Bom saber que esta terminando finalmente mais uma jornada. Espero que consiga tudo que tem lutado.. e que mais coisas venham!

Abraços
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It’s good to know that you’re finally finishing your journey. I hope that you find all that you fight for.. and that new challenges came!

[]s
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Celina (aka cezinha)

And I’m looking foward to using the Fnk soon, huh ;]

Keep it up the awesome work.

Now serius… congrats for your degree, and for firstbourne.
I will be waiting for the history of how it happend.

I had followed your blog regularly and wondered if you went on some sort of sabbatical or maybe decided to abandon the Flash platform. Thanks for clarifying the matter.

Sucks about not having the time for Tweener updates… its still my animation api of choice even with the great strides TweenLite has made.

Looking forward to seeing your Flash 10 thesis project.

cheers,

Evan

Good luck it will be fun, I looked at it at as an adventure it is funny you mention indy.

escee: that’s a big question and one I’ve been asked many times – and one I’ve asked MYSELF a few times too. Almost everybody who worked with me thought I was pretty crazy to go back and waste some time getting a degree (specially here in Brazil — really, one of the last things a real quality studio would look into when considering hiring me is whether I have a degree or not, and if one did, it was not a place I’d be willing to work with anyway). People still respected my decision though, so it’s not like that was ever an issue.

It’d be a bit lengthy to answer that question now. I’ll do so in the future, but I think it suffices to say that there’s a lot I’ve learned even if, at a technical level, I know a lot more than pretty much most teachers there (the course is mostly theorical/experimental, it’s not Computer Science or anything). I guess it’s all about learning to think in different ways and listening to different people at an Academic level. Filling the gaps of knowledge. It has helped me a great lot as a person and a professional, I believe. Even dealing with my fellow students which are 10 years younger than me has taught a lot to me.

There’s also the fact that I never had the money to do so in the past, so going back to a college and getting a degree has been a kind of a goal for me for a long time. It’s something personal. I actually had to save money for a couple of years before finally enrolling so I could have some cache to burn on tuition.

There are negative points like having zero free time for a while, and making a lot of people angry by constantly declining to go out to drink/movies/parties. It has also had some impact on the time I spend with real working, forcing me to work every weekend. But it’s part of the price you pay I guess.

All in all, I’ve always been strongly opposed to graduate degree *requirements* (again, specially on our local market). I still am in many ways. Maybe I’m just too much of an angry self-taught, do-it-yourself nerd. But having one is something positive nonetheless.

And just as a reminder, my thesis project (“flash 10-based sound/visual synthesis application”) is just something I’m doing for fun. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not earth-shattering. I think it’s cute but it’s not meant for commercial applications or improving workflow or anything really important like that. It’s like a mid-level experiment/prototyping/educational tool if anything.

If it wasn’t for the college, I don’t think I’d be building that. It was some college classes that forced me to go a bit more experimental, getting my head off the Flash/Actionscript world and presenting me stuff like Max/MSP and vvvv, which are the true inspirations for my thesis project. That I went back to AS with that project is just accidental; the inspiration for it has been a world I probably wouldn’t have met had I not attended college (or would only meet much later).

I mean flash design and development is one of the fastest growing sectors of the digital field, (we’re in high demand) and you’d also have more time and money to develop this “flash 10 sound/visual synthesis” app that sounds very interesting…i can’t wait to hear more about it.