Joseph McGuffin:
CLASS OF 1987
Baumholder American High SchoolClass of 1987
Baumholder,
Incirlik American Elementary SchoolClass of 1981
Incirlik afb,
Seoul American Elementary SchoolClass of 1980
Seoul,
Joseph's Story
It's been a long road since my time in Baumholder, which now I look back on with a certain fondness...but at that time the saying, "Happiness is Baumholder in your rear view mirror" wasn't lost on me.
There were many good times and not so good times there, but overall I feel the people I met, the culture I was exposed to, the food, the driving, the Kino, the snow...was all good!
I left Baumholder shortly after graduation to go to Cleveland, OH (the mistake on the lake...Clebland...). It was to attend my first year of art school education at the Cleveland Institute of Art, a century old private art institute that was well known for it's fine arts programs. My desire at the time was to pursue medical illustration since it was one of 5 institutions nationwide with an accredited program for that field of study. Well...I changed my mind after that first year and decided a commercial illustration career would be more lucrative and fun. I wouldn't have to stare at cadavers and other such visceral materials all day long.
My time in Cleveland was very memorable as it was my year to explore my own freedom, a new city and State I'd not been to before, meet new people, and try to "find" myself. Unfortunately, all of that took up more time than my education and I wound up sleeping through thousands of years of prehistoric Art History. I woke up around the Pre Renaissance and did my best to keep awake through Modern Art.
Just before the year ended I decided it best to change my career goal and on a lark applied to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which must have seen something in me and my work, because they accepted me.
Summer of 1988 I show up in Southern California ready to go to ACCD and came to quickly realize that it wasn't going to be easy. Instead of playtime and fun, I spent ALL of my time working. I spent ALL of my money on art supplies. I had what was called the Art Center physique - too poor to eat, no time to work out. I barely survived. 3.5 years later and wanting to quit school every one of the 9 terms I spent there I graduated with a BFA in Illustration. I'm fortunate enough to be an alum of such a prestigious school with an excellent reputation and talented instructors who prepped me to be a "workhorse" of the entertainment industry.
After graduating I looked around and found that the video game industry was hiring en masse. It was 1992 and the 16-bit game systems were really taking off and they needed artists to create the game art. Wow...I thought. I get to make ga...Expand for more
mes! Having grown up playing old Atari games and being a "nerd" in school and part of the computer club might just pay off!! I combined my passion for games with my art training and jumped into the business head first.
Fast forward....20 years later I'm drowning in games and entertainment. I've made games for every platform, console, and in almost every genre. I've worked for the smallest to the largest game companies out there - including Electronic Arts and New World Computing/3DO. I now wonder how the hell am I ever going to get out of this crazy business?! Believe it or not...having this much experience in the games business puts me in the top 5% of the industry as an "Old Timer" as it is still so "young" and the average age of the game industry worker is 24. This business is still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up! At one of my last positions I was the executive producer at Technicolor Interactive Services, a division of the old film support company, Technicolor, which I helped startup and build for them. The business was created to allow this 92 year old film company to get into games. Well, we did so in a big way and were able to work on most of the AAA game titles that were released in the last few years - "Gears of War", "Gears of War 2", "God of War 2", "Unreal Tournament 3", "Uncharted, Drake's Fortune", "Silent Hill", "Saint's Row 2", "Spyro the Dragon"...and so on.
Interspersed in all that game work I've worked on film and television projects, internet related efforts (where I currently am) and worked with Terry Ray (Baumholder buddy) on developing several of our own entertainment properties. I'm always working on a variety of creative projects just to keep my right brain working. My career went from all creative as an artist, art director, creative director to one that is more left-brained - a producer, and executive producer. I now manage budgets, schedules, contracts, monies, and teams of artists domestically and overseas. I've spent quite a bit of time outsourcing to India and China in recent years...and got to spend almost 4 months time in India - a country I would recommend all to go to.
I don't know what the future holds as it's a pretty crazy time in my life (as if the past times weren't)...but I'm living and working in Las Vegas, NV and have a great girlfriend who has been amazingly supportive. I'm really at home here in Las Vegas where there's always something to do and go to! I do yearn to go back someday to visit Germany and Baumholder...
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