I REMEMBER THE MOMENT WELL, as I should, since it was the moment when I realized what I needed to do as an artist to make my mark in the world. What I wasn’t sure of was how big a mark I could make. What made the moment even more significant was that it took me over 6 years to figure it out. It began in 1989 when I graduated from the Hartford Art School (Connecticut) with a major in printmaking and a minor in Art History. I took enough Illustration classes to constitute a double major. The result: a portfolio filled with static lithographs, etchings and a multitude of illustrations of varied mediums. Animation didn’t exist in the curriculum and therefore was never an option. I never considered animation as a skill I would even be good at. After graduating, I pounded the pavement with portfolio in hand, knocking on as many doors as I could. With the exception of a handful of interviews, having no experience did not get me very far. The Internet didn’t really exist back then – at least not as we know it today. The term “home PC” hadn’t been invented yet, and I was stuck with a book filled with analog images that represented four hard years as an artist – and hardly anyone to show it to.

After 6 years of countless random jobs (jeep mechanic, restaurant manager, Boston Water & Sewer Collections Dept, etc....), I became aware of a local education software company that was producing a new animated series on Comedy Central. On a Monday morning I walked in the front door of this software company, gave my portfolio to the receptionist and told her I’d be back on Friday to pick it up. I turned around and walked out the door.

A month later, they hired me to work on an animated pilot for DreamWorks. At that time, the company used an old DOS-based animation program called Animator Pro (Autodesk) that soon became obselete. We turned to Flash and little did I realize the impact it would have on my career. Initially we were using Flash to animate for broadcast shows. We didn’t have a clue how to use it for the Web – until we got a deal to produce an animated series for shockwave.com (now atomfilms.com). I was put in charge of this project and had to ramp up my knowledge of Flash very quickly. During this time, my contact at Shockwave asked if I could speak at the Flash Forward conference in New York City. I agreed without knowing exactly what that meant.

I drove the 3 hours from Boston to NYC the day of my session. I shared the stage with two brothers, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, who had just started a small company in NYC called JibJab (ever heard of it?). We became fast friends and remain so even to this day.

That evening was the Flash Forward Film Festival, held in a huge theater with a very large screen that displayed the best use of Flash in several categories. Awards were being given and the excitement in the air was palpable. I never anticipated that a software program could generate such a buzz. I was witness to a culture being born, an entire society of Flash users who shared a common bond as if it were some secret handshake or cryptic language. And there I was, standing in the middle of their nest, surrounded by the frenetic buzzing and energy derived from this program.

It was my first experience seeing the best of the Web being celebrated on a huge stage and it suddenly all made sense to me – why I was there, what I was involved with, and what I had to do. It was my first moment of clarity.

To descibe the image of me standing in the back of the theater, watching this phenomenon transpire, recall the scene from The Blues Brothers film where John Belushi is in the church chanting “The band!” as he is struck by a holy beam of light through the church window. That was me. I knew from that moment on what I needed to do. I drove home as my head was spinning with ideas about how I was going to display my art with Flash for the world to finally see. It was a 3-hour drive and I never even turned on the radio the whole way.