Optical Circuit

Hi and welcome to my website ‘Optical Circuit’.
My name is Roman Drahoß and I’m happy that you are here with me. I’m currently a 37 years old PC ‘allrounder’ with interest in many things.

I worked as an electrician as an apprenticeship, received my degree and gained experience in this job for many years (yes, I know how to handle those wires in your power socket). After many years, the job began to bore me more and more. Nothing new, always the same, no challenge anymore, no direction I had the urge to move on. Then one day, a friend of mine offered me a chance to work in an office as a technician. I agreed to do so. At last, away from the ’stupid work’. So, I gained a nice job there. I really learned a lot about the ‘affectations in an office’. A completely new experience for someone like me, who was always only on construction sites, mainly populated by men. Now I was in an office full of women I had to learn many new manners.
So, in this new environment there was a new friend waiting, but I did not know this at the time. This new friend was Dietmar Halbauer, the company’s graphic artist. As time went by, we really got to know each other. He showed me some exciting new features in the world of graphics. With this, he showed me the direction I’ve been looking for. Within a year, I’ve learned Flash and this was my entry to web development. From this point on, I’ve learned everything I could to expand my knowledge in web development. As my skills improved, Dietmar allowed me to work in combination with him on several small projects.

After about 15 months of working with this company, Many coworkers and I were laid off. A sad day. Unemployment strikes. But after all, I used this time to develop my skills further and I also expanded my knowledge in many more directions. I learned web design, design itself, multimedia and web programming. First, I attended a course for multimedia. Nothing real new except for small parts where we learned Adobe Premiere. I received a certificate for being one of the best out of 12 students. Later on, I attended a course in web programming. This was completely new for me, so I was afraid that I could not end this course successfully. The course instructors told me in the beginning, that I maybe made a wrong choice doing this course because I mostly did graphics. And because of that, I would be a creative mind, not or not easily able to understand the fixed structures of programming, the logical thinking, solving logical problems. But I could convince them that I WILL be able to do this, as I NEED to know this to be a good webdesigner. So, I began the course.

Coding went excellent for me, I learned a lot and finally stuck to PHP and MySQL programming. The course instructor we had was suprised more and more as time went by. He saw how I was able to learn and do the programming. He was really impressed about my skills I learned and he told me at the end of the course, that he is so very pleased to know a person like me who is able to combine creativity and logic into a whole. Sure, I would never be the best programmer, but I learned the skills needed to be a good webdesigner with an adequate knowledge of web programming. I had reached my goal.
I had passed the course with flying colors. Out of the 12 students, three of them recieved an accolade PLUS a commendatory letter. I was one of the three. The best course I completed.
Meanwhile, I’ve been lucky to work in a company of my friend mentioned above. He opened up a firm and gave me a chance to put my newly gathered skills and, of course graphics, to work. After a short time, he introduced me to another friend and this man woke up a new desire in me: 3D art.
This was the point, where I was saying to myself: You have to learn this!

Earlier, I fumbeled around a bit with discreets 3D Studio MAX. As I learned it, I developed my first 3D movie with it. It was a small advertisment for the company of my friend. We had in mind to broadcast this clip on tv, but unfortunately it never came to it. So this movie just lays here now on my hd and is now a witness of the past.
After about four months of learning MAX and making a small movie, I finally felt good enough to learn the ‘big one’ in the 3D sector: Alias Maya. The step was done. Since then, I’ve learned Maya more and more. I’ve bought books, I did tutorials, and it’s my hottest passion on the PC. Besides gaming.
I’m still learning and learning, try to expand my skills and my knowledge with the hope to make some real big money with it one day.
One day, maybe … who knows … you will see my name in the credits of some cool CGI supported movie.
So look out for me, maybe it will happen in the near future … ?