[KS Update] – Producer’s Letter #1 – September 9th 2013
Ah jeez where to start? The team has slowly introduced me to all the burger joints in the area so I am currently sleepy with bacon’y burger goodness. But I digress…. (Note: I do that often.)
This first “Producer Letter” is mostly going to be introduction to me and a little storytelling about my move and first weeks at CSE. Future letters will focus more on what we’ve been working on to keep our backers up to date. On with the intro…
First off I am many things, husband, father, producer, comedian, hugger, gamer, pragmatist, nature lover, and more. There’s two other things I have always been. One, an artist, and two, a hard worker. When people ask me about getting into the games industry the first thing I tell them is, “It’s a pile of hard work.” I’m really serious about that. It’s not that it’s a requirement of long hours or difficult problem solving, that could be said to be part of any job. Here however you have an industry a lot of people want to work in. So how do you actually get in and then survive? Well that’s number two…..a hard worker! My definition of hard work is more specific though. Hard work for me is working when you don’t have to. It’s going beyond your current task. And most importantly, it’s looking for problems to solve. If you don’t see them, you’re not looking hard enough. I’m excited to apply that work ethic here at CSE.
I’ve been an artist from an early age. However I am also very into fish, animals, and nature. Like most kids I wanted to be a vet or something. So around college age I started attending UC Santa Cruz with a focus in Marine Biology. After two years of chemistry and biology classes I quickly realized I had no working concepts of this thing they call math. So after failing Chem 1C twice I started to seriously ponder whether this Marine Biology thing was going to make me happy. So I’m pondering this idea late one evening on a plane to Oregon to visit my girlfriend. I’m sitting between two businessmen in suits who are reading the business and sports sections. There I am, ripped jeans and a gaming logo t-shirt drawing an Alien ripping apart a Colonial Marine. Suddenly I hear from the aisle, “You draw that?” (Now of course I want to look up and say, “What?! Me? Noooo.. I’m just holding this pen to keep it warm.”) However I don’t do that. I look up and the flight attendant is looking at my drawing. “Hey Janice come look what this kid drew.” So now I have three flight attendants fawning over me and clearly annoying the two businessmen.
Letter is way to long to copy/paste the whole thing. Its worth a read. Here is the concept art he posted with it:
