About to head into work

I've been working for Mark for about 2 months now. At first I thought getting paid 14 an hour US for making tiling textures was easy money and I shouldn't have a problem doing it. But turns out, I actually hate what I'm doing. The rate I procrastinate is crazy and I could really get those textures into him alot sooner than I actually do. But repeating textures is just dead boring work, nevermind that I never see them applied to any live models. I don't know what the software is exactly that he's working on, but my guess is it's a simulation software since he talks about what the "user" is able to do. My work ethic with this project absolutely sucks and it makes me feel more guilty that he appreciates me enough to want to extend the contract.

Jacob from Volt called last Wednesday but I was out meeting Garrett. He wants to launch an add campaign for Innovative called "No More Paper" and consulted with my about some marketing ideas. I have no qualms with the suggestions he's made but coming up with a whole advertising campaign is bigger than anything I've ever done, graphic design wise. I understand what he wants to say, I know what he wants to do to spread the word but as for HOW we get the message out there, I can't think of anything. And as a matter of fact, Garrett was throwing out more ideas than I was. I'm tempted to let him do all the creative work while I just sit back and slap the marketing pieces together but clearly that's not why he brought me on board. At the end of the day, I forwarded the notes I wrote down during our previous phone conversation and he told me he'd talk over the ideas we generated with Aita. Haven't heard back from him yet.

So I didn't end up getting the phone call Jacob meant for me.The next morning sometime I called Vaughn (Jacob had left on vacation) who told me I was scheduled to start the following Wednesday. I'm relieved to finally have found a job that'll help in my career and not get me falling back in on graphic design. Sure it's QA, but at least it's within the games industry and I'll be working directly with EA employees. I look at it as a 3 month interview with EA as opposed to a 20 minute sit down interview. I keep repeating this to myself since I'm still sore over the fact that I've yet to land an artist job. I realize none of it is my fault and that character art is far rarer and more competitive of a field to get into than environment art, that and combined with the fact I don't have an environment reel ... anyway I'm not gonna delve into that. Important thing is I'm doing what I can in my job search, and simultaneously working on multiple environment pieces to throw on the website. I just have to keep this up and my portfolio will be that much bigger by the time I'm finished with Volt.

All in all, I'm pretty relieved to have something within the games industry. Doesn't even have to be an artist position (I realize I'd even be happy as a graphic designer in the marketing department for EA or another design studio). It might be the longer route, but it's better than taking the wrong turn altogether.