professional work status

so i work at a game company called wizards of the coast. yes, its the company responsible for magic cards and dungeons and dragon and no, they dont have the stores around anymore. at wizards i am a 3d artist working on their minis line. this is somewhat new to me; i transitioned from game art at the beginning of the year. working on the game art (for a character visualizer) was a good experience. i learned some new techniques and got the chance to do some unofficial art direction. the only thing i didnt really like about it was that i didnt get the chance to do much creating myself (until towards the end of my relationship with the project) so my professional portfolio was stagnant for a while. what i did learn about myself is that i did enjoy the art direction aspect, even though i wasnt getting my hands dirty and creating assets.

now that i have been working on minis for several months, i am getting back into creation again. this work has the same fundamentals as game art but there is a whole new world that im learning about since the end result is a physical product that people buy. now that i have some knowledge and we have defined a pretty good work flow i will now be working on my own mini. the overall details have already been worked out be r&d and the art directors but i get to take a mini of my choice from beginning to end. this means i get to model, rig, then pose it; do concept art for the the armor/clothing design, then do a fully detailed sculpt in z-brush. this will be so great for my portfolio, showing something from concept all the way to a physical plastic miniature figure. it will definatly be a challenge but i know i can do it. it will also benefit our team as it will give us further insight to the work flow and process to see if we can stream line the process with our vendor that creates a bulk of the assets. this all sounds pretty nerdy but i really love my job and sometimes i cant believe i get paid to do this stuff.