In high school the first video game college on the continent was establish in Vancouver, Canada and a couple years later another branch of Digipen opened up in Seattle Washington. This got me thinking that perhaps my desire could also provide a solution about what career I wanted to pursue. It was here that I started to do my own research into this industry. I was basically alone because most people didn’t know about this field in my area.

I went to Jefferson Community College to see if programming was a thing that I could do because, at this time, it seemed that artists were not in high demand and everyone was stressing programming. At the community college, they had an established computer field where I was able to have a taste of C/C++ programming languages. After a couple years of community college, I received an Associates degree in computer science and also earned the status of Microsoft Certified Professional.

This is me standing next to my Allegheny College senior comprehensive project.

From here I started my hunt for a four year college to get a bachelor’s degree. I was accepted and attended Allegheny College in Meadville Pennsylvania. I was taught how to program at a grander scale and establish myself as a studio artist as well. I had the artistic ability before being a master at technique, but this was the place where I really learned how to polish and focus my skills. I became an avid programmer and became accustomed to learning new programming languages.

Allegheny College did not have a game development field in place but I chose to get a double major and create my own pseudo game development major. I learned about how I could apply my artistic and programming skills to create games. With the aid of the professors and my own initiative, I learned how to think more multi-dimensionally and discover the answers that I did not have. I have to say that was one of the most important things I learned at the college. I taught myself Maya and became a proficient Maya modeler. Modeling became a fun skill to learn, I actually took a class independent study with the art and technology professor to learn how to model with Maya.

I attended the Game Developers conference in March of 2004 early to see what the industry was looking for from an artist and programmer. I was surprised to learn that a person can get a job in the industry from writing storyboards. I found this entertaining because as a young child I used to create comic books, a form of story boarding. In fact most of the stuff I just liked doing had its own place within the game industry. To accompany what I had learned from the event, I took advantage of several freelance opportunities here at the college to hone the skills needed in the industry. The game industry was where I wanted to be and it became my new direction for a career. Upon my graduation I had learned what the industry was all about and I had about a years worth of networking under my belt. I graduated cum laude for a high GPA and also got the award for the best outstanding Studio Art Thesis, where I explored art through video games. If you are curious you can check out my senior project section for further details.