It took me 15 years to land my first job in the games industry, and this video is basically the honest timeline of how that happened—no shortcuts, no overnight success story. I found 3D in my final year of high school, studied game dev at AIE in Melbourne, and that’s where I really locked onto character modelling and digital sculpting. The problem was I graduated without the confidence (or the portfolio) I thought I needed to actually compete for game jobs, so I stepped away. I ended up in retail management for a long stretch because stability felt like the “smart” move, even though it wasn’t what I wanted creatively. After a major life change and moving to Canada, I slowly came back to sculpting—at first just for fun, then more seriously. In 2024 I committed properly, enrolled at Think Tank Training Centre, focused hard on game-ready character work, and after graduating I kept polishing and applied selectively. About 10 months later, a rare junior role opened up, and that became my first industry job. The big takeaway: stepping away doesn’t mean you quit—sometimes it just means you’re taking the long road.