overviews to give you a rough idea of the steps involved. I want to make something that gets right into the blood and guts of the process, and not only shows you the techniques and methods, but lets you develop yourself and learn your own ways of working. Your own ways. That part’s the important bit.

On a personal level, I want to meet people, I want to share what I know, and ultimately I want to make some sort of an income doing so. It’s fun for me, and it lets me learn too which I think is really important.

WiaW: How does your graphics work differ, or will differ, from others in your graphics community?

Heather: At the moment I’m still finding my feet with my own style, and I may even be doing so for years. I’m new (ish) which means that at the moment I really get the chance to experiment and learn without being too locked into a particular way or method.

I like working with light and texture, and I enjoy making the effects themselves (think water, fire, explosions, dust, fireworks, etc); that’s the part that really kicks my brain into gear. After that it comes down to what catches my interest; I’m a huge fan of fantasy and sci fi so no doubt that’ll play a role.

WiaW: Is blogging popular in the graphics community?

Heather: Yes and no. I think that (like most niches) 3D has some really good blogs out there, some of which are pretty big and successful others are literally just personal blogs for tracking progress. Sadly, most of them pick up and are dropped again within the first few months, but I am noticing more appearing and sticking around; there’s a possible trend there.

WiaW: Where you want to take the intersection between blogging and graphics?

Heather: Blogging’s only the beginning for what I want to do. Basically I’m aiming to create a cohesive training platform/entertainment centre/community for Lighting, Texturing and 3D Visual Effects. My blog’s the start, but I’m going to be blending in ebooks (free and non), models, video, audio, portfolios, guest speakers, tutorials, comics, animations; I want to create something much bigger than myself or my blog. I want to take our combined knowledge, and make it easy for other people to not only learn what we do, but what works for them and what they can bring to the medium.

It’s a long way off, but I’ve got the time. We’ll see where it ends up.

Website In A Weekend – building communities

I’m occasionally asked what Website In A Weekend is all about. Aside from the literal notion of building a website in a weekend (all of which is here), it’s about building website-based communities. A large number of regular readers here are building communities, and if this is something you would like as well, stick around. There’s more interviews coming up, from both Pre-writing participants, and people outside our collective niche.