Figured it was about time I updated this thing. I'm not much for writing journals but I did start a blog earlier this year to get into the habit so I can look back over the years. More for personal reasons that to update people on my life, really. But hey, it'd flatter me if people were actually interested!

So 3 months after graduation, this is where I sit - One part time job doing freelance textures, another part time job as a marketing guy/graphic designer for Innovative, and I start QA testing for Electronic Arts this Wednesday.

I can't say it's been a fun 3 months. In fact I'd say it was the most depressing. After being recommeded to apply for a junior character artist and user interface artist with Blue Castle games by their talent sourcer, I find out later that I was rejected for both positions by the hiring managers. The UI job because I didn't have enough experience (and this was an intermediate/junior position) and the junior character artist because someone with more experience and prior experience with the company came along so I was SOL with that. Also, EA Blackbox invited me to an open house to meet the team and I got free booze and a free video game out of it. Not to sound ungrateful, but I would've traded in all that for an interview. Turns out the team had already hired more talent than they needed at that point but their talent sourcer was nice enough to tell me I was still being considered for future needs down the road.

Until all that happens though, I'll do this QA thing. Since Volt (the company orchestrating all of EA's quality assurance testing) employees work at EA's facilities and the job description requires me to keep in regular contact with EA producers and higher ups, I'm thinking of this opportunity as a 3 month interview process instead of a contract QA job. It's full time which means it'll take away time to work on the portfolio (let alone my other 2 jobs) but I want to do everything I possibly can to secure myself a good standing with the game artist community - whether it's with EA or not.

Here's hoping something good will come out of this.