Hello, my name is Lukas Welinder, welcome to LITHIC MEDIA WORKS. This being my first blog post, I'll share a little about myself...
I'm 21 years old, and currently live in Southern California; I am a fourth generation artist and third generation entrepreneur with a developed interest in web development and a passion for learning.
Around age 7, I was introduced to Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator by my mother, the creative side of the family. She also attempted to teach me to paint, however, I found using computers to express myself to feel far more natural. While I remain her padawan of design to this day, It was not long before I was the one giving advice on the programs involved.
Over the years, my interest in digital art, while persistent, has varied in medium dramatically. The best way to phrase it would be phases of passionate interest; passion to the point where I was regularly up working on projects in the dead of night despite the looming responsibility of schoolwork.
In the 6th grade, I developed an interest in editing and video production. It began with dumb-funny youtube skits I would make with friends using iMovie, but quickly became such an obsession that I saved up for a copy of Final Cut Studio. By the time I was in high school, I had produced everything from sports montages to music videos to stop motion shorts.
Entering high school I began to diverge from editing. Around this time, a fellow editor introduced me to 3D motion graphics using Cinema 4D. I was hooked... but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
I began researching the trade like it was the answer to life. A switch was flipped and suddenly computer graphics was my life. At one point I was logging upwards of 30 hours a week of tutorial video and practice in programs including: Blender 3D | Maya | 3DS Max.
The discovery of Blender 3D and the idea of open source technology dove me into the next phase which ran parallel with computer graphics for some time: programming. While I had dabbled in the topic before using C++, I now was spending a great deal of time learning Python with the goal of furthering my mastery of Blender(open source Python app).
Leading into my sophomore year of high school, my path becomes less linear.
While developing my skills in coding and computer graphics, I began to gravitate towards game development. I found the idea of creating an interactive storyline as a way to share my imagination to be the pinnacle of artistic expression. On top of practicing my technical understanding of the work, I filled notebooks with ideas, story-lines, and character profiles in my down time.
However, after volunteering on a couple community projects, researching the industry, and touring a number of studios, I began to see how competitive, and often unrewarding the work can be when not in a position to make decisions. While I still spent time with computer graphics, coding became my dominant interest as I opened up my mind to other career paths.
I was acquainted with algorithm design as I began to study the mathematics behind topology and rendering techniques. Unlike many kids my age, I greatly enjoyed studying math and learning the 'why' behind the commonly taught 'what'. It's probably a fair statement to say that I was the only kid who would get excited about getting math textbooks for christmas.
At this point in my life I was reading just about anything I could get my hands on. A lot of that material was on business administration and marketing by the suggestion of my father, a passionate brand builder in the action sports and lifestyle clothing industries. On average, I was reading between 300 and 900 pages every week; I still do so to this day. Those books along with my dad's business news was the usual dinner table discussion as far back as I can remember. Growing up with him was like growing up in a perpetual business workshop.
Here is where things took an interesting turn. Three things happened the first semester of my sophomore year in high school. Firstly, I started playing Minecraft; second, I began thinking about getting in to college; third, I became keenly interested in socioeconomic models. Where most might see the three as unrelated, I saw them as a recepy. I came up with the unorthodox idea of implementing a communist model on a Minecraft server as a socioeconomic experiment to base a college essay on.
It took three months to go from idea to production ready. To make it happen, I used crowdfunding to build a PC that would be the server system, taught myself Java, HTML, PHP & MySQL to custom build the server and related websites, and did all of the design & marketing needed to get the idea out. Despite the lengthy application process, the server had 50 members within the first three days.
The project ran successfully for close to two years and had upwards of 450 active members from around the world at its peak. What started out as a small experiment turned into an international video-game community and server hosting company.
Despite this relative success, it was not something I wanted to stay on board with. I had learned what I could and wanted to move on, so as my education became more demanding, I closed down the project.
After high school, I went to college studying Computer Science and Mathematics as a double major. I also started working at a small coffee shop on a busy corner downtown. Coffee was a passionate hobby of mine at the time, so it was a great fit.
Working food service turned out to be a great learning experience. I started out as a Barista, within the first couple months I was promoted to Training Manager. From there I was eventually promoted to Shop Manager, then Social Media Manager, and finally Branding Manager, working full time.
I had done freelance design on the side for a while at this point, but my sophomore year of university I started taking on more serious freelance clients. Eventually, I was getting sent more projects than I could manage alongside school and work. I started forming relationships with other designers and studios, handing off projects for comission. However, it had come to a point where I needed to make a difficult decision.
School wasn't working for me at the time; it just wasn't the kind of learning environment that I felt would benefit me in the long term. Classes felt like they moved too slowly, and few of my peers were passionate about creating. I had taken a majority of required Computer Science and Mathematics courses and was faced with a cliff of general education courses that piled on homework in low level topics that I had already covered in High School.
I came to the conclusion that completing college was simply not worth the cost. I left school, and later my job at the coffee shop to began work on establishing my services under a studio name. The last year I have split my time between client projects and developing the brand image and foundation for the studio. It will continue to develop as I do, however it is now time to lift the curtain and allow it to develop in the open.
I'm surprised you're still reading; I admire your inquisitive nature. Now a little about the blog:
I will be sharing current projects, and things that I've learned about the things that I love: design, development, photography, and marketing.