New job: New city

As I get ready to start my second week at Rockstar North, I feel like it’s probably about time I posted an update. In order to avoid it being massive, I thought I’d break it up a bit.

So first things first! A new city to explore! Edinburgh! 

Edinburgh is awesome, I absolutely love it already. Mind you, moving into an amazing apartment for a month whilst I find a place of my own doesn’t hurt! 

It’s lovely: 

Of course, it can’t last forever and eventually we’ll have to find somewhere else to park our stuff. We had quite a few viewings last week and I think we’ve found somewhere to stay. As long as the application goes OK, we should be able to move in quite soon. Rather inconveniently, the weekend we’re leaving this apartment is the same weekend we go to Sweden for a wedding. Very bad timing. 

Anyway, as I was saying, Edinburgh is awesome. It does have it’s fair share of weirdos too though! I’ve already had one mad old woman threaten me for accidentally bumping into her (I tried to dodge out of her way, but she ploughed into me, then gave me a death stare and swore at me!) and there are quite a lot more daytime drunks than I was anticipating. 

On the other hand, within an hour of landing in Scotland I’d already seen someone playing the bagpipes. Swings and roundabouts!

NEW JOB GET!

Good news everyone! The plan was to try and get a new job sorted out before I finish my current term of Animation Mentor which finishes in June. As it turns out, I actually had one sorted out the week after I finished at SCEE Cambridge.

And where is it that I will be going? Well…

Rockstar North

Heck yes!

That’s right folks, in July I’ll be heading up to Edinburgh to go and work as an animator at none other than Rockstar North, the studio that brought you GTAIV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, to name just their recent hits! I don’t even know what I’m going to be working on at this point, but I do know that it’s going to be awesome.

This really is like a dream come true. It certainly makes me feel like all the hard work I’ve put in (particularly the past 16 months of Animation Mentor – which have nearly killed me) have been totally worth it. Talk about a confidence boost, eh?

It’s all happened rather fast but I’m really excited about starting. Fortunately I’ll be allowed to finish my current term at AM before I start (it was after all, the main reason I decided to leave Cambridge). In fact, I will be working alongside former SCEE colleague and AM chum Andy Davis, who is a fantastic animator!

As you might be able to tell, I’m quite excited. Many thanks to Jim Jagger for offering me an interview and to Facebook for putting links to my reel and CV on his News Feed ;)