Year 2 - Back to School; January 2001

The same month that Walrus shut down, I graduated from school with a horrible portfolio. All that work at Walrus wasn't applicable to anything for my career, and my school projects were just that... crappy student work. With little to no portfolio to fall back on, I was on my way to being another failed art student. I decided to work at the school and managed to get a job as a Teacher's Assistant in the Maya curriculum.

As a TA, I would sit in the classes with the students and help students when they raised their hands. This proved to be the BEST job I could have ever taken at that time in my life. As I sat in the classes, I essentially was taught Maya courses along with the rest of the class and if a student asked for help with something I didn't know, I could take the time to go figure it out and get back to them.

I was a TA to two main teachers: Ryan and Jeff. Ryan was a young guy like myself who had gotten a job as a teacher right out of school. He knew his stuff, but didn't have much experience in the actual work force. Great guy though. Jeff was an experienced game artist who left the game industry to take a much less stressful job in teaching. He worked at Acclaim back in their heyday and had been a Lead Artist on the NBA Jam series along with others. He proved to be my mentor during these times. He taught me SO much about Maya and I credit him with motivating me to change my focus to game development rather than film FX.

Also during this time, I began writing Maya tutorials. I posted links to my website (newly improved this time) where I posted them. Slowly but surely I began to make a name for myself at the school. I dedicated all my time to learning more and more about Maya and writing tutorials to not only help others, but help myself learn as well. I started getting a ton of students coming up to me asking for extra help and became a tutor as well as a TA.

I started getting a lot of attention online as well. Emails asking about Maya coming from far off countries. It was pretty neat.

I worked there from January until October 2001. I started running out of money and was tired of my parents having to bail me out for rent every month. I asked for a raise at work and was denied. I had no choice but to quit, pack up my stuff, and move back home to Mississippi. I was officially unemployed, with a horrible portfolio, and with no prospects... Wasn't looking good at all...