I guess updating my blog as the year transitions from 08 to 09 is a pretty lame thing to do, but i have no excuses. A huge portion of my life’s direction could easily be conjured within the next few months and that gets you thinking. In the mean time, before GDC now is the time to scrounge up business card designs, settle on what style of portfolio I will bring with me and hopefully produce a few more things of artistic quality in the mean time.

Hopefully i’ll get a last minute entry in before i head out to San Francisco in regards to my plans and schedule at GDC.

Tags: GDC

My ticket for the 2009 Game Developers Conference has been obtained and travel plans are being set in motion. I will be attending the conference for its full duration and hope to glean whatever I can both in terms of information and contact building even if the career part doesn’t go as planned. Im still being tossed about in the waves of time management in relation to art. I really hope I can get some knock-out pieces done within the next few months, however!

If anybody has suggestions pertaining to how I should present my portfolio I would be much appreciated. At this point I don’t know if I should bring bound portfolios or lose images in a binder…

If anybody plans on attending let me know - I’d love to meet people there - in the mean time, I suspect I wont’ update until GDC approaches.

As most college graduates will tell you, the first few months post graduation can be pretty rough. For me, the apathy that struck me manifested itself in a complete absence of any real work done artistically for nearly 4 months. Being coaxed along by freelance work, I am now free of that trap, at least for the time being.

No longer contending with my lack of drive, my plans for the future are as follows:

-Travel to the San Francisco area in March to attend the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Because it’s easier for me to assume I won’t have a career by then, this is my next concrete attempt to show somebody what I am capable of, and being able to talk to somebody in person I feel is an advantage I need in order to express how I work and how I think. So in the mean time, I will be filing my time with freelance and hitting refresh on my inbox, looking for open positions I can fire off applications at.

-In close proximity to the conclusion of GDC09 I have a larger decision to make. Assuming again I don’t get a job or internship (in order to validate further planning) I will either be attending the concept design academy, or I’ll try entering a company via QA. This will require somebody in HR who will hold the job for me as I relocate myself from Omaha Nebraska, for a position usually open to locals.

In the mean time, I will continue to juggle my job at Target and my pseudo career of commissions.

On an oddly creepy note, i wrote a blog entry exactly a year and 12 hours ago...

A lot can happen in 7 months. Since my tour of valve I have been grinding out as much art as possible and my drive has only seen a speed bump in the last few weeks. I have just graduated with an associates degree in Digital Media from Metropolitan Community College, and have not only transitioned into working at Target full time, but also have sent out dozens upon dozens of internship and job requests. Chances are if you’re reading this, you might be one of the recipients of said emails.

It seems like I’ve lived my entire life with graduating college ahead of me, and now that its behind me, I have to change gears to a full time career hunt, while working full time at a job. In the mean time, hopefully I can find a good balance for personal artwork, as I don’t think I will be able to parachute into a concept artist position.

Tags: life, graduation

Multiple months have passed since my trip to Seattle and Valve. To consolidate it into as few words as possible it was amazing, and infinitely worth the money and time… in retrospect I couldn’t imagine having any chance or direction with my art had I not gone. The past few months have been ones of motivation and drive… I’ve quit EVE online, and XBox live has expired… all for the sake of art!
As classes end up here in 3 months and I near my graduation my next major milestones are mass portfolio spam to game companies, and if that fails, moving cold turkey to the Washington area and seeing if I can start at the bottom as a game tester and claw my way up and out! - in slightly related news, my animation final group project turned out way better than i could have hoped! it has also taken my knowledge of Adobe After Effects from "passing" to "proficient" http://youtube.com/watch?v=v7Ys8GlfKiE enjoy!

Lack of updates can be attributed to two things of note. One, nothing too exciting is happening at the moment, all with school out for the summer and all. And two, nobody really reads this yet! That being said, this next month holds a really vital place in my future in that I am traveling up to Washington State in order to get a better grasp of my future.

Currently I have a tour of VALVE lined up (words can’t convey how valuable this is) and am trying to get a few more in the works as well as a few school tours. Ultimately if I don’t get a job straight out of college (which is a pretty large possibility) I’d like to take further schooling up in that area to be within striking distance of future jobs and this is my first step in that direction!

Lack of updates can be attributed to two things of note. One, nothing too exciting is happening at the moment, all with school out for the summer and all. And two, nobody really reads this yet! That being said, this next month holds a really vital place in my future in that I am traveling up to Washington State in order to get a better grasp of my future.

Currently I have a tour of VALVE lined up (words can’t convey how valuable this is) and am trying to get a few more in the works as well as a few school tours. Ultimately if I don’t get a job straight out of college (which is a pretty large possibility) I’d like to take further schooling up in that area to be within striking distance of future jobs and this is my first step in that direction!