Well a month after I graduated from Dulles I headed out to Los Angeles, California to go to school. I attended Otis College of Art and Design and graduated with my Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts majoring in Toy Design. During the four years I spent going to school and living in Los Angeles, I worked with several different toy manufacturers including Mattel, Disney, and Hasbro, as well as other small model making companies. I worked mainly on a free-lance basis (which is what I prefer), but after a while I was hired to work full time with a company named Playroom Entertainment. I was hired after graduation from college but soon started to miss my Texas roots and decided to look for work down south.
I was soon offered a job with DSI Toys in Houston and packed all my belongings and headed back home to Texas. I worked with DSI Toys for about six months until the company was forced to shut down after an embezzlement scam had caused them to pretty much go bankrupt. That was probably the worst day of my entire life, not only had I just moved back from L.A., I had no job and was considering to just pack up and head back to California. It wasn't until I noticed ADV Films; which is a Japanese Anime distribution company, that I was forced to reassess my options.
Soon after, I was hired as their company's Lead Toy Designer in their ADV Toys division. I designed high end merchandise for licensed products like Neon Genesis Evangeleon and Robotech. I worked there for over two and a half years until just like DSI Toys, they started to run into financial problems and began laying off over 500 employees across four different countries to make up for their losses. Eventually they had no more money to put into my division which and thus led to me being laid off.
That pretty much brings us up to date, I have come to the conclusion that nine to five jobs are not for me; that or I just have bad luck with the companies like that. So I have taken this opportunity to pursue my own career as a professional designer at large and plan on pursuing my own endeavors. Being laid off was quite possibly the greatest thing to happen to me, because now my eyes have been open to something even bigger. I have vision now that I had once lost somewhere along the way during the days of my job hopping and working like a dog for some company that will eventually in the end probably kill me.
I think I have and will always be someone who can't stand being forced to leave your home and go somewhere to sit in a place for eight or more hours a day just to have to come back home to do it all over again the next day. It's taken me this long and this far to finally realize that "ideal" job is not what I'm after, I'm after my own life, my own rules and my own decisions. Hell, I'm not sure where it's going to take me. If I have to move back to California or stay here to make it work, then I’m doing to do what ever is possible to make it happen. I mean I already know what it's like to make tons of money, I've been down that road and it was fun while it lasted but I was never happy because I wasn't pursuing my own ideas, I was busy working on other peoples ideas. My view on life is that, I can die a rich man that lived a sad life, or die a happy man that lived a rich life.
P.S. If you're wondering about my "new" last name, it's technically not "new". I was born Lance Eric Martin and my second step father adopted me so when I turned seven I was given his last name which is Swartout. Well just recently, I've decided I want to keep my family name which is Martin so that I can some day continue the family lineage, amongst other specific details that I won't bore you with unless you're truly interested.
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