Jason Thompson is a graphic designer for Prisma Graphic, a printing company based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the only graphic designer the company employs. He is from Seattle, but has lived in Phoenix the last 20 years. He loves the Seahawks and the Suns.

I went to the Art Institute of Phoenix. My dad is a graphic designer. I’ve always loved computers and I’ve always loved drawing and designing stuff. It just has worked out.

I design the Suns program for the game that they hand out with the stats and stuff like that. They give me stories. Basically, right now I’m putting together the brand new one. I use a whack ‘em tablet. Instead of a mouse, it’s more of actual drawing because you’re moving your hand. It helps out a lot in Photoshop and stuff like that.

I’ve always loved to draw. I wanted to be an animator before I did this. I found out that it takes 1500 drawings to make a few seconds of animation. So I rather see something right away.

I love my job because I get to work on the Suns stuff, and I’m a huge Suns fan. It’s also just thinking that the stuff I’m putting together goes out and is viewed by millions of people. It still is cool to think that every night at the Suns game, there are tons of people reading through something that I put together.

Sam Pilafan is a bundle of east coast energy. He is a music teacher and band director at Arizona State University. This is his 38th year teaching at the college level.

What’s your story? How did you get here today?

Right away I started working. When I was 15 years old I played an accordion at an Italian restaurant. I had the bad news that the accordion isn’t part of the marching band. I didn’t know that. So I took up the tuba because the band director told me that if I played the tuba, I would always have friends. So I did that and became a band guy in high school and college. I had a great time. I played in rock n’ roll and Latin bands. Then the phone rang and I won an audition to go to Tanglewood, which is a Boston Symphony summer music school. I was picked as one of fourteen people who was picked to be on stage during the opening of the Kennedy Museum of Modern Arts.

During that time, I met everyone. That led to a string of 25 Broadway shows. I was a studio artist in New York City. I had an amazing time. That fascination got to the point where I toured the world for 20 years and made 38 CD’s. It was really successful. And then one day the phone rang and it was an opportunity to be a full time teacher instead of part time. And I took it. I worked for 20 years at Boston College. Before that, Berklee, which is a famous jazz school, and then Arizona State. I headed for Arizona not knowing what was going to happen.

Wow. So what do you do now?

In my life, the teaching was the thing that made me the happiest. I’m working with people. I’m trying to make them responsible. By learning how to practice. By learning how to be dedicated and work well together in a team.

My job is to get the students to breathe better. That’s an expertise that I have. My job is to get their rhythm to be better. To set them up so that leads to a piece of music. Now we’re talking about something that borders 250-300 people on a football field. We try to teach them to be a performing athlete from the waist down, and a performing musician from the waist up. This is something that is choreographed from the first note to the last note. From the left side of the football field to the right side of the field eleven minutes later.

There’s a population of 54,000 people here. So we’ve got aerospace engineers, computer science majors and people who are interested in the health professions. There’s almost 300 people out there, so there are people with multiple layers and pacing and problem solving going on. All at the same time.

That’s my job is to mechanic all of that. It’s like being a catcher at a baseball game. Although you don’t know the pitcher. There’s no telling what’s going to be coming down the pipe. Every day it’s different. I find that absolutely fascinating as a job. To teach others the real legacy. It’s an honor to sit with younger generation people and get them ready to take over.

Anything else you’d like to add about teaching?

If you’re in the people business, teaching is a phenomenal thing. This is my 38th year of college teaching. My situation is really interesting in that I teach two generations of people who study with me. It’s like I have a student who is just a spectacular teacher, and I got one of her students. Then I got one of her students’ students. I am now a teacher grandfather, as of this year.

It’s really neat because the science of teaching has gone into areas all over North America. It’s really fun to watch that. As a musician, even though you make a lot of recordings, it’s a permanent record of sound, it seems to me that the real legacy is your students. The culture that you pass on is enduring. It lasts from teaching generation to teaching generation. But that’s what I do.

In one of the cooler interviews we’ve ever had, we talked with LPGA golf professional and current Bird Golf Academy teacher Shirley Furlong. Shirley’s pointers weren’t limited to just our golf swing, but extended on to her story of how she came to play golf for a living.

When you’re playing golf professionally, who are you competing against? The players around you? The course? Or yourself?

A lot of players when they are in the lead of a tournament play against the player they’re playing with. I could never play like that. When I’m playing golf, it’s just me and the course. Focusing on your game, on that one shot that you have in the moment, that’s the biggest competition you’ve got.

I think it extends on to business and life as well. You can focus on all the things going on around you. You have to focus on what you can do and what you want to happen, and let that be good enough.

Do you have a ritual, mental or physical, in preparation for taking a shot?

Yes. There’s two things I try to do to get my focus together and prepare myself for a golf shot. One is to see it. I step back and visualize what I want to happen. I see the ball landing and ending up in a certain place on the green. Or when I won my tournament on the LPGA, I saw the ball hitting the dirt at the back of the cup and dropping to the bottom. So I see it.

Next, I have to feel it. I have to take a step back from the ball, take a practice swing, and I have to feel what I just visualized. Then I’m prepared to take the shot.

How long into your career did it take you to identify that routine?

I’m still working on it.

Do you consider golf a job like a lot of 8-5ers? And do you ever get sick of playing?

When I was playing golf professionally, about 80-90% of my whole life was devoted to playing golf. That’s all I did. And it was my job. Where I finished in the field determined whether I was eating Taco Bell that night or treating myself to a steak dinner.

Later on in my career a lot of my friends on tour started retiring. I asked them when is the right time to retire, and they said you’d know the time when it came. And that was true. On morning I woke up in Canada, I went out and had breakfast by myself, played golf, had dinner by myself, and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and I thought, ‘You know what? This just isn’t fun anymore.’ About a month later I retired and now I’m a golf instructor for Bird Golf Academy.

Because when you’re playing golf for a living, you’re living out of a suitcase. You’re waking up on Monday morning and trying to figure out what city you’re in. I only play golf now when I get asked to, or when friends are coming in town. It’s just more fun.

What were you doing before you were on tour?

I started playing golf at a young age and was surrounded by the game. I remember being a young girl and pointing at the TV and proclaiming I was going to be a professional golfer. I got a scholarship to Texas A&M and got a degree in education. Then I qualified to be on the LPGA tour. So that’s how it happened.

Pursue the Passion visited Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona to interview seven people who produce video games for a living. Below is a video featuring everyone who was interviewed. To learn more about any job that was featured, click on the appropriate link below the video for a more in depth video and Q&A with the interviewee.

Click on any of the following links to learn more about the careers profiled in this video:

Associate Software Engineer

Video Game Technical Artist

Technical Video Game Designer

Associate Producer of a Video Game

Video Game Sound Designer

Video Game Character Artist

Video Game Environment Artist

Video Game Recruiter (Great advice on how to get into video games…)

Watch the video in HD on Youtube:

Leslie Carerra-Keys is a senior environment artist at the video game company, Rainbow Studios. She worked on the new video game, Deadly Creatures, released today on the Wii.

What’s an environmental artist do?

Basically all the environments you see in a video game is what we create. So we come up with the sky, and the all the elements that are captured in the scene. We draw a lot.

What’s important to know when working in video games?

That you’re only as good as the last thing you’ve done, and that everyone knows everyone in video games. Like when I came here and was going to work with Sam Howard, our character artist. I had never met Sam, but I knew everything there was to know about him and he already knew everything there was to know about me. So the video game industry is very tight knit. It’s not a good idea to burn a bridge because that will get back around.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted your job?

Watch more music videos, movies, and anything to peak curiosity. Because that’s where a lot of your design inspiration can come from. You might see something and it can influence your later work without you even knowing it. So expose yourself to all things creative.

Sam Howard is a senior character artist at Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. He created many of the characters in the new game released on Wii, Deadly Creatures.

What does a senior character artist do?

A senior character artist takes concept art and brings characters to life.

Where do you mostly work?

Most of the time I’m here at my desk in front of two monitors creating characters. It’s also really dark where I work. We call it the cave. And it’s not because we’re vampires, but because the darkness reduces the glare on our monitor screens.

What’s your education background?

I went to BYU and received a degree in industrial design. My first job out of college was in Salt Lake City working for Microsoft Indy Studios as an animator. Then I worked at various other studios before I finally made it here to Rainbow Studios.

How many people does it take to create a video game?

It depends on game to game. But for the Deadly Creatures game that we finished for the Wii, we had 30 people working on the game. Which is a bit of a smaller team. Sometimes you can have 60-70 people working on a game. It varies on the title and on the console.

So that’s another thing. Know how to work in teams. If you think you’re just going to show up and draw all day, you’re wrong.

What advice would you give someone looking to be in games?

Draw all the time. If you can’t draw, you can’t have my job. I draw all the time. So my advice would be to draw all the time, and draw anything you see. Draw animals, people, whatever. Just draw.

Also, you have to be more childlike. Some of the best ideas you have come from being a kid. Of course you have to grow up, but you have to maintain that childlike playfulness to be really good at creating characters in games. Because you use your imagination so much. So you can’t be super serious or else you won’t last.

Like we had this one guy who used to work here that didn’t have that childlike nature to him. They’re not here anymore because that trait is so important in this job.

Dave Lowmiller is the Senior Sound Designer at Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. The interview takes place in a sound studio with electronics galore. A guitar rests against a sound board. It’s a sound designers dream.

What do you do?
I spend a fair amount of time fighting with computers. But really, I create the sounds that are in the video game. Everything you hear is something we’ve created. Whether it’s dropping watermelons, blowing up cars…we record the sound on all of that. Usually it’s hooking up sounds to objects that already exist. Like for the Deadly Creature game. We had to capture the sound of the scorpion in the game.

What education do you have?

I have a degree in television and film production. But people from here have all kinds of different backgrounds. You have a guy from the Navy to a piano performer.

You’re a sound designer. Would you say you’re more of a musician or a gamer?

I’ll admit it. I play a lot of Madden. I have a weakness when it comes to Madden. I’ve got no time to play video games except when the new Madden comes out. But I’m a musician. That’s what I do.

What advice would you offer to people who want your job?

I’d say be curious about sound. Whenever you’re watching a movie, or listening to a song, or playing a video game, and you hear a sound that really catches you, you have to be curious about why the sound is as good as it is. And then you have to want to find the answer.

That, and have the best demo reel ever.

Dave Knudsen is an Associate Producer at the video game production company, Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona.

What does an Associate Producer of video games do?

Essentially my job is to make sure that certain deadlines are met and we stay within budget. I make sure things are met on time by removing all the unnecessary things that would get in the way of people completing the project when it’s supposed to be done. I clear the way so people can work. And I monitor the budget.

Why are you perfect for this job?

I actually came from a stock broker background. I got a finance degree from college. I worked at a major university that received a lot of grants. Again, that job was a lot of project management and finance management. So it’s similar to what I do know, just a lot more fun.

What are the goals when the company creates a game?

Well the obvious goal is to make money. That’s why we’re in business. We create video games so we can make a profit. Otherwise, that’s just bad business.

For the Deadly Creature game that will be released by the time your readers read this, our goal was to really push the envelope as to how games are created for the Wii console. No one has ever created a game like this for the Wii. So we’re excited about that. And, our goal with every game is just to make it kick ass and have people enjoy it. So it’s more than just making money, but it’s still about money. Some people ask us why the game isn’t two player. Well, because we couldn’t fit developing two player functionality into the budget and into the time that was allotted.

Elliot Olson has been working at Rainbow Studios for six years. He is the Lead Technical Game Designer.

What’s your background?

My educational background is in engineering. I went to a game design college and morphed my path into design. I used to do a lot of extreme sports as well. I was pro snowboarder and used to ride motorcycles.

What’s a misconception about your job?
Well, you don’t play video games everyday, all day. We focus on a lot on the game play. It’s all about figuring how to bring a new thing to the game.

What’s your thoughts on school?
School is just how you technically do it. The rest of it is instinct.

What’s your advice to someone trying to get into games?

What I tell people trying to get into video games is find something that really pisses you off about games. Like when you’re playing that game, you just want to fix it. That thing that just makes you so angry that you become passionate about it.

When you know what you don’t like about video games, that’s a direction or focus you can pursue. It provides clarity. But ask yourself what bothers you? If you’re that passionate about getting into games, it’s because you’re pissed off about it.

Bryan Moss is the Technical Artist for the video game company, Rainbow Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. He has been with the company for 6 years.

What does a Technical Artist do?

Basically, I manage the communication between two departments. You have the programmers and you have the artists. I’m the go between the two. I make sure that what the artists need, they get from the programmers. And what the programmers need from the artists, they receive it on their end.

I also rig creatures and writing scripts. I work with environment artists and I get to see how everything works.

What sparked your interest in art?

In high school I vacationed in Florida. I went down by the water and there were these guys doing airbrush art with these long ponytails. I just wanted a ponytail and to be able to do airbrush art.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get in games?
Be open to criticism. There are a lot of really great artists out there who aren’t open to that criticism and as a result, they’ll never reach their potential. You have to be open to criticism, believe in yourself and your abilities, and be willing to work hard.