It's funny how things work out when you trust in God.

When word got out that Disney was closing down their Florida studio it only took a few days for other studios to send in recruiters to grab up artists. Core, was the first shark on the scene, of course they were, they are a derivative of Disney. After that it was a feeding frenzy, all the studios showed up and it was a mad house.

Unfortunately, only a handful of the artists had portfolios ready, (I learned later that some people knew what was coming and they got ready, to bad they didn't share that information), I had an old resumé that my wife and I quickly updated and I got some of my work together to show. I spoke with all the studios including Pixar. All were hiring but not all were hiring layout artist specifically Pixar(they were the only studio that was cautious in their approach). I left resumés with all of them, but none of them showed any real interest in me. I started working on a portfolio  immediately, the studio gave us a three month grace period to prepare for leaving, they allowed us access to the studio all the while. It was really hard getting copies of our work, most of it was in the Disney Morgue never to be seen again.

I got together as much art as I could, but the only studio I left work with was Pixar. I had a long and in-depth interview with the Blue Sky Studio people. The Sony studio gave more of a pitch than they tried to recruit people. It was obvious that the studios weren't really ready for this recruiting frenzy either. Blue Sky was my best interview and they were looking for specific layout artists.

I fit the bill.

Just before I agreed to work for Blue Sky I got a call from Sony, they said they would top any offer that Blue Sky made. Okay, they never saw my work and I never had an interview with them, but they wanted to hire me off of my resumé, to weird, I declined.  Off to New York we went, and I became a concept/visual development artist/designer for Blue Sky Studios. Not the job I interviewed for, crazy huh..., obviously God was watching out for me because it lead me to my job at Pixar, where I wanted to work in the first place. You know, I can say that I wasn't freaking out about the whole thing like some guys were, yes, I was scared but I was really trusting in God with my future and my wife was like a rock so I oddly enough I was at peace through the whole thing. I still don't know how my wife was truly feeling during the turmoil.