More Developments at Work

So this week was spent mostly trying to secure a position for myself at EA. I think overall it went pretty well but I wouldn't say I'm guaranteed a position with the company since i still have over a month to go before my contract ends with VMC.

I emailed Trey sometime last week, asking if it was possible for me to sit down with an artist from the team and just talk about art related stuff, how to get into the industry. He responded and told me one of the artists Tam (whose name I've actually come across before) was willing to meet with me over lunch. We planned for our meeting to be last Wednesday but he had to postpone twice on me and ended up meeting on Friday. He felt bad and offered to buy him lunch, which I planned to turn down and just buy my own but stupid me, I forgot my debit card in my backpack and he ended up buying me lunch anyway.

Tam didn't really tell me anything new - don't give up, be persistant, it will happen. But coming from someone of his status at EA, I took it quite seriously. And I don't plan on giving up - not that it was ever in planned in the first place. He told me a bit about how he got in, what he went through and that it wasn't at all different than what I'm going through now. Just the biggest thing was to keep it honest, what my plans are in the company and keep talking to as many people as possible to try and promote myself. Shortly after the meeting when we got back to work, I wrote him and email and gave him the URL to my portfolio website. He said he'd take a look and get back to me on it. I've yet to receive his response, but we'll find out sooner or later.

Also, Adrian was fired from work this week. We just found out for sure on Wednesday at the weekly team meeting. Reg asked if we had any questions as the team was dead silent without anything to say. I'm pretty familiar with what Don and Dave's opinion of him, and I have my own too of course, but I never expected they'd actually fire him outright seeing as how he's been this way all along and has still managed to hold the job. I didn't have anything to say and just replied with a no-comment. But at the back of my mind, I couldn't shake the feeling that justice had been served. And even as I write this, I kind of feel guilty for admitting it. Reg also told us that he would be replaced by two people (and I think now that maybe one is meant to replace Adrian, and the other would replace Alex when he leaves at the end of the month).


And speaking of Reg, I also emailed him asking if he'd mind being a reference for me when I formally apply for the character artist position with EA in September. The HR guy told me that's around when the positions would be filled. I was nervous about the emailing Reg because I didn't know how appropriate it would be but thankfully he encouraged me to be more forward about these things and to not "beat around the bush." He also said (much to my relief) that he and the rest of the quality assurance team had been happy with my performance and he'd be pleased to be a personal reference for me.
So that's Tam and Reg who I've got rooting for me so far. I'm not sure if they're enough to secure me a position since Cody's led me to believe I'm up against Gurn who works with development. If Gurn gets the job over me, I won't mind because I think he has more knowledge of the kinds of games EA makes. If anyone deserves the job more than me, it'd be him. But still, I'm hoping I get it, lol.
And it looks like things have been shaking up at Blackbox. In our daily spam, Ken told us that Friday was his last day at Blackbox because the company wanted to cut down on employees. So I emailed Cody the next day and asked him if he was still with the company. He said yes, but he wasn't convinced they would be renewing the contract. Seems he was aware that the company was downsizing too. But knowing him, I wouldn't be surprised if he was just being pessimistic so that if they renewed his contract, he'd be happy. I still hope everything works out well for him though, whether or not they decide to keep him.

That's about all the noteworthy development things this week. Except I forgot to mention the Beijing Olympics started on Friday! Meh, nothing worth mentioning really, since I don't really care too much about the Olympics.