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Today I'm 22 years old! 
I thought it would be fun to show how I became a game animator all the way back from the beginning and share some mindsets I developed, so here is a very very long thread on how that happened. Story time!
I thought it would be fun to show how I became a game animator all the way back from the beginning and share some mindsets I developed, so here is a very very long thread on how that happened. Story time!
I'll start off with saying that my path was hugely paved with luck and privilege. We were immigrants into the US, but my parents were extremely hardworking and I had a very stress-free childhood. They were also encouraging of anything I wanted to pursue.
My goals were always rather whimsical. I was interested in law in middle school, so my dad encouraged me to take the LSAT. I did it in 8th grade, got a pretty good score, then gave up on law lol. But it was important cuz I decided I could do anything if I put my mind to it.
Fast forward a couple years > I went to uni for engineering. After my first year, my sister got me an internship with one of her friends to develop exoskeleton arms (again, luck and privilege). This experience was extremely important to me and one of my biggest failures.
I was let go from the internship after a month or so. The catalyst for it was my age around which there were legal issues (I was 15), but I know the true reason was incompetence. I knew barely anything of electronics and robotics and required too much hand-holding.
I asked for a lot of help from my supervisor, thinking that it would be like school were I would be taught the things I needed. I can try to reason to myself that my immaturity was due to my age, but I can't escape the fact that I should've been more self-sufficient/motivated.
I'd never shared this with anyone up till now because I'm still ashamed of it, but I'm saying it now because it was a critical part of my development. It was important that I learned that I need to be capable of self-learning. I can't expect to be taught everything I need.
By the way, I understand now that it's ok to make mistakes. No one is perfect and you'll learn so much more from failure than constant success.
ANYWAY, back to the story. After my first year in uni, my brother (who was already interested in gamedev) switched to a computer graphics program. On a whim I decided to switch, too. I was already interested in drawing so I decided to try for concept art positions.
The uni's game art curriculum was... about what you'd expect. I won't go into more details as it's a topic already beaten past its death. But there was one good thing: I learned to teach myself since I wasn't taught much 
. I practiced drawing for about 3 years.
. I practiced drawing for about 3 years.
Also, I was super lucky to be able to go for free due to scholarships/financial aid, which meant tons of free time to practice. Like I mentioned, I was going for concept art, but I always enjoyed putting game prototypes together and those required animations. So I animated, too.
Fast forward to 2017, I got a portfolio review on my 2D stuff. The gist of it was to make some revisions and keep on keeping on, which was cool, but I learned that I don't like to revise 2D stuff lol. So I pivoted to something else that I was already enjoying doing: animation!
I graduated, but knew my reel wasn't ready yet. So I continued to grad school since I was able to take teaching assistant position to pay for it. Practiced a bunch over the next year and applied to an animation internship in late 2018 with what I thought was a pretty good reel.
Rejected! That was a very good learning experience since I thought I would at least get an interview. So I decided to look at successful reels and watched Richard Lico's demo reel. Wow.
My reel's body mechanics were solid, but it was super boring. It was basically a bunch of body mechanics exercises. From watching Richard's reel, I learned that animating is bringing something to life with emotions and thoughts, not just making it move.
So I entirely remade my reel, trying to focus on characters' personalities. This was and is still difficult for me, partly because I'm pretty unemotional. I have to make an active effort to convey or understand emotions in real life, which translates into my work.
Which is why I prefer action animation over acting, but that's a digression. After I remade my reel over a couple months, I got it critiqued with feedback I interpreted basically as "I'm ready". So I applied (to 3 places or so).
Then my professor suggested I go to GDC. Again, luck/privilege came into play. My sister lived a short train ride away from the venue, so I was able to stay with her during GDC and massively bring down the costs. I ended up meeting someone who works here at Certain Affinity.
I showed him my reel and he said they were looking for animators at the time, so he passed it on to the team. I got an interview/offer which I accepted along with an internship at Hi-Rez.
I did the Hi-Rez internship first and met a lot of great people along with my first real experience in games, but the projects weren't really my thing and I was already locked in with Certain Affinity, so I came here after the internship.
I've been here a little over a year now and I love it here! (although the weather here sucks) I've gotten to work on some really cool projects and really enjoy working with my teammates, plus I've learned an incredible amount.
That's my path so far. I'm excited about what I may do next, but I'm very grateful for the people I have met along the way who have and continue to inspire, encourage, and guide me and hope to pass that on to people who come after me as well as I'm able.
Props for reading all the way to the end! There's no after credits scene though.
Also I’m late to work lmao
