When I opted to re-brand my ‘Journey of A Game Artist’ blog to Journal From the Road following my career shift last year, I fully expected to write articles every few weeks. I thought that it’d be a good use of my time on the train and that it’d keep me motivated to work on projects. As the year went on, it became clear that the act of balancing 3D work, GameTextures blogs, and personal writing, would be difficult to maintain during my train rides. Do I work on 3D or write? Do I write for my blog or for GameTextures? Do I do nothing and take naps?
(I absolutely take numerous naps.)
I started a morning pages routine that I really enjoyed in early 2019. It kept this blog a little less ‘bitchy’ for lack of a better term, and a bit more focused. It also let me sort out a lot of thoughts I had during a rather trying time where commute frustrations ran high. I managed to keep writing for GameTextures too, although my output has definitely wavered a bit due to my incredibly busy year.
As it turns out, even having a laptop on my commutes wasn’t enough to make the commute to DreamLine tolerable for a long time. Yes, if I was less dedicated to fitness or wanting to create for myself I think the commute would be less of a pain, but my drive to work on my own projects and become a better artist and writer is too strong to just stop and be complacent.
And, if I’m honest, I think the reason I nap a lot on the train these days is because I push myself physically in the wee hours of the morning.
DreamLine itself is a company on the upswing, I think. I can’t speak sales numbers, but in my short time here I’ve seen a small to mid sized company go though growing pains. The founders and original CEO left the day to day operations earlier this year. They and the board hired a new CEO with lots of experience at different companies in the kitchen and bath sector. I also happen to find him rather personable. The company hired a true HR director as well as a new CFO within the last few months and new processes are being implemented company wide. It’ll take time for some of the unfavorable policies to be adjusted (I hope the company will re-work their sick time and work from home policies) but overall, I believe my coworkers will be at a better version of DreamLine a year from now.
I will not be. I found myself a new full time job.
I am happy to announce that I have accepted a full time faculty position at Drexel University as an Assistant Teaching Professor of Digital Media. I will be teaching a mix of classes ranging from 3D modeling to game development and more. My official start date is September 1st, but since that’s Labor Day Weekend, I will be stepping on to campus as a Full Time Professor on September 3rd. My last day at DreamLine will be August 30th.
Along with the new position comes an additional announcement that I will be returning to the Freelance/Self Employed world as well.
I’m back!
Drexel
Detailing how I managed to land this job without a Master’s Degree might be an article on it’s own. The short version is pretty easy to lay out though; My adjunct instructor reviews were great overall (and only got better the longer I taught) and I got along well with the different program directors I had met with in that time. I was told the Digital Media department had openings partly by chance as I had been in touch with one of the department heads about teaching a night class weeks earlier. I had decided not to teach those night classes, as my schedule would have been horrific. What followed was one phone interview in the freezing winds of winter, a series of interviews in a suit (first time since 2014), and a little bit of luck.
Teaching isn’t what I thought I’d be doing when I was 22. I fully expected to be an Art Director or something by this point. When you’re as green as I was at that time, it can be hard to really know where your strengths lie, and life is just getting started too. I’ve known for a little while now that I deal with people very well and would likely make a pretty good manager or director, but the road to getting there would be long and require too much sacrifice at this point in my life. I would also need a lot of people in their 40’s and 50’s retire early and that’s a bit unlikely. Teaching university students gave me a lot of that fulfillment as an adjunct, and it came with the not so small bonus of sharing with students the mistakes I’ve made so that they can learn from them. That was just as important to me as it was for them to know how to make a prop in Maya.
I now have the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with them again on a full time basis.
I’m also rather excited to be working closer with the faculty at the University. It’s an easy and non-controversial statement for me to say that I will probably be the dumbest full timer there. During my interview, professors like Paul Difenbach, Tony Rowe, and others really showed me their love for what they’re doing. A lot of them have already accomplished so much and are orders of magnitude more intelligent than I. Many of them chose to teach as well. It very much goes against that old sentiment of “those than can, do. Those that can’t, teach”. Trust me when I say that the men I talked to during my interview process choose this to be the work they do.
Teaching at Drexel also gives me a fair amount of freedom in how I spend my time. I will be on campus more than I was when I was an adjunct, but compared to the time crunch I experience now, my life will feel more open. I have a 4 day work week, with no strict amount of hours set. Some days I may be on campus for 4 hours, for others I may be there for 10. Between my two machines (desktop at home and a laptop on the go) I’ll be able to work anywhere I choose.
More time, more money, surrounded by extremely intelligent peers, and helping to shape the minds of tomorrow; what’s not to like?
I also have, for now anyway, summers to work contracts, learn, or relax.
Freelancing in 2020
One of the many changes I am making.What does a driven artist do with an extra 12 to 20 hours a week? Besides sleeping an extra 30 to 60 minutes a day and working in a bit more game time, he returns to his roots with a new perspective and a new plan; Self Employment 2.0.
With Self Employment 2.0, I will be giving my business a makeover. I personally believe that my longer term goals and plans will benefit from my new approach. I’ve often wanted to build something from my humble office and have not had the time (nor funds) to do so. Now I’ll have a cool mix of both.
One of the biggest failings I felt I had as a freelancer was my need to always have work. I did not start freelancing with a big cushion of savings that allowed me to be picky in the work I took on. I had to hustle, and I made it work for as long as I could until that feast or famine mentality finally turned on me (there’s a specific VR Project that I worked on in 2018 that ended very badly. More to come soon.) Additionally, because of my need to always have paid work I never felt that I could fully devote myself to improving the quality of my portfolio or, in more recent years, build my own assets. With the mix of stability and flexibility that teaching full time will provide, I believe I’m going to be able to finally do what I really want to.
I have some assets available on Sketchfab and The Unreal Marketplace now, and it’s a great feeling when I see a sale.
Leading into September, I am going to fully rebuild my desktop PC (according to the news, my timing couldn’t be better). It’s been long in the tooth for the last two years and it’s time I modernize. My current PC was built in early 2014 and even with some mild overclocking, it’s showing its age. It can still game at 1080P well enough, but when the Material Editor in Unreal takes moments to think when moving nodes around, it’s time. I have a few gaps to fill in the build (I’m back and forth on GPU’s right now) but overall the build will be anchored by the following parts:
- AMD Ryzen 3900x, a 12 core beast of a CPU
- AMD X570 Motherboard with PCIE 4.0
- 512 GB SSD by Samsung, chosen for it’s incredible speed
- 1TB SSD that is run in a standard SATA config for my work and games
- 2TB Mechanical Drive for Archival and Media (Music/Movies)
- Nvidia RTX something or other. I want the fastest I can get without totally breaking the bank
- 32 GB of DDR4 3600 RAM
This machine should be able to chew through pretty much any workload I’ll be doing for the next 5 years and will have upgrade paths for at least some of that time.
Once September hits, I’ll be working on asset packs for the rest of the year. I want to have one pack done a month, but if it takes a bit longer to get them done that’s fine. Quality is what is important. These kits will serve a triple purpose; to make some passive income, boost my portfolio, and to increase my visibility. These packs, along with my continued writing for GameTextures, will drive me into 2020 with some degree of momentum. Once 2020 starts I’ll re-evaluate my goals since I’ll have an idea of the additional demands of full time teaching as well as a feeling of what I’m enjoying or disliking the most about this iteration of my self-employment. Since my focus at the end of the year will be on selling assets, I will likely form an LLC and re-organize my products and services under that banner. There is some legal protection that comes with forming an LLC that I want to have.
Plus, how cool is it to be a professor who owns his own company.
What’s old is New Again. Mostly.
In this ‘what’s old is new again’ start to the fall, there are a few differences in how I’ll be approaching my work. In a ‘second go around’ like this adjustments are warranted. I want everything about this set of opportunities to be better than it was before.
- Teaching is my #1 priority. It’s my full time, main job and I have a duty to the students to give them my all. I always have, even while working as an adjunct.
- I’m excited to be able to give more of myself to my writings (both for GameTextures and my own works).
- I’m beyond pumped to start my freelancer rebirth, all beginning with a focus on kits and social engagement.
I’m truly excited for the fall to begin. In some ways I’m looking forward to this more than I was looking forward to moving to Austin to work at Bluepoint in 2017.
Until next time.