Who am I?

“Hello my friend. Stay awhile and listen…“ -Deckard Cain

 So who am I?  Well you could say I am a lot of things.  I guess I’ll just start you out with a picture.  Here I am:

I can’t take serious pictures.  Ever.

Sexy.  Heartthrob.  Captivating.  These are all words to describe someone much better looking than me. However, hopefully a couple of these words carry over but it’s not a big deal if they don’t.  The point is, I like it when people get a visual of me so they know who they’re reading about.  So here’s a professional background on me.  And by that, I don’t mean professionally written.  Please don’t judge me too harshly on my grammar, it’s enough work being an artist.

Let’s start with the first thing I can remember when it comes to my professional career.  Around 11 or 12 years old I remember waiting for the last day of school to be out.  The last day is usually a wash where nothing important happens but instead of letting us out early, we would have a party where we would watch movies and eat candy.  (I’m sure the teacher loved sending us home loaded with sugar)  The day was pretty cool compared to an average day but I wasn’t expecting a whole lot, however the last movie the class watched I remember vividly.  It was Toy Story.  I didn’t realize it then but that movie changed the course of my future.  From then on I was fascinated with computer graphics and is anything having to do with the computer.

I guess anything that had to do with a computer became the most important thing in my world.  Finally I had a tool where I could control every aspect of it.  And that meant a lot to me.  Instead of being held back by my physical disability, finally I could actually excel at just about anything that would show up on my screen.  Even if I couldn’t excel I would try crazy things.  I remember one day going into the computer lab school and putting a PlayStation game in a computer.  Well, a PlayStation is just a glorified computer so why wouldn’t it play?  Well, now I understand a little bit more but when you’re young you believe anything can happen.  I remember my first computer also, it was a beautiful DOS machine where you’d need to type out which program you were going to use.  If/then statements have come a long way.

Throughout high school I attended as many computer classes as they would offer and spent the night and day in front of a glowing computer monitor.  I remember programming classes to this date, because they meant so much to me.  Just being able to comprehend a digital platform that had the ability to create applications to do just about anything meant the world to me.  Even if that application just made fart sounds…I was young.

Unfortunately because of my physical disability I wasn’t able to follow up with my aspirations of programming, but I remembered how the process and flow of information worked which has stuck with to this day.  I was not sure of my future until I thought back to just watching Toy Story at a young age.  Luckily if I couldn’t have my first choice for my college education, maybe I could go for my second.  My mom pulled some strings and before I knew it I was off to art school.  But not just any art school, animation school.

I studied, got adequate grades, and tried to fly through college as quick as possible in between eight and twelve hour Warcraft sessions.  Ohh, and work…  Eventually I graduated and joined the work force.

My first few jobs were small contract positions.  It’s really hard to just graduate and jump into the job you dreamed of as a kid.  So I would work for small businesses, some big ones but not for very long.  After just scraping by and having some professional experience in the field to add to my resume I got my first job as an adjunct instructor at a local college.

While teaching I met some wonderful colleagues who mentored me on class structure and best practices.  Teaching became my number one priority when my schedule was easily comparable to to a full time instructor’s.  During my tenure I was asked to be a speaker at the end of term meeting which was a great feeling to be appreciated in a professional field.

A couple freelance projects and a few terms later I came to the realization that teaching full time was much more physically demanding than I had expected.  After some contemplating what my next move would be, a friend of mine randomly contacted me about a designing position for a video game company.  Needless to say I jumped on the opportunity like a fat kid on a cupcake.

So I started working in the game design field which was very different compared to the smaller scale projects I had worked on before.  Luckily, in game design I get to utilize all my skills as an artist.  One day I’ll be working on some 2d animation and the next they all be on a 3d animation task.  It really keeps me busy which I thoroughly enjoy.  Some people think it’s just playing around all day, which in some cases is true because the games aren’t going to test themselves.  But we do laugh a lot.  And there are office jokes which are fun to take part in.  Just like this one.  Or this one.  And this one.

But to sum it up, working in game design is a very difficult but rewarding field.  Not very often are you doing the same thing twice which really keeps my interest throughout the duration of work.  But I like to know that the games I’m making or whatever I’m helping with will be used with an educational intent.

From that point on I’ve been very lucky to work on several projects for big scale operations including: the Department of Defense, the University of Minnesota and some smaller special organizations throughout Minnesota.

So there you have it.  That’s me in a nutshell.  Well…not really a nutshell, there’s no real text on a nutshell.  And I don’t think they even get internet.  But that’s me.  If you have any questions or interests in talking to me just send me an e-mail.

Thanks for reading!