Actually it was two months in west Hollywood to be exact. So I ended up quitting my job at Sun Microsystems and enrolled in the two-month Maya Fast Track program at the world famous Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, California. I moved into a studio apartment right next to Warner Brothers studios while I still maintained my apartment in Silicon Valley. Ironically, this apartment complex was also the home of a MTV series about roommates. I can’t recall the name of the MTV series however. I actually walked into a group of MTV technicians setting up lighting rigs on one evening. I definitely felt plenty of good vibes in the Burbank area. But why wouldn’t I. I was taking life by the horns and pursuing my life’s dream. About five miles away was the fledgling campus of the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Now what I haven’t told you by now is that I had been teaching myself how to use the advanced visual effects software application called Maya. Normally visual effects studios paid $50,000 or more for a single Maya license. I had found a cracked (illegal) copy on the internet and had successfully installed it about one year earlier. During that year I went through hundreds of online tutorials. It was always my childhood dream to work in the visual effects field and I was finally taking steps to make that happen. Long story short, after two months of instruction I knew I was not going to be a visual effects artist. My stuff was …eh. The other students were much better than I was. I loved learning how to use the software but I could not keep up with the progress and quality of the other students. It was an expensive but necessary journey and I don’t regret it at all. For kicks I have posted my demo reel below.