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After graduation, I stayed in Grand Forks for a while playing in my band Stagefright. But it was the call of higher education that motivated me to move on -- that and a particularly cold November day outside of East Grand Forks. I remember that I was working a construction job at the time and it was a mere 20 below with a chilly breeze. It was so cold, the electric air compressor I used to run the staple gun wouldn’t even run. It was at that point that I longed to return to Colorado. One month later during my yearly sojourn to visit my Mother for Christmas, I checked out the Colorado Institute of Art and signed up for the Winter Semester.
Like many, I went to college with one career path in mind and left pursuing another. I wanted to be an audio engineer and left with no desire whatsoever to sit in front a mixing console the rest of my life. I graduated with a degree in Music and Video Business, dabbling in video production, film production, concert promotions and artist management. But my career destiny was revealed after attending a video industry trade show where I had my first exposure to the wonderful world of computer animation.
Blame it on Jim Cameron and his Abyss and Terminator 2 movies. I remember seeing that “Russian Water Tentacle” and being completely blown away. It wasn’t long after college that I begged, borrowed, and uhmmm, begged some more and purchased a souped-up PC along with a copy of an animation program called 3D Studio. Soon, I was turning out small animations for various clients throughout the Denver area. In 1994, I formed Nanomation with a visual effects refugee from Los Angeles and later merged companies with even more LA production refugees to form Paradigm Ranch Animation Studios in 1995. We worked with a broad range of clients from LA to NY working on movies for Warner Brothers and Disney as well as several national television ad campaigns.
But as is so often the case, business can run in cycles; the highs and the lows. Not being in the LA area had its disadvantages, so I got hired on at Quark, the makers of QuarkXPress, a computer graphic design program. While a fun experience at first, I began to long for those exciting and challenging animation and visual effects projects I used to work on, so I began teaching part time at my old college, which was now called the Art Institute of Colorado. Wow, I never thought I would enjoy teaching, but this was so much fun and very rewarding. Nothing makes me happier than that moment of epiphany when the light bulb goes off over a student’s head. I’ve taught there for almost 10 years teaching, graphic design, 3D animation, digital compositing, digital photography and video production.
After September of 2001 and my subsequent lay-off from Quark, I continued to teach part-time and do contract work until I began working for the Design Visualization division of Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) in late 2003. We do computer animations and simulations of the various architectural and civil engineering projects PB works on. I love it as it is exactly the same type of work I used to do with my company, Paradigm Ranch. Instead of directors and producers, we work with engineers and planners (it’s amazing just how equally similar and bizarre these two seeming opposites really are). I currently work as the group’s technical lead, coordinating all technical aspects of production. It’s what a fun job and the travel is great. I get to work on some really interesting projects in interesting places: San Francisco Bay Bridge, Panama Canal and Dubai. As a bonus, many of the people I work with are my former students from the Art Institute.
It was at Quark where I met my wife, Jerrilynn. We dated a long time before we got married, almost 6 years to the day from our first date. Much to my father-in-law’s great joy and relief (my wife is one of 5 girls), we ran off to Maui, Hawaii and said our wedding vows on a beautiful beach at sunset in front of a Hawaiian shaman, a witness and a photographer. The most romantic thing we ever did. Ironically, we are both from the same hometown of Ft. Collins, CO and were in the same high school graduating year, 1988. We just had our first child on April 14th of this year, Sofia Elizabeth Kauffman and live in Broomfield, CO, a suburb of Denver with our German Sheppard mix Sarah-Dog, and two cats Toby and Sebastian. I really dig the “Daddy” gig! Never thought I would have kids since after all, I am a very tall 9-year-old myself.
I can’t believe 20 years have passed since high school. I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone.
