DMA: Day 1

Wow what a day. I'm exhausted. I had to get up at 6am this morning so I could be at the DMA by 8. Waking up early just isn't for me. As everyone was filing into the room, one thing struck me. Everyone in the class was late middle school to high school age with the exception of one woman who was well older than everyone. If there's one thing I can't stand is kids that age. On top of that, they were all boys aside from the woman and this one young girl. Once I noticed everyone's age (or lack thereof) I knew this class was gonna be jacked. I had originally expected the class to be full of people who already had a fair amount of experience doing 3D stuff, but I guess I was way off. So day 1 basically consisted of a speedy introduction to 3D Studio Max and 3D modeling. All in all it was painfully slow as they really didn't cover anything I didn't already know. At the very least I learned a few shortcuts, but nothing new. We spent most of the time learning the interface and then doing a little box modeling of a face. After that the instructor told us to pick our favorite firearm and try to model it in Max using a reference photo. I had a little trouble finding reference pics, but I found a great pic of a shoulder-fired RPG, so I began modeling that but ran out of time so I'm guessing we'll pick it up tomorrow. All in all it was an interesting day. The only thing that bugged me were the kids. Being in a room full of immature, impatient, whiny adolescent boys just drove me nuts. They couldn't follow directions most of the time and would bug the instructor for help a lot, which is the main reason for our slow pace. The girl next to me couldn't do a single thing right, so every couple minutes she'd call the instructor over for help. Argh. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little more fun. All this waking up early is gonna kill me though.