Let me introduce myself: my name is Cheri Arbuckle and I’m studying Simulation and Game Design at Wake Technical Community College. This won’t be a traditional on-line portfolio; I don’t have enough of a body of work to put that together yet. This is more of just a showcase for me to display my work and talk about my choice to study art for simulation and games at fifty. That’s right, I started my studies just after I turned fifty. I’m currently in the second semester of my first year of school. I’m a part-time student as I have health issues that prevent me from going full time.
What made me decide to take this step at fifty? A number of reasons, mostly having to do life goals. By fifty, I realized I’d achieved all of the big life goals I’d set for myself. I’d gotten my bachelor’s degree (Theatre [costume design], with a minor in Fine and Applied Arts), left an abusive marriage, learned to drive (something that for various reasons I didn’t accomplish until I was in my forties), earned two black belts. I’m very happily married, my only child is an adult now and I really had nothing in my life to work towards, no goal to keep me motivated. I considered returning to school to finish a computer programming degree, begun ten years ago. But ten years is a long time in the computer world and I discovered I’d have needed to start the whole degree over, as languages and course requirements had changed. And my heart isn’t in programming. It was simply something I’d left undone.
So my heart sister talked to me, saying that as long as I had to start over, why didn’t I start over in something that had long been a dream of mine: computer art and animation. And if I wasn’t going to do it now, when was I going to? She had a good point and I enrolled. It was definitely the right decision. My design skills are still sharp, but after over twenty years, my technique is really rusty and sometimes I feel like I’m starting over from the beginning. And really, I am. The last time I was in art school, Photoshop didn’t exist, computer art was an elective in the computer science department (who sure weren’t going to let any of us artists near their machines), and we were creating graphic pieces with non-photo blue grid boards, wax sticks, and Letraset letters.
I taught myself InDesign, Fireworks and Dreamweaver in a flirtation with web design when my daughter was a toddler, and I’ve used every version of Photoshop since 5.5, so I’m not a complete computer art neophyte, but I’m very close to it. I’ve just started learning Substance Painter in school and am absolutely loving it, now that I’m finally starting to figure my way around it. My plan is to post my work as I finish it: the good, the bad and the ugly. I may even post some of my better college pieces when I have nothing else to post and you can see how far I’ve come since I started this new endeavor last fall (2017).
Please forgive the construction mess here. I’m still shaking out the elements of this theme and I’m getting some unexpected results. So if there are wonky menus covering headers or such, please know that I’m working to sort everything out and will get rid of them as soon as I can.
The image is of Sophie, she’s a mascot of mine (and one of those better pictures from college). She’s also the centaur silhouette on this site’s banner. She can serve as a barometer as I improve.