I have recently determined that it is unrealistic to for me to continue working on developing Synfig alone out of my apartment. Not only is the work simply not getting done, I am also enduring a large amount of emotional and mental stress in the process. My quality of life has plummeted over the past few months. Life is just too short to waste on such things---so I'm moving on.

There are a handful of questions that I imagine everyone reading has. What am I going to do for a living? What is going to happen to Synfig? Will I ever start an animation studio again? Most importantly, what went wrong?

Employment

After I get back from being out-of-town, I will put myself into job-hunting mode. A good friend of mine has already made me aware of possible employment opportunities at his workplace near San Francisco, which looks very promising. There are no guarantees however, so I need to apply to other companies as well. Here is a list of some companies I have in mind:

• Crystal Dynamics --- These guys made Gex, Blood Omen, Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver, Snowblind, etc. They are owned by Eidos. They are located near San Francisco. Both Mike Gonzales and Nathan Frost work there, and I would love to work with them again.
• Sucker Punch --- They are best known for their Sly Cooper games. This is where Adrian Bentley and Dan Brakely work. Their offices are in downtown Bellevue.
• Valve --- One of the most popular and respected video game studios in the industry. Made Half-Life and Half-Life 2. I believe they are based out of Kirkland.
• Zombie --- Another video game studio in the seattle area.
• Apple --- Who knows where this could lead. Apple is known for developing amazing software, and to be a part of it would be awesome. I believe they are located near San Francisco.
• Google --- Google says they are doing research on computer graphics and user interface stuff, so it's worth a shot. They have facilities all across the United States, including the Seattle area.
• Industrial Light + Magic --- Hmm...
• Dreamworks Animation --- The makers of Shrek.
• Pixar --- The second great animation studio needs no introduction. While their primary facilities are located in California, I believe that they actually have offices in the Seattle area doing some work on RenderMan stuff.

I'm sure this list will expand as I research companies in the area and across the country. Some of these companies I don't really expect to actually get employed by at this point in my life, but hey it's worth a shot. I know I have the skills to add value to any of these companies. It is simply a matter of making that fact obvious to their human resources department.

Synfig

As for what is going to happen to Synfig, I'm not sure at this point. The most likely scenario is that I will release the source code to Synfig under the GNU GPL; my reasoning being that I would rather everyone be able to use it than no one. As I said in the closing letter of Voria Studios, I refuse to let Synfig fade into oblivion.

I will likely continue to work on Synfig in my spare time. Hopefully I will be able to generate enough interest in the software to get other people to consider working on it in their spare time.

Voria

I have not given up on the idea of owning my own company, or starting an animation studio. I have lots of interesting plans and ideas for the future, so don't look at this as if I were throwing up my hands and walking away from a dream. I just realized that the current path I am on is a path to insanity. Perhaps some people have the ability to pull off great things in a vacuum, but I am not one of them. This has been a painful lesson to learn.

What went wrong

There are many things that have gone wrong over the course of the past three years, as well as many things that have gone right. A complete post-mortem of Voria Studios will be its own topic of discussion at some point, but right now lets narrow the scope a bit to the period of time from December 10th 2004 (The day Voria officially shut down full-time operations) to May 19th 2005 (My 24th Birthday).

Ultimately, I believe I have trouble orienting myself and functioning in an unstructured environment. With no one else to provide moral support or to hold myself responsible to, I just fell apart. I have worked out of my apartment before with decent success, but this time I think that the burden was too high for me to keep on top of. The guilt and frustration of not being able to execute eventually made it impossible to execute, which is where I am today. This is why it is time to move on.