Game Development

Though my roots in this professional world are still very young, my career in this industry has already started to sprout from the creative soil LCAD planted me in.
When I graduated in 2013 I was quickly scooped up by a local video game company in Irvine, CA called Obsidian Entertainment. There, I was brought on as an Art and Animation Intern for “South Park: The Stick of Truth” to help finish up the project. I was even labeled “The intern to just get stuff done.” Shortly after, when South Park was wrapping up, Obsidian gave me my big break in to this industry by hiring me on full time as a 3D Junior Animator in 2014. Since then I have been queued with a couple more of the company’s current projects. One of those projects being the CRPG “Pillars of Eternity. ”
At Obsidian, I have the opportunity to push my ever-growing skill set by sampling different hats and learning different software in the 3D animation pipeline. By me being able to do this, my creativity and my skill set level seems endless – just like the endless amount of imaginative people that I am very fortunate to work with. These creative people push me to do my best every day, just like the talented people I worked with and learned from during my time at LCAD.
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Since graduating from LCAD, I’ve animated on a banner ad for “Ren & Stimpy” creator John K., animated and storyboarded on several projects with Hero4Hire Creative near Boston, and made a few animatics to stay in the public eye and keep the gears in my head from getting rusty. I’m currently working full-time on the hit Netflix series “All Hail King Julien”.
Coming from virtually no animation education, but a deep-seated passion for classic Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons, I benefited profoundly from the company of my fellow students, my professors, and other legendary animators that I met by association while at LCAD. The animation business is no different. Master one facet of filmmaking or draftsmanship and you’ve still got a dozen to go! Thankfully, I’m still thirsty for knowledge and practicing to get better at my craft every day, and my coworkers and supervisors are treasure troves of insight.
If you want to pursue a career in animation, especially where storytelling is concerned, here’s a tip: Go to LCAD. I’ll bullet-point a few tips as well, for those who are comforted by seeing numbers at the beginning of paragraphs:
1. Play to your strengths. Are you likely to tell a story whose main character is Rapunzel? Luke Skywalker? Batman? Daffy Duck? You’ll definitely want to branch out and test your skills with something new or daring as you move forward, but don’t lose sight of the stuff that gets you most psyched in storytelling.
2. Favor the simplest, most direct approach (to a point). Don’t skimp on expressions, construction, or nuanced action – if characters behave differently, they should be drawn differently. Their actions will sure as heck be timed differently. That said, a character always makes his/her point more clearly with a few simple gestures than flapping and twirling his/her arms about.
3. Don’t stop! After completing my senior film “A Little Hitch” and in between freelance assignments, I continued to make animatics and limited-animation skits to stay active and prove that I was not a one-trick pony. I have a feeling that all that work combined landed me the DreamWorks gig. After all, if you love what you do, you should be prepared to do it at least 40 hours a week!
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