The Job Hunt is Done

Yesterday was a great day. You know, you can't have everyday a great day otherwise all the great ones would seem boring as you'd not know the difference between the great and the mediocre. But yesterday was great. The "job hunt" can be one of the most stressful periods in life- not knowing if anyone is going to respond to your resumes and packages, then not knowing if you'd be a good fit a particular company, the finally not knowing if you're even going to get an offer.

Last week, I flew out to Chicago to interview at Midway Games. I met the team I'd be working with and they were all very cool guys and gamers at that (who knew, gamers working at a game company...?). We took in some grub at a local irish pub which had very good fries. My wife and I talked over it and decided it was a good fit so I accepted the position yesterday and I'm pumped. They do a lot of great work and I'm looking forward to learning some new applications and skills as well as working with some cool cats.

On top of that, I think we have a buyer for the house. How sweet is that? Very.

Another week, another....blog entry

It was a good week-nothing crazy good or bad. Picked up another freelance gig which should be fun. A little cg add-on ladybug for a live action movie that filmed here in Savannah. My buddy Jon and I are gonna handle that. He's heading off to Europe for one last quarter before letting go of his school days, so hopefully we can get his match move knocked out early in the week. Made some good progress on a spot I'm doing for a little studio up in New York. I'm pumped to get to play with Tiko again. I'm grateful for the chance to work on some freelance gigs that involve some animation instead of just design. Good stuff, but gonna be a busy few weeks.

I've been trying to decide what to spend my gift certificate money (grad gift from my brother and his wife, though the fact that its for a game store leads me to think my brother was making the call on that one...thanks, Mike!). I've been fighting the call of Azeroth for a long, long time....is it time to give in.....?

I gotta say Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has to be my new favorite cartoon. The get so much antic, squash and stretch and just fun-to-watch animation in the simple style, that you just gotta love it. That and, Bloo is selfishly awesome...he cracks me up.

Had a good phone interview with a company and heard from some others. One is flying me out this week which I'm excited about. All of my packages have arrived at the studios I sent them out to, so I guess I'm in the waiting game to see if I get any responses there. All the responses so far have still been from posting on the web, so I guess that's a good way to go to get some response for my fellow job seekers.

Good news all around...

This morning, I read the blog (see "I got a rock") of a friend of mine who has been having some major bad luck. Things have been a bit wonky (spell check might not thing that's a word, but we know better) round here so I was hoping that I wasn't gonna start a streak of that myself.

I worked a bit today on figuring out how to podcast for a clients site and found a great little how-to if anyone is interested and it worked like a charm. This afternoon brought nothing but good news in the form of a couple of freelance animation gigs. One of which I've been waiting for months to see if the funding was gonna be in place on their end for me to start and it is. Tiko will fly again...

The other project I can't say much about yet, but I'm excited to see what comes of it. I should know more next week. How much I'll be able to divulge is another question entirely. Great way to start a weekend!

Graduation and Fly Larvae

Last week was graduation week at SCAD and so a little crazy here. I was bustin' my tail trying to get packages done to send out to studios and so was tweaking the reel, writing cover letters, updating the resume and all the fun that goes along with that which apparently always includes running out of printer ink at some point. I drove down to Jacksonville on Thursday night to pick up some fam. More arrived via car on Friday and still more on Saturday morning.

The graduation ceremony itself was Saturday and was pretty cool though LOOOOOONNNNGGGGGG, we must have had umpteen thousand animation graduates. Afterwards, an multitude (how often can you truly use that word) rushed out of the theater and then tried to find their respective students. It was "Where's Waldo at a Harry Potter Convention". We headed back to the house after that for some good old' BBQ from a local restaurant.

The family all headed back on Sunday and my wife and I started an assembly link of checking DVDs, addressing packages, and proofreading letters for the stack of packages that finally made it to UPS yesterday. I posted the reel on a couple of sites and got some hits so that was definitely encouraging and let led to some pretty interesting leads.

This morning brings us to trash day and thus my discovery that those flies I saw buzzing around the trash the other day were up to more than finding some trash to grub on. Babies, in general, are some of the cutest things in the world. That is a generally accepted rule that most would agree to. However, I am going to offer an addendum to this, fly babies do not follow this rule. I know that flies gotta do their thing but I ask future generations to make their nursery some place other than my trash can....(shiver).