When I was in school I did all my work. Some of the kids wouldn’t do their work when it was assigned, and they’d save it up. They wouldn’t do it until the end of the semester. And their work really kind of reflected that. There wasn’t much growth. But I always did my artwork on time and I got pretty good grades, so I think I built a lot of momentum and a lot of trust, I think. My professors trusted me..
By the time I finished, I felt ready to get work, to conquer the world. My mother taught me the art of visualization — visualizing your success and practicing for it. There was a poster in my math class in high school, and it said, “Wish upon a star
but do your homework, too.” And that’s kind of what I was doing by visualizing myself being successful at what I wanted to do. I was really kind of wishing upon a star, but I was also doing the work.
So I think as a result of doing all that it seemed like a lot of things were kind of happening for me. The first thing that I was able to do was be hired to be a visual development artist for a movie at Dreamworks. It was a brand new company then. The movie was called Amistad. And this was two weeks after I graduated.
One of my professors gave me some names of people that I might want to show my work to. And one of those people was a guy at Sports Illustrated. So I took my work up there and showed it around, and at the same time I got a job from them. So I was fortunate to really start working immediately.
