They liked my demo reel of killer teddy bears

After graduation I wasn’t looking at many prospects, but a friend of mine at college was working at a company who sold computers and IT services to a large broadcasting company on the East Coast and heard that they were looking for a new 3D animator so he put my name in the hat. There really wasn’t an interview. It was more of just an overview of my demo reel, which mostly consisted of stuff I had done in college. I threw in some other stuff, like 3D animations going back to my high school style of things—mostly teddy bears—killing each other, drinking, having sex, doing drugs… Nothing particularly not safe for work, but it was definitely in there.

It was my job to make 3D mockups of 2D images. For instance, making a 3D model of the station logo and drawing it into a template that had some camera moves so we could have it fly across the screen and what not. I would also have to do less templated promos for various programming, like mocking up the background for the sports package, or creating particular graphics for special news segments.

I wasn’t particularly excited to start working at this massive media conglomerate, but I was excited to have something to start paying off my student loans. It was super laid-back; I contracted 30-35 hours a week, I was coming in when everyone else was leaving, I was leaving as soon as I got my assignments done because no one else was there to keep track of how long I was at the office. My contract had me working 35 hours a week. Realistically I was probably working more like 15.

So it was a pretty cushy job. At least, at first.