Hello, I’m Amy Jones. I’m an artist, have a lifelong love of video games and was lucky enough to win the NoGD 2008 ‘Aspiring Women Artists Competition’. I am a product of an endlessly twisting road of unexpected, intricate and confusing attempts of trying to mesh my hobbies and career. Finally, I have an unusual light at the end of my twisted vocational journey: I’ve been granted the means to become an artist in the video game industry. To someone who doesn’t know me this may seem like a sudden and unexpected scholarship but the story behind winning it has been a lifetime in the making… er, my lifetime that is.

Until only recently in my life I had never known another soul who shared my interests to the same extent. To be honest, I forget the pretentious differentiation between a nerd and a geek. I believe at this point I believe am a ‘geek’, due to my niche knowledge of comic books, video games, cult films and anime. It was incredibly difficult to grow up ‘geek’ when you’re the only one. My sister was the quintessential girly-girl with a pink room and an awesome doll house and I was requesting a subscription to Nintendo Power before I even had a game system. When I was very small my family moved from South Florida to a town that was so small that didn’t have a comic book store or any sort of bastion of geek culture and before the days of the internet that was equivalent to living in complete isolation.

Even though there were no arcades in town, I still found video games to play throughout my childhood. By a stroke of luck my father had acquired a Pac-Man arcade cabinet, I had played my friend’s Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment Systems. I simply couldn’t get enough. My mother believed that time was better spent outside than on the NES, so we struck a deal that she thought I would never complete. She agreed to let me purchase a Gameboy if I could complete a list of chores she had devised over the next couple months in addition to my usual work around the house. The tasks were fairly epic: weeding the longest gravel driveway in the world (seriously), endless rounds of scrubbing the kitchen floor, washing windows and hateful dusting. At the end of two months my mother relented and took me to a new kind of store that had opened that summer called Walmart to pick up my first ‘official’ system.

Shortly thereafter the ‘game madness’ began and to prevent interruption I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours to play the Super Mario Land (there was excellent light in there which was necessary for playing the Gameboy) when my mother figured out where I was hiding, she removed the light bulbs from the bathroom light. The battle between my love of video games and my mother’s resolution to get me outside continued. Honestly, the whole saga played out like a poorly written sitcom sans laugh track. We laugh about it now and she’ll never understand the appeal despite numerous attempts to explain it to her. Some things are better off left unsaid and after I started reading graphic novels, sci-fi, manga and watching anime… I believe video games seemed like one of my less odd interests.

I’ll spare you the myriad of stories about being ten years old and trading my lunch for a Zelda game booklet, the year I finally got an NES for Christmas, infatuation with Castlevania , Chrono Trigger , Final Fantasy 7 , Vib Ribbon , buying my Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Sega Nomad, Game Gear etc. Let’s just say it’s a lifelong passion. Spare me whatever pretenses I have of being normal by keeping my remaining geekdom under cover- if you can relate to any of my stories, then please know you’re not alone. I’m sure by now you have a pretty good idea of who I am as far as my hobbies are concerned. No doubt- I’ve had geek chops ever since I was a little kid.

So while I am knowledgeable about all things ‘video game’, a good reason to check this blog frequently is that I am not formally trained as an artist- graphic or otherwise. I currently work as a freelance illustrator and a painter, so I have the ability but not the building blocks of artistic education under my feet. I love working freelance art but to combine my knowledge of video games and artwork would be my dream come true. It took a long time for me to come to my career conclusion and I’ve bounced around from many jobs trying to find the right fit. Originally, if you look at my college degree than I’m an archaeologist and when that went awry I went to work for social research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When I began working for UNC, I started a video game blog on a website called 1up.com which exploded and became very popular with the readers. I can’t say I understand it entirely, but I ended up in marketing adverts, promotions, going to E3 and meeting a lot of people through a simple blog. My writing turned out to be, in some cases, more of a full time job than my actual nine-to-five. My blog took me across the United States, gave me work, great connections and eventually led me to my husband. It was wonderful, exhausting and opened many doors for me into game reviewing, analysis and gave me great experience for landing the scholarship I was awarded at Sessions Online School of Game Art.

So let’s change gears from the ‘more distant past’ and rewind about a month ago. I’m sitting in my home and the announcement for the NoGD scholarship comes across my e-mail. When I read it I felt like the description for me perfectly: I am an artist but need more education in the programs associated with video game art. I’m a writer but am disenchanted with the entertainment side of game writing. I know about video game development, analysis and I love playing video games! Have you ever had a moment when you knew something sounded too perfect to be true? I didn’t let my doubts or angst get the better of me and immediately sat down and wrote the best essay I could possibly muster. When I sent it off I had no doubt that I had done my best work and kept my fingers crossed.

And, heck, I actually won.

Writing the essay was actually a lot of fun because the narrative was driven by who I am at my heart and my own personal experience growing up with video games. I didn’t write about how women aren’t active in making excellent video games or the inequalities we face due to our gender. Why not? Well, the former isn’t true at all and the latter isn’t endemic of the video game industry alone- it’s everywhere in the workforce. I’m here to do the best work I can as an artist and I know if I can succeed then it is advancement for every woman and, more importantly, everyone interesting in making better video games. Luckily, making a great games is has nothing to do with your gender and everything to do with your experience, passion and education.

I trust my soapbox introduction gave you a better idea of who I am and my lifelong love of video games. Hopefully you’ll take time to visit this blog every once in a while and join me on my journey to become an artist within the video game industry. I look forward to writing about all of my experiences. I’ve made a promise that I will use this opportunity and not disappoint those who granted me the scholarship and I am resolute on keeping my pledge. I know with the help of NoGD Aspiring Women Artists Scholarship, Sessions Online School for Game Art and my life experience I can make this dream come true.

Until next time!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 2:25 am and is filed under AJ & Art, PEOPLE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.