Tuesday 11 October 2011

A long way from home.

Here I am, sunny England. All the stereo types that people told me about the weather crushed in my first week of arrival. I'm Maarten a Dutch guy just coming from Dublin (Ireland) and now on my quest to climb up the ladder in England.

My background.

When I was still a kid I used to day dream allot. Together with daydreaming came the creativity however never having considered becoming an artist I'd rather be a pilot, go in the army or do something with computers. Little did I knew what the future would bring. as time went on I started messing around with Photoshop, flash and FrontPage which I later replaced with Dreamweaver. but while growing up you have to make decisions and one of them is what after high school ? My original plans were to become a network administrator which I wasn't too excited about but I simply didn't knew better. Until my girlfriend at the time asked me to come along to one of the colleges she wanted to see. It didn't take more than a few minutes before I was convinced. After seeing they were using video editing software, illustrator, 3ds max etc etc I was set on doing this course. As I progressed I figured I enjoyed 3DS Max the most so I often practiced this at home went ahead and tried to challenge myself.

After getting my degree in Multi Media design I decided to stop for a year. sort myself out see what I wanted in life and what the possibilities were considering I really wanted to become better in 3D modelling.
With this in mind I got in contact with Ballyfermoth college of Further education in Dublin ( Ireland).
They offered a Game-Design course (HND) covering 3ds max, The unreal engine, Unity 3D and more. 

So I left Holland and went to Ireland. 
Once in Ireland things went well.
eventhough this course was more about the design behind games  i've learned allot from it and enjoyed my time allot. They taught me how to program, use several engine's such as the well known Unreal engine, Unity3D and more. I got taught how to model characters and improve the work i already had from before.

However, after graduation i knew i wanted to do 1 last specific study..... Game art.
Having read up allot on game development i knew there were a few options to go for. Canada,America or England. I chose for England due to closer to home and easier to move over to and started my search for a good study.

With help of the internet i came on the website of DMU. A good looking site with all the info i was looking for but most convincing of all was the youtube video where there was  portfolio work being shown and explained what would be expected and taught. This also gave me a good impression of the energy of the students and the environment they were being taught in. And so i applied but i still had a full summer infront of me. After a horrible time at the call center lady luck shined on me once more. One of my room mates knocked on my door telling me about a job in an (unnamed) games company which needed a dutch speaking person urgently.  A few minutes later i was on the phone. It appeared to be Activision i got the job and worked there as QA localisation for 3,5 months. Had an absolutelly amazing time there and learned ALLOT from how the games go in development and all the little bits and pieces that come with it. After my contract ended and me having said farwell to Ireland it was time to begin a new chapter..... England.



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