Those who shmooz get into galleries. That's not my game either.
I wanted to be an animator when I was a kid. I had an uncle who was a veteran of Disney and went on to become a mucky-muck at Hanna Barbera.
He burst my bubble way back in the '70's with his tales of the changing industry and the role of unions and overseas studios. Convinced that by the time I was educated and ready to enter the work force there would no longer be much of an animation industry for me here I didn't know what I would do. Perhaps go into painting like my mother or photography like my father.
What I found was an Atari home computer in the early 80's. And a book on 8 bit graphics. The Atari became an Amiga a few years later with programs like Deluxe Paint.
After a stint of security guard jobs and a couple years of community college life drawing and ceramics I landed a job as a draftsman for a furniture manufacturer. I thought that was it, I at least had a job that let me put pencil to paper and draw.
The computer art was a hobby. I loved it, and loved games and other graphics done in that era of the 80's. I went to an Amiga users group meeting, my first time going because they were having a graphics presentation of what some of their members had created.
Wonderful stuff- I was really impressed. After the general meeting was over a guy stood up in the front of the packed auditorium and said he was looking for an amiga artist to work with his game company.
I left to go home and on the way out, just past the door that same guy stood alone. Out of all those people showing off their talents as artists, not one of them went up to him with any interest in applying their creative talents to a paycheck.
I stopped and introduced myself, I didn't have anything with me to show him - I had not even had anything in the art showing. But I asked him about his game company and he said they made sport games for 8 bit consoles and amiga, that they were looking for a computer artist/animator.
I later interviewed with him, after I had prepared a demo reel within the span of a week showing animation and characters with a sport theme.
That was my break into a brand new industry. Now I am a motion graphic artist, technical artist and game designer. An old timer from the start of an industry. My goal of being an animator was met...everything I had wanted to do growing up was realized because I jumped up and went for it when an auditorium of people passed.
