What jobs have you had?

I’ve been in games and animation for fifteen years. What a wild ride. I remember my first real gig was for Nickelodeon. My first ACTUAL gig was for a man who will remain nameless, who paid me 100 earth dollars to make some pixel art he never used.

But my first real gig was animating Spongebob for a flash game. I did two hand drawn run cycles, and they paid me 400 USD. GREAT. It roughly translated to my first iPad in CAD. Granted, iPads were brand new back then, so it wasn’t amazing. But I was proud of myself. My partner at the time gave me into trouble for spending my pay on an iPad and I reminded her that at the time, I had no bills, I lived at home. It didn’t matter.

After that, I worked on a tv show where I animated for 18 hours a day. The pay roughly translated to 12/hour because of that. Pain. But it was good experience. So good that I quit being an animator as soon as that contract wrapped. Animation was originally my dream, but I realize now is that I just wanted to act myself, not DRAW acting. Animation was a way to do that, but not at that pay. It wasn’t worth it to me.

I switched to visual development and concept art quickly after. I will say that I didn’t actually understand what either of those were until I was deep into my late 20s, I just thought paint pretty pictures get good job. But it’s obviously so much more than be a good draftsperson. It’s selling and expressing information that’s useable in a pipeline scenario. This is lost on 90% of applicants to these positions. Myself included, at the time.

I couldn’t seem to land an internship at Disney, oddly enough (this is sarcasm), so I talked to my friends in the industry and they found me contract gigs and eventually my first full time position. I was a 2D artist in games, which wasn’t the goal, but hey here we are. I did some pretty ass work at the time, and I didn’t know how to listen – or follow instructions – but I somehow stayed employed until I passed probation and moved to the city. Then my brain finally kicked in and I was like oh this is a very inefficient pipeline. And no one seemed to be doing anything about it, so i jumped in. I was 22 and I was promoted to Lead Artist. What a big mistake. I was way too young for that.

But I made do, I initially worked with a team of two artists and that was manageable. But then the game we were working on got canceled, as they often did, and then I was then put in charge of a huge license. I was still 22 by the way. Trial by fire.

But we succeeded, that game funded that studio for 10 years and I didn’t leave that position because I couldn’t handle the heat, it’s because my producer kept talking about his weiner and HR wouldn’t do anything about it.

I moved onto lead another team, but this time in animation as a rigging artist. It was not as fun, but I met a lot of ride or die friends while I worked there. That studio was actually a lot of fun, because after the first contract wrapped up, I moved into their games department. It was maybe my favourite job, because it was just a rag tag team of people doing their best and everyone was cool and then we got shut down because we lost government funding. But I moved onto the new show at the studio instead of leaving completely. I ended up working on a very cute 3d show for about a year before deciding to take approximately six months off.

I freelanced in the interim, but it wasn’t what I wanted ultimately. I went back to a studio through a referral and worked there for three years on a bunch of cool projects. It was probably my second favourite job. I really liked it. But all good things must come to an end, and I was back on the market. I went to an animation studio a week later, and worked there until I moved back into my previous animation studio again. Then covid hit.

That was wild.

I moved on after the contract was up, and I went to work at a game studio in the city. It was a small team, and everyone was remote. Until we weren’t.

I left because I got my dream job, working on a semi-big game as an art director. I had done art direction up until that point but of course, unofficially. That’s how it sometimes works. But now I’m here.

I’m trying to stream a bit on twitch and make money there.

I’m trying to find new full time work.

And blogging.