Andrew Dowell

I first came to Taiwan with my girlfriend over 6 years ago. She's now my wife and I've started a new chapter in life. I originally worked as an English Teacher with a school for 5 years until I could apply for a permanent visa. Without this, I couldn't apply for work within the film production industry without asking my new employer to pay for it. Without prior experience nor a solid background in the business, this wasn't likely to happen. But everything fell into place nicely, as it did six years ago whilst thinking about visiting Taiwan for the first time. Some moments in life present huge opportunities for great change, luckily I was ready. So, what's it all about. Many people ask me about my job and what I do. I am a Production Technical Director. but honestly this often confuses them as I try to explain specifics. The purpose of this blog is to quickly define the pre-production pipeline and where I fit in. According to Wikipedia, Pre-production is the proce...

As part of my job, I'm working as a research and development artist. We usually work with 3D software such as Maya and Zbrush to produce pre-visualizations for film, animations and theme park rides. It's fun creative and rewarding but you can easily get lost in a scene. Literally.  We are developing scenes which render in real time, and can be used with the Oculus device to help see the scene in action, from any position or angle without the use of pre-rendered video files or any actual sets being fabricated in real life. Epic games released the 'Unreal Engine 4' this year for free. By using a unique pricing plan you only start paying for the product licence once you start making money. There are tons of market place library assets appearing every week and are wonderfully easy to use (at first glance) with a high level of alteration in the blueprint maps. If you can dream it, anything can be achieved. Impossible is nothing.

It's been a few months already and I now understand why artists usually don't have current work on their website or blog. It's because they are busy working. Posting tweets and clever captions means I'm procrastinating. I embraced my procrastination. I developed my Pinterest account. I love it. I know what you're thinking, Pinterest is for girls and stay at home mums. They use it obsessively for a few months and then give up. But this could be the ultimate scrapbook resource for the inner artist. I have a hard drive with thousands of reference images that are neatly organized and generally very useful for getting inspiration. But it's not something I carry with me all the time, or can easily share at a moment's notice. And then there is also hardware failure which would be catastrophic. So, I've set about the task of updating everything into boards and into the Pinterest universe. It's a huge undertaking and I'll probably spend the next few mon...