Working it out

This is a strange time in my life. I'm out of school and I have nothing to do but work on new content for my portfolio. After a long break, I'm starting to get back into the 3D modeling groove. My portfolio needs a lot more pieces before I'll be satisfied.

After getting some critiques from an employee at Raven studios, I know I need to not only step up my level of detail on character models, but also build on my portfolio of props, and that's exactly what I plan to do. I've already changed my site to read "digital artist" instead of "character artist" because I need to focus on more than just characters if I want to try and land a job somewhere. I'm actually completely redesigning my site at the moment, so check back for new work and a new layout.

Right after graduation I jumped onto a mod project and volunteered to continue helping out with my former internship, but after a month or two I realized that I needed to take a step back and start to figure things out in my life. I realized that I'm not going to get a job in the game industry right off the bat, so I have been looking around for something to do locally until I can build a stronger portfolio. In order to build a strong portfolio, I believe I need to focus on work that I personally want to create and therefore I am taking time off of all outside projects in order to make myself happy. I seems kind of selfish in a way, but as soon as school ended I fell into a rut when it came to motivation, and now that I have practically cut my ties with everyone, I have been able to focus on just "art" and have become more productive because of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not abandoning any of these prior affiliations; I plan on returning to them when I'm ready to start contributing. I just need to work on building my confidence first.

All of my friends have moved away or are going to school at the moment, so I have plenty of alone time in which to work. The only factor that's making things tough is my air-conditioning because it keeps breaking down, but I'm not complaining. I am looking forward to building up my portfolio, re-launching my site, and then jumping into as many projects as I can before hopefully landing a job in an actual studio.

It is still my dream to work in the game industry, making anything that anyone tells me to make; but as for right now, I need to make what I want to make (as if to get it all out of the way now).

-Matt