This is a text aimed at community college and university students. By Bill Allen User groups are important points of contact for animators of all experience levels, as a recent San Francisco Siggraph chapter meeting showed. Speakers Andrew Schmid and Oren Jacob, a lead animator and a technical director with Pixar, explained tricks for blue screening, animation design strategy, and motion layering. Like some other groups, this one has a newsletter that carries job offers, how-to tips, and other info like a list of meetings for the several Bay Area computer art SIGs. Just find a time and place, and get the word out locally to friends, dealers, computer teachers, and anyone such as video producers and ad agencies that might be interested in hiring computer graphics people.
Simple refreshments are nice but optional.
Out of this, you will find topics and speakers for subsequent meetings. If they get to know your group, they may send commercial products to award as door prizes, and may assist with finding speakers. Diamond Multimedia has announced their first PCI-based Mac video accelerator product for the new Macintosh 9500. Both support 24-bit color up to 1152x870 resolution and refresh rates to 120MHz. You can also use them with either a Macintosh or PC monitor.