Truth to tell ...

I am extremely excited about school (duh!), but at the same time a tad on the afraid side. I tried college once and failed miserably. Granted, I am a different person now than I was 20 years ago, but the memory of it is still there. I do have an awesome wife I can lean on in times of need, and a great mother who cheers me up who lives only 30 minutes away ... but there is still that tiny little monster that is gnawing at me.

One other thing that I am afraid of is that although I took art through all my years at high school, I haven't drawn in since then (20 years). I will say that I do remember that me and my siblings have all been good at drawing. I can remember seeing Skip and Carrie doing some drawings tha were quite good, as well as Deborah did an ink picture for mother when she came for a visit once. I also remember having two books for drawing animals that I did pictures from, doing sharks and girraffes quite well. So I know that I COULD do it ... but can I STILL?

Well ... the art book I have for my drawing class says that we fear what other people think of our art. Actually, BEFORE that it tells us that people new ot the field think that they don't need to know how to pencil draw as it is all done on the computer, but this is not true (I will have to do conceptual art as well as story boards). As important as it is to be able to draw in this field, how can I NOT be a little afraid of what people will think of my drawings? So maybe that crappy professor I had the first time I tried college is right this time around ... going to have to PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE.

My plan for practicing will be quite simple, really. There are a bunch of books out there for drawing. Until I get into the full swing of it again, I will be borring some of these books from friends of mine, from the library, and starting my own little collection as well. My school book lists some good exercices such as doing 30 second sketches of people and things to just get ideas down on paper, and tehn you can go back and flesh out the ideas ... I tried it a couple of times already and my 30 seconds turned out to be more like 2 minutes, but it's a start.

So ... once we get my scanner and I get some drawings going, I will put them up. I am not going to let myself be afraid of what people here think of them as I hope for some constructive criticism, and also to be able to look back at this see how I have (hopefully) progressed.

Anyhoo ... gotta go fix dinner now ... see you all around!

1 week and counting!

Here it is, 1 week from from my first day in school. I have requested taht day off just so I can take my time and get a feel for things. I don't know if I will take the first day off for each of the first days of each semester, but a lot of the classes I will be taking look so very exciting!!! Another exciting thing I discovered is some of the places I can possibly get a job with:

EA Games
MTV
HSN
Disney
Sony Playstation
Blizzard
20th Century Fox
THQ

And the types of jobs I can get:

Sports Game Designer
Game Designer
Mobile Game Designer
Video Game Intern
Technical Game Producer
Production Artist
Graphics Designer
Flash Developer

And the cities we could end up in:

Burbank
Seattle
Orlando*
San Diego
Cleveland
Hollywood
New York
Austin

(*I know Mere is hoping for Orlando!)

Anyway ... Mere tells me that she talked with an HR Recruiter today about what I am doing, going to school and blogging and such. First off, he has heard of Westwood College (online and otherwise), which is a good thing. He said if I was attending Bob's Online School, then there might be a problem. But Westwood is an acreditted college, so I picked a good place to be going. Also, he said that blogging is a great idea as a lot of people do this to get their name out there. Once I start having things to show off, I can put them here or in Facebook or Myspace for anyone and everyone to see.

That's about it for right now. I am reading the first chapter or two of each of my books to just be ready once school starts, so ...

I'll be seeing you all around!!!

Excitement is building ...

So here it is, 8 more days before school starts, and the excitment is building. I am so excited, I made a slight booboo while preparing dinner this morning (crockpotting it). I pulled out a frozen beef brisket, and dropped it in the crockpot with some cabbage. I know I looked all over the brisket and the in the packaging and could not find the spice pouch, so I figured I didn't get one because it was sold as a "beef" brisket and not a "corned beef" brisket. Well ... we just got home from work and I am spooning out the cabbage and the meat, when lo and behold, there was the spice pouch. Meh, I added my own spices, so it will taste good anyway.

Some things that are adding to my excitement as we get closer to my school start date are the job listings online. Checking out the Game Developer adds places such as Disney and NVIDIA are hiring. There are jobs all over the US, and there are even a lot that are freelance. I haven't given freelance much thought, but it has it possibilities.

Another thing that is getting my excitement levels up are the classes I will get to take. Here is a list of all of the ones I need to take for my major:

Course No. Course Title Credits
CAREER MAJOR – GAME ART AND DESIGN
minimum 133.0 credit hours required
*CA101 Computer Applications 3.0
*GA211 Image Editing for Games 3.5
*GA253 Introduction to Animation 3.5
*GA257 Cinematography 3.5
*GA300 Texture Mapping for Games 7.0
*GA301 Game Art Project 7.0
*GA304 Advanced Drawing and Perspective for Games 7.0
*GA424 Special Effects 7.0
*GA445 World Building 7.0
*GA461 Character Animation for Games 7.0
*GA491 Game Art Senior Project 7.0
*GD110 Introduction to Drawing and Perspective 7.0
*GD121 Digital Illustration 7.0
*GD242 3D Modeling and Animation 7.0
*GD305 Sequential Art and Visual Narrative 7.0
*GD330 Game Design Process 7.0
*GD340 Life Drawing for Animation 7.0
*GD341 Character Development and Design 7.0
*GD375 Color Theory 7.0
*GD441 3D Modeling 7.0
*SG110 Introduction to Game Development 3.0
*SG140 Game Analysis and Playability 4.5

Even if I can't make it as a Game Designer, with courses such as Digital Illustration and 3D Modeling, I should be able to get other jobs as well. I have never felt so many possibilities were open to me.

Anyhoo ... in the days to come I plan on posting some of the jobs I have found listed, and maybe even a picture or two of this and that. So ...

See ya around!!!

Beginnings ...

Well ...

Life is just one continuous road, and occassionaly we make pit stops. Sometimes they are planned, and sometimes they are not. When I got out of High School, I went directly into the Navy. I was all signed up for the Nuclear Sub program, I had a girl in mind that I wanted to woo, and I thought my life was on the fast track to fun and adventure.

Of course, even though I made it through boot camp, I did not make it into the Navy. I had fraudulently entered the Navy knowing that I suffer from debilitating migraines, and had one the day of graduation from boot camp. Needless to say, the Navy didn't want me.

What was I to do? I really had no plans as the plans I had fell through. I didn't get the career I was wanting. The girl I wanted to woo got married. And the fast track to fun and adventure took a detour.

Well, I started by living with my mother in a trailer in a town of 2,000 people. I worked the graveyard shift at a Mini mart in the dead of winter in North Dakota. It was not a career job, and I got fired from it because of complaints I had against me. Of course, I think they were trumped up complaints because I had 3 migraines in 5 days (nights), and so once again I was left wondering what to do.

I then decided that I would try going to school. I wanted to be a micro-biologist. I moved to Colorado to live with my father and his wife and got a job as a cashier at a local grocery store in a town of about 30,000 people in Colorado. I started school with minor expectations and no real clue about how it would be any different from high school. But I was in for a big suprise. Math used to be one of my best classes. I could do it all in my head and be done with the homework assignment even before the lecture was finished. But in college, I froze. I could not even do the simplest of math problems. My hands would start to shake when I would take a test and I couldn't even hold my pencil. Fate (?) intervened one day when I ran into my math professor outside of class and I told him about my predicament. His response to me: "PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!" That's it. That was all he said to me and he walked off. Don't even bother going back and looking at what he said thinking you might have missed something, because there is nother there to find. It really blew my mind that he was not as helpful as my high school teachers were. I felt really disallusioned and unimportant. Not to mention I was young and stupid, and felt angry at the world, so ... I flunked out that first semester.

Now we run into all sorts of little pit stops in my life. I had a falling out with my father and his wife and I moved from Colorado back to North Dakota to live with my sister. I had some minor jobs here and there and then moved in with a friend of mine that was going to college. Again, some more minor jobs and then I moved out on my own when I met my first wife, Kasie. At the time I was working both at Wards and at a Bingo parlor when I met Kasie (she worked at a drug store). not long after Kasie and I got married, I got a job at a tech center that had opened up in town called Sykes. Sykes did a lot of outsourcing, and I was on the Gateway Computers account. I supported the entire computer system and all of the software that went with it. Well ... after 2.5 years, I left Kasie. A year after that (and 10 years after my fallout with my father and his wife), I decided I needed to get a fresh start on life. I called up my father and arranged to move back to Colorado. After all, I had three years of tech experience, so I should be able to get a goof job, right?

Three months after I moved to Colorado, I was hired by another outsourcing company called EDS. This time I was on the Maxtor hard drive account. I moved around in the same town I was in, had some romantic interests around the area and out of state, and then fate (?) once more stepped in. Maxtor pulled all of the EDS employess into a meeting room and said there was good news and bad news: Good news -- Maxtor was not going to be going overseas for tech support like most other companies. Bad news -- Maxtor no longer wanted to outsource, and if we wanted to keep our jobs we had to re-apply for them.

I decided I wanted to take the 5 year severence I had built up with EDS and did not even submit an application/resume. 5 years after I had moved to Colorado, I left and moved on to Illinois. It is here that I got another outsourced tech job (doing system installs and supporting them and their peripherals), and met my wife. Her name is Meredith and works internally for a major insurance company. I am an external and I installed her PDA, and that is how that kicked off our wonderful marriage.

It has been 3 years now that I have been in Illinois, and Mere and I have talked about our future. I am not very happy with my jjob, as it is not very satisfying or fulfilling. We tossed around the idea of me attending cooking school, but I decided that although I like to cook, I like more to entertain. Not something I want to go to school for.

Enter now Westwood Online College. You have probably seen their commercials on TV. They are an acreditted college and they have many options for degrees. I was checking out some of their degrees and came across: Game Art and Design. Whoa! That sounded so cool! After all, I love playing games (video and board and role playing), so what could be better than making them, right? So I did some more research and contacted the school. I got a response right away from Wendi, and we got the ball rolling.

Now, for anyone who is interested, here are a few tidbits that I found out in my research. First off, in the next three years the demand for animators (which I will be able to do once I get my degree) will increase by 15%. Going to monster.com or dice.com reveals around 40+ jobs as it is using the keyword "animator". It jumps to 60+ if type in "game designer". Jobs range from $50k a year to $125k a year. Companies that I saw were big names such as THQ, HSN, 20th Century Fox, and Disney. Am I excited about all of this? OH YEAH! And just as icing on the cake, my brother informs me that he has some connections at EA Games, a HUGE game manufacturer! So I am hoping I at least get some info on building a portfollio from those people.

Anyway ...

School will be starting in 9 days. I already have my first books and semester lined up, as well as a huge art kit. I will post more about that later. I will be posting as much as I can over the next three years, and hopefully my awesome grades I intend to get (my wonderful wife will be making sure I stay on track). And hopefully, with any luck, I will end this blog three years from now with me getting a kick-butt job with Disney!