>> I was an English major because I was good at it.
So it wasn't anything that I ever thought like I'm going to be a teacher
or I'll be a lawyer or something.
It was more like I need to pick something and I'm good at, you know, I'm good at reading
and synthesizing a report from what I've read.
So that pretty much says English major to me.
So I was an English major and I graduated and I got into the workforce as a marketing guy,
where I was writing copy and designing.
I mean, go way back into the '90s and people actually used faxes
and I was designing fax communications to send to the clients
and whatnot, but I never like loved the job.
And, I don't know, I think it was after maybe five or six years, I started to think, okay,
like I'm not loving this and I don't anticipate like changing jobs
to another marketing job somewhere else is going
to make me love this any more, so what do I want to do.
And I started going to like community colleges and just taking photography classes
and Autocad and, you know, what else was there that I liked.
And animation was always something that I really like a lot,
but I never really considered it as a career.
I had drawn a lot in high school.
Didn't really pursue it in college.
So I, you know, obviously, those skills were super rusty.
And plus, I just didn't know how am I going to get from English or a marketing person
at this point to animation, you know.
And again, go back ten years or so from now and, you know,
really there was just a couple big schools that were brick and mortar schools and you would have
to go there physically to learn this kind of stuff.
And at the time, I'm ,you know, I'm working fulltime.
I'm married.
We have a kid.
So I was like well I can't just quit my job and go back to school as a full-time student.
I need to find something else.
So anyways, I wound up finding this on-line school called Animation Mentor.
It was founded by some guys that had worked from Pixar and [inaudible] and whatnot
and the instructors were all from the big studios like that.
And the concept was basically a year and a half and you're out with the knowledge
that you need in order to become an animator.
Of course, that all depended on the amount of effort you put into it.
So anyways, that seemed like a good path.
I could continue to do my regular job at the time and, foolishly, I thought I'd be able
to spend time with my family, but also, you know, do the school thing,
go back to school just in an on-line format instead.
So finished all that up and I was, I guess, dedicated enough and lucky enough
to make some good contacts and got into the industry.
And that's, you know, that was my path.
It was, you know, probably not completely typical, but I don't think it's
that atypical anymore either, because there's been--
There's just been an explosion in on-line schools as well and that kind
of I guess you'd say nontraditional schooling format.
So it's certainly an avenue that I think people could take
if they decided that is what they wanted to do.