Charles D. Hail
More About Me

I started drawing at a very early age - practically before I learned to walk.  By the time I entered 3rd grade, I could reproduce characters like Bugs Bunny, Popeye & Fred Flintstone freehand.  I doodled, cartooned & sketched constantly during my childhood.  I usually drew with pencil, but by age 16, I had discovered pen & ink and pastels.

While in high school, I took night courses in figure drawing, watercolor, and acrylic & oil painting.  Most often, I drew people, concentrating on children & older people.  I also drew horses & other animals, or the occasional landscape or still life.  Taking some note of my artistic pastimes (but considering my aptitudes in math & science most of all,) my high school counselors advised that my best career choice would be architecture.  Perhaps not completely convinced, I went on to Stanford University and took the standard prereqs for an engineering major.  Meanwhile, during my freshman year, I designed the poster for a dorm-sponsored 10k run, created sets for 2 plays and painted my first mural (on my dorm-room wall, which I had to paint over at the end of the year.)   The next year, I joined Alpha Delta Phi.  The hallways of the ADP house were full of great murals and I usually adorned my room with one, too.

It was at about this time that I discovered Role-Playing Games (RPGs.)  At first, I played AD&D™ with some fraternity brothers.  A short time later, I learned of a new system called "DragonQuest"™.  When I had learned enough about this much simpler system to begin designing modules, I found it to be a great creative outlet.  I created my own world - Lia - and filled it with "dungeons."  What followed was many years of designing increasingly-more-difficult RPG scenarios & creating the accompanying visual aids.  Of course, before long, I was drawing portraits of the characters & scenes from their adventures.   Later, this lead to my drawing a proposed comic book based on the characters.  The book was written by Doug Miers, an Alpha Delt who played one of the characters.  Although this project didn't sell, he went on to write & publish Comics Conspiracy comics.

Eventually, after a year & a half of calculus, statics, etc., I realized that my interest in architecture was more about being at the drawing board than computing the stresses on a cantilever beam.   Furthermore, I realized that in order to become the artist I wanted to be, I needed more than skill with a pen or brush.  To me, art is simply a means of expression and has little true value without something meaningful to express.  Figuring out what I wanted to say with my artwork meant finding my own perspectives in life, which is something they don't have a degree for.  In addition, Stanford would not accept the transfer of my credits from the small-community-college art courses I had taken, which meant I would have had to take all of these courses over at a MUCH higher cost.  This seemed pointless, so I left school and got a job digitizing fonts & logos for a company that manuafactured computerized engraving machines.

In 1990, I started a one-man mural & sign painting business called "Pegasus Designs."  In the process, I took up airbrushing.   Eventually, I started designing logos for businesses as well as painting their signs.

From 1993-'95, I served as Editor & Graphic Designer for The Wolf's Cry, a small local paper published by my partner Bambi Moseley.  I designed the logo & all the graphics, did the pasteup and drew cover illustrations.

In the late 1990's, I aquired a computer and finally entered the internet age.  I got familiar with some of the graphics programs, taught myself the basics of html, and then I started working on animated GIFs & JavaScript.  I built my own website as a training ground in many web-related areas.

Then, in 2002, I went back to school at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California, to get my Associate Degree in Multimedia Arts & Communication.  I found that I really liked 3D computer modeling & animation, so I took a whole year of it, including the last class taught by Hancock legend Ed Harvey.  I continue to explore the 3d Studio Max program.  I've done some freelance web design & I have completed the first of 3 bookcover illustrations (along with the associated website) for a new future-fantasy trilogy by my good friend, Phillip Alden.  However, I've come to realize that, when it comes to multimedia work such as 3D animation, if you want to work on the really complex (& satisfying) projects, you need to be part of a good sized team.  That's one of the main reasons I've begun to search for such a position.

     My other interests include:

MUSIC - I think music is an essential part of our psychological well-being as humans. I play guitar and listen to anything from oldies rock & roll to reggae, but I prefer classic rock. Still, my all-time favorite band is Rush.

SCIENCE FICTION - I am an avid Star Trek fan (actually, I consider myself a Gene Roddenberry fan) but I also enjoy watching classic SF films such as "Forbidden Planet," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," & even older ones like "Metropolis."