Thread by @TylerThAnimator, By request:tldr version of my story:when you graduate...be a better animator =)1. [...]

By request:

tldr version of my story:

when you graduate...be a better animator =)

1. I left my job of 14 years in the hospitality field after feeling unsatisfied with the work to go to art school (I had been playing WoW and it inspired that childhood sense of wonder)

2. In art school I was fortunate enough to have some incredible instructors, including three former Fox animation feature animators. So we learned 2D before even getting our first 3ds Max class

Unfortunately I graduated in Dec 2008, not a great time to be job hunting.

3. 6 months later I got a job as a QA tester at THQ Phoenix, where our corporate console testing was. The first game I ever worked on was #Darksiders and I was amazed that for @VigilGames good enough was never good enough. They constantly improved on stuff that was already badass

4. A couple of years later they were hiring up for #Darksiders2 and I applied for a jr. animator position. Didn't get a call back. But I knew one of the testers there and he said he'd put in a word for me so I applied for QA.

5. Because it was a contract position, they wouldn't pay to relocate me, but I drove out to Austin on my dime anyway because I really wanted to be in that studio. It was incredibly invigorating working with so many talented and hard-working devs.

6. As we wrapped up DS2, we started working on our next game (which eventually became The Hunt, which is another thread). I was grabbing the game rigs and animating with them in my spare time and was getting some feedback from a couple of their animators, when all of a sudden...

7. THQ went bankrupt. Because we had just shipped a game and didn't have a blockbuster ready to come out, no one snapped up our studio in the auction.

Just when I felt I was making some anim headway, it got derailed.

Fortunately...

8. This Austin indie studio called @CertainAffinity held a "sorry you lost your job" happy-hour meet and greet to snag some of our super talented devs.

I met @Rubeldan there and he looked at my reel. He gave me great feedback and said one of the best anim things I'd heard:

9. "This is a pretty good reel. The stuff you're not doing well I can teach you. The stuff that's hard to teach you're doing already."

Great, right?

Turns out they weren't hiring animators at the time, but he gave me a card and told me to keep in touch.

Then...

10. I started really looking for animation jobs. I figured it was a good time to make the change from QA to animation. And armed with Dan's comment and feedback he gave, my confidence was higher in my revised reel.

Unfortunately, after a few months of that I was still unemployed

11. I pinged Dan again and he said they were looking for more testers so I should apply since it would get me in the studio and we could work on anim stuff on the side.

He also reminded me to list him as the reference so he could get the referral bonus =)

Cut to 5 months later

12. I was doing assignments that Dan gave me with a YouTube clip as the reference and told "do something with this."

So I'd try to do something interesting with it, he'd give me feedback, I'd make changes.

All this was...

13. ...establishing a relationship and showing that I could take direction (an important skill).

Eventually I got my hands on some of our DLC ships for a game called Age of Booty: Tactics.

I'd spend my lunch break working on a ship set, then do QA for my working hours.

Then...

14. We signed a deal with a long-time partner to do a project that was going to require a ton of grunt work for anim(in addition to some real animation work).

Perfect for a first time animator since it wasn't too demanding and would be a crap assignment for an experienced one

15. But not all our studio leadership believed that it was a good idea to take a guy out of QA to animate. At the time, we were a super-senior studio and if they needed someone, they just went out and got them.

So...

16. I had to show my reel (and add some new pieces) and @steevKelly (our sandbox lead at the time) and @Rubeldan (our anim lead at the time) had to fight for me.

Thankfully, it was the shot I needed to prove myself. And I'm still there animating today! =D

17. The morale of the story seems to me to be:
-keep at it
-get good
-helpful people are helpful
-give it all you got if you get the shot
-being in the right place at the right time helps (and fortune favors the prepared)

18. Epilogue: @CertainAffinity has moved several other folks out of QA into other dev roles in the past few years.

It's a really good studio, and we're hiring =b

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