My name is Ray Rodriguez and I am the graphic artist/animator behind AKOMIC ANIMATION! I created this web site to showcase my 3D art, animation and graphics for both friends and potential employers alike. I'm originally from a small town in South Texas named Rio Grande City and I moved to the Dallas area when I was around 15. I've always been a BIG comic book fan and love almost anything involving comics like movies, cartoons, toys, etc. I have over 5000 comics, including Daredevil#1 and Mad #1, 2 and 3! I still love drawing comic books and you can see a lot of comic book pages I've drawn by clicking here. I eventually enrolled in The Art Institute of Dallas going for an Associate in Visual Communication, but mainly because I heard they were adding an animation program. Once they did, I transferred over, graduated and got an Associate in Computer Animation/Multimedia. Three months before graduating, I got hired as a 3D Artist/animator for for a video game company named Terminal Reality. I created a ton of 3D models, animations, bosses , level designs, etc. for 5 PC video games. The first game I worked one was Terminal Velocity, a 3D 1st Person Shooter. I then did Microsoft's Fury3, which was very successful. Afterwards, I worked on some Add-on Packs for Fury3. Then, I worked on Monster Truck Madness for Microsoft! I made the big Mechanical T-Rex that chomps up cars! (I got the idea from The Simpson's) Then, I worked on Hellbender, which was another 3D 1st person space shooter. I liked making that kind of art and stuff, but I didn't like having my salary tied into royalties, which could or could not come in...so I went and got another job. Terminal Reality was a col place to work at and the boss/owner Mark Randall was cool. I made a cool demo tape there with tons of models I made that you can WATCH DEMO HERE. It was during this time that I met my beautiful wife, Kelli, which I later married!
I worked for a couple of years for Flight Safety as an Animator, 3D Artist and Team Lead. Flight Safety has been around since the early 1950's and they train all commercial pilots for certification on specific planes. I worked on the Citation 5 plane first as a 3D/2D Artist/Animator on a team of 3 people. My team leader was Karl Wallace and our programmer was named Randy Vavrin! Randy and I are still friends to this day and he is a good programmer! Years ago, Randy and I made an Archie Comics Air Hockey Game and it is available at my Archie Website. I was later promoted to Team Leader of a 5 man team and was the lead 3D Animator of our team as well. I worked with Brian Condon and this young thug named Shane Sanger! Shane colored his hair red and owned about 20 pairs of sneakers. Our most important team, The American Airlines Team, all quit at the same timeand went to work for Bell Helicopter. So, they told me they needed to replace the team and they asked me if I would mind leaving my team lead position and join the American Airlines Team as a 3D guy...so I said "Yes!" Fortunately for me, I was on the best team when our division was outsourced to a company out of San Antonio named Jana Inc. Though I was a Jana employee, everybody but our team was moved over to the new Jana building... where they began letting people go weekly! Before the year was over, we went down from having 16 3D Artists to...only two 3D guys! The only ones left were me and Mike Benson! My son Roman was born during this time period! I quit a month before they shut down our division in Hurst and got a contract job working as a 3D Animator for Halliburton.
At Halliburton, I worked as a Contract Employee in their Research and Design Division as a 3D Animator for 8 months! I created a ton of complex animations for them demonstrating how their new equipment works! I worked there for about 8 months and then 911 happened shortly there-after, so it was hard for me to find a job for about a year-and-a-half! During that time I took a class in Flash MX at Richland College, worked as a substitutes teacher, at Lone Star Comics and in tech support for Stream International. I then landed my current job as a 3D Designer for Pacific Northern, Inc.! I love this job in that I'm in charge of all the 3D work going though the building and maintaining standards and directories. I also create animations, render still images, create jewelry displays, mounted presentations, material libraries, etc. I get to do a lot of creative stuff here! I use 3DMax 2008, AutoCad 2008, Corel Draw, PhotoShopCS, IllustratorCS, Flash MX and Premier pro for video editing. So, all in all I've been doing 3D graphics and animation for about 14 years! I still draw comics and do 3D! That's about it. Check out my web site to see all of the different artwork and animations that I've created!
Check out the current HENCHMEN COMIC STRIP I AM WRITING.
