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My journey began in high school when I started writing and animating my first big story called Axem Rangers X. It was the project that led to my decision of becoming a 3D environment artist because of the inspiration that my animation teacher gave me. Every time I began a new episode, I pictured my characters in different worlds, and it was always inspiring to tell a story while imagining the environment as the story progressed. Axem Rangers X definitely inspired me to step into 3D environment modeling because of the realism that every environment contains. Whether it be levels for video games or environments for TV shows and movies, working on this project alone made me want to create environments beyond my imagination. Today, my ongoing project: Axem Rangers X is currently airing on YouTube and it was recently nominated for the arts & culture award at the 2014 Montreal arts & culture gala at Dawson College for best cultural representation in an animated film.

Before joining the 3D animation course at Herzing College, I needed to gain some work experience, so I began job searching. I applied for the position of video producer and animator at Spectrum Productions; a video production studio that allows people with autism the freedom to let their voices be heard. I learnt the skills of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. With the new skills I learned, I was able to produce videos for schools. I also animated many short films such as Beethoven Octopus Episode 2 and Romeo vs Tybalt. Eventually, I was asked by directors to produce and star in live-action short films such as The Kenners 2 and Galactic Justice. As I produced these videos, I learned to follow the production pipelines and respect the submission deadlines. After all the hard work I put into these videos, myself and my fellow colleagues were invited to Ottawa where we attended the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorder Leadership Summit. We presented our work to Senator Jim Munson. In return, we received a standing ovation. Out of all the videos that I produced, Galactic Justice was another project that made me wanna create 3D environments. When watching Galactic Justice, the fictional environments looked so stunning, I couldn’t tell whether the environments were created in 3D or with a green screen.

I love environments. Every TV show or movie I watched or video game I played inspired me to draw comic book stories and sketch fictional levels for dream video games and movie projects which were impossible to create at the time since I had no knowledge of making video games nor movies whatsoever. And even though I didn’t have the resources either, I still wanted to learn the skills used in the 3D industry.

Axem Rangers X © 2009 by Francesco Bologna is licensed underCC BY-NC-ND 4.0