2016 was a crazy year, that's for sure. But most of it was actually positive for me. In the beginning of 2016, I made a huge push to revamp my entire portfolio. I worked for months to create artwork specifically for my portfolio and create something that actually represents me. I'm honestly still happy with my portfolio that I finished back in March, and I've mainly been making minor tweaks to add in updated artwork. So that was the good start to the year.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work as a Lead Instructor at iD Tech's UCLA location. Although I only had two days off the entire summer, it was a lot of fun and I met some really great friends there. I loved it so much so that this coming summer I will be returning as a Lead Instructor in California, but this time I'll be at Stanford. So that's exciting.
As I was recovering from the intense summer, I was applying for a few jobs and internships in the fall. I was lucky to be interviewed by Turner when they visited CCAD in Columbus, OH. The recruiter gave me some useful tips that I've been working to integrate into my work and current portfolio. A week later, I had an interview with Tonko House, one of my dream job studios. It went really well and I had a blast talking with Dice Tsutsumi. He let me know that it would be a few months until I hear back with what the next step in the process would be, so I'm still patiently waiting for those results.
After all of this excitement with interviews, I got a call from someone I know at iD Tech, and had a sudden interview for a full-time job that I applied for. She sent over the test and I successfully did that. A few days later, I got a call back and received the position as a Curriculum Developer at iD Tech! Not long after, I flew out to Campbell, CA and went through my training seminar for the new position. And for the past month and a half, I have been developing curriculum for some of iD Tech's courses that will be available in the summer of 2017. I work full-time from home, so it's super convenient and exactly what I needed right now!
So overall it has been a very exciting year. Although I have been getting less and less time for personal art, I have been progressing in my professional life, so I am super happy about that. Even though I've been busy, I have been keeping up as much as I can. In the first half of the year, I was still able to do daily fundamental drawings every day for an hour. I was able to draw daily characters as part of my Nay-A-Day project. Once summer hit, those things stopped happening daily and were a little more whenever I had time in between my 7am - 11pm work days.
After summer, I was doing things daily a bit more often. And then once I started my job as a Curriculum Developer, I have been drawing daily still, but doing less of the dedicated projects. I managed to complete Inktober and Huevember this year, but the end of November and all of December has been a struggle to draw after eight hour work days. I've went back to doing more of my Pokemon-of-the-Day project, since those are a lot quicker and easier to do than the NAD project. I've drawn a few NADs since then, but not a huge amount.
Since our offices have been closed last week and this week, I have had time to do more personal drawings and most specifically: I have been working on progression in my story. This week I have been working a lot on a Weebly site for my characters, so stay tuned for when that goes live!
Oh yeah and during all of the craziness of this year, I have been working on a game with some of my friends. We're extremely close to the end of pre-production and are about to start into production finally. Next year we are planning to do most of the production work, and hopefully the game will actually be released by 2018! I'll definitely post an update here once it is closer to the release date.
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