Part 1: How I got into the video game industry...

For a while now I've been wanting to write abut my experience of getting into the industry, and being in the industry (the video game one, if that wasn't clear); but it seemed like an overwhelming task since in many ways I feel like my whole life has been in preparation for this industry. However, I know there's a lot of people out there who are struggling with choosing a career path, and who maybe have decided upon games, but can't get their first break so I thought this could maybe be a big help. I will start off with a few things to keep in mind. First, I will try to be brief with the "who I am" portion of this and only explain what's necessary. Second, I have to be explicitly clear that this is my experience and from what I've heard everyone's is vastly different. And last, but possibly most important of all, please don't look at this guide as some sort of guide to getting you a job, because like with anything a lot of that is going to be you being ready, willing and able when an opportunity arises.

Let's begin with high school. I always knew I wanted to be an artist, ever since I was little, but in high school I finally started realizing that I couldn't be an architect that inked comics, had a fashion line, and was also a tattoo artist (I mean, I guess I really could but I also like sleep). Because of this I started to narrow down my focus and was trying to find something that could keep me interested and challenged but where I could use my wide array of skill sets. Thanks to many hours of watching my then boyfriend (now husband) play games, I realized doing art for games would be a great fit. I mean, after all, someone had to design those buildings, and that advertisement on that billboard, and those clothes that character is wearing, right? I was lucky enough to call silicon valley my home, and was able to reach out to some people who I knew in the industry. Most notably, my best friend's dad who worked at EA. He was patient enough to sit with me and let me ramble about how I could be a fresh take on video game concept art, and he was very supportive, but also realistic. He told me how concept artists are very rarely kept on a team through a whole production cycle, and are usually let go after a few months. I also was able to meet with EA's college recruiter, thanks to my English teacher who knew I was interested in video games and had a connection. This meeting was a little bit harder to hear. I told him the same story about how I wanted to do concept because I enjoyed creating lots of different kinds of art. He started to ask me about how I made my art, did I use Maya, was I doing any work digitally? At this point I was pretty mortified. See, growing up, I didn't have a lot, my mom was a single mom and she did great but we didn't have anything fancy, and certainly not a computer that could run Maya or Photoshop. And to be honest, at that point in my life I didn't even understand how games were made, I didn't understand the connection between what I was physically drawing and how that got turned into a game. I was pretty disheartened at this point, but still felt like I had to give this a shot before completely bailing out on this idea.

Fast forward a bit and that same English teacher who got me that interview with the college recruiter called me up and asked if I was still perusing games. I said "yes" even though at that point my "perusing" consisted more of showing up to my community college classes every once in a while. He told me he knew someone who worked at EA who was looking for an administrative assistant (and no, I didn't know what that really meant either), and so he thought of me for the role. I went into the interview, in retrospect looking like a hot mess, but somehow still got the job. I was thrilled. No, I wasn't doing concept art, and no I wasn't making a ton of money, but I got to go to work everyday at EA and that was amazing. I told myself at that point that this job was going to be my deciding factor for whether or not I was going to peruse working in the industry for real. I worked at EA for about eight months and about halfway through October when I was 19 years old, my boss told me there had been a massive layoff and unfortunately I had been laid off as well. I was devastated. I loved my job there, I got to talk with artists, I got to watch the cool stuff they did, I got to walk down the halls and look at all the amazing art these people had created, and just like that, it was gone. Looking back now I wish I could tell myself, "get used to it", but it was really hard for me especially at that age. I had about two weeks before I was officially gone at EA, so I took the opportunity to apply for unemployment and look for other jobs. My boss at this point did something I will forever be grateful for, she pushed me to go to school, and to do it, seriously. I had avoided looking too much into colleges and things like that because I knew I didn't have the means, and with how dismally I had been performing at community college I knew I didn't have the grades either. But, I put that aside and decided to look in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I had toured there in high school and really liked the environment. They told me they did have a games program that had just started, and GPA wasn't a factor (*score*).

Now my college journey truly began. I was 20 years old and I started my journey taking a life drawing class and an intro to animation class. I was overwhelmed but excited. So here I am, at this extremely expensive school, with a bunch of kids who have been going to art high schools (once again, I didn't even know that was a thing) and I wasn't as good of an artist as them. I didn't know what chiaroscuro meant, I drew with a Bic pen of printer paper? Once, again I felt like the odds were stacked against me. Luckily, my intro animation class was going well, and I really loved my teacher so I did alright in both classes, by the time the semester ended. I was however working retail and paying for all my bills except rent, so I didn't have a ton of free time to dedicate to school, but still felt the fire to keep pushing forward. As classes started to progress and my art skills still weren't really up to snuff (why did I even compare my art to the other kids?) my grades really started to drop. I just felt like I was drowning between school and work and friends and commuting and life and a full time live in boyfriend everything was just so much. It got so bad that I actually ended up on academic probation and I had to do something to give myself a breath of fresh air from the droll of daily life. The academic probation was really a kick in the pants to start trying. The problem was, at this point I had pretty much given up on concept art. I felt like I'd never be good enough, and by this point I had been told by so many art teachers that my style was "too graphic" I honestly felt like I'd lose it if one more teacher said that to me. Plus, in all honesty if I didn't like a teacher saying "it's too.." whatever... then how would I have done with an art director saying it? (I can guess not well...) But again, now I find myself, having to pull myself up from my bootstraps, wasting thousands of dollars a semester at this school and I don't even know what job I was in the industry? So I started taking classes in everything artistic I could, modeling, texturing, animation, game design, literally anything but programming (*boo* *hiss* lol). I ended up really enjoying modeling, but enjoyed making environments more than anything and at my school, at that time, the modeling track focused on lots of organic things, and I just wanted to model houses and furniture all day to be honest. Because of this I didn't feel challenged, and my endurance was waning.

Then, it happened. I took a rigging class. A rigging class I hadn't even taken the prerequisite for, mind you, and it was a strange experience. I struggled, A LOT. But I also had an amazing teacher who would end up being my mentor and friend, and even though I was struggling and still stuck in my old ways of not trying as hard as I could, he really took the time to help me through that class. I think I ended up just barely passing, but of all the classes I had taken up until that point, I felt proud of that grade, like I really really had to work for that grade. It was the first time at school I felt that way, and it was the turning point for my life as a student, and for my life in the industry. From this point on I had a lot of bad habits to unlearn. I started going to school much more regularly. I got more disciplined about making myself dedicate time for homework. I got a laptop so I could work while commuting. I really started turning my school life around, the only problem was I had been in school for about two years already and had just found what I thought I wanted to pursue, that along with unlearning these bad habits, had their speed bumps but I fought through. I kept working very closely with that rigging teacher, who ended up being my teacher for three rigging classes, a VFX class and a python scripting class (*yay* *woo* lol). He was patient with me, even when he knew I could be trying harder, but I felt like he understood I had a lot on my plate and was trying to keep up with work and the rest of my classes. I then became a student that, didn't always do the very best, but did pretty good, I held a 3.0 most semesters and more importantly I was passionate, and I really was doing the best I could with what I had. By the last year of school the pressure was really starting to kick in. I had done a ton of scripting classes because I had avoided them like the plague, and now needed that knowledge to help me make tools. I think my teacher saw this and he started to really help me get my name out there. I started talking with other teachers and getting an idea of what a technical artist or rigger's life would look like in the industry. I started planning out my website and recording demo reels of my rigs. I had teachers start looking at my resume and helping me get prepared for the possibility of landing a job.

Being in San Francisco was really advantageous for our school because they could send students to GDC. My last semester at school, I had done pretty well to prepare myself for graduating, and my teacher put in a good word for me and got me one of the few coveted tickets to GDC. I made some last minute adjustments to my website, got cards printed and headed to my first ever GDC, super thrilled to have the chance to be around industry professionals. I got to meet and talk to a lot of people, even got invited to a Crystal Dynamics party but no solid leads came from anything of my interactions. I realized after this that networking, a skill that my school had stressed as being incredibly important, was not my biggest strength. Don't get me wrong, I know how to talk to people, and I can be professional, but butting my way into conversations to try to hand someone my resume felt...uncomfortable. Fast forward a few months and I graduated school, the first in my family with a BA degree and I was so proud. I felt confident in my new found skill set and felt like I really could do well in the industry, but I knew the hardest part, the endless applying and not getting any call backs was just around the corner. Right around the time I graduated my mentor invited me to another event my school was having, this one was a showcase of student work, aimed at getting students jobs. I showed up early and helped my mentor set up and spent most of the day demo-ing a project I had worked on with one of my best friends. We both got to meet tons of people in the industry, many of which seemed to be in need of a technical artist. One, in particular approached me and asked "Would you be willing to move to Seattle?", without even thinking I said "yes". I was lucky enough to already be in a committed relationship and my partner and I had discussed the possibility of me needing to move for a job, and we both liked the idea of a fresh start. A few days later I was contacted by a recruiter who would be the contact for me for the job I had been approached about. He told me the role was in Seattle, at Microsoft and it would be a Unity prototyper role. He gave me a few tips about what to be prepared to talk about and he scheduled an interview for me. A few days later I had a very easy interview where I was asked about my knowledge with Unity's UI system, the particle system, my scripting knowledge and my rendering knowledge. About a week passed and I got an offer for the job!