Video Games and Sculpting with Jonah Gilbert_GILBERT.mp3

Danielle Gilbert interviews Jonah Gilbert, a senior 3D character artist for video games, with 15-17 years of experience in toys, games, and TV. Jonah shares his journey from drawing as a child to transitioning from 2D to 3D art. He reflects on his passion for art, the influence of formal education, and the financial stability his career provides. Despite early struggles, he found success in the industry, even though a dream job interview at Blizzard didn't go as planned due to lack of interview preparation. My name is Danielle Gilbert. Today is August 15, 2025, and I'm interviewing Jonah Gilbert. Jonah, can you tell us about yourself and what you do and your title and who you are? Sure. My name is Jonah Gilbert. I'm a senior 3D character artist. That's my title. Currently for video games. I've worked in toys and video games and TV for about 15, 17 years. I do characters, people, monsters and whatnot for toys, video games, and TV shows and digital entertainment. Awesome. Is that something that you've always been passionate about throughout your life, or how did you get into that kind of work? Yeah, I always felt like art has been a passion my whole life. When I was younger, you could trace in video game books, trace little characters like in Nintendo Power. When I was a little kid, Drew got in trouble when the Catholic school would draw, and the teachers would come and take my papers away and crumple them and throw them away, and I'd just keep drawing. Then when I went to high school, I got into graffiti and was part of a graffiti crew. Then when I turned 18, when that could have been a felony crime, I started drawing in books and met a friend in high school that he was an excellent drawer, became a tattoo artist. From there, I started to do more drawings and took it seriously. Cool. Yeah. How did you develop, because today it sounds like you're doing 3D work for video games and such, but when you're talking about the past, it sounds like a lot of that was more of illustrations. Did you decide not purposefully to just continue pursuing that kind of work? How did you develop from 2D to 3D? I always thought that 3D was a weird science, computer genius thing, because that showed me a little bit of 3D stuff, and it was code and a lot of technical stuff back then. So I felt like that was too big brain for me, and I could draw on a piece of paper. Yeah. I drew and started drawing on a computer because it was cheaper in the long run, and you can erase and whatnot. So I got kind of used to the computer, and until I met a friend in community college in our math class, he started to do 3D, showed me, and I would dabble in that, and that was pretty fun. But I really got passionate about it in art college, and I saw someone who did a cool sculpt, saw the program. Well, I thought he was the best sculpture artist in the world when I saw his work. And when he showed me the program, and you can actually sculpt on a computer with a tablet and a pen, and that was my calling. I knew right from there within about an hour of using that program that that's what I want to do for the rest of my life. Awesome. So it sounds like you saw others doing this. At first, it felt like it was unobtainable, and then as you kind of got more into the art world, I guess, you started to see that maybe this is possible, and when you tried it, you loved it. Yeah. I think I did the 2D stuff, I believe I did kind of on my own time. I always loved to do it. I put in the hours still. I remember we'd go to house parties and whatnot, and we'd still bring our art books, and we'd still drink if it still drew. But I didn't have any formal structure for it. So in school, it did help to kind of hone that in and be on schedule, on time, and abide by the teacher's asking of what they wanted and fill that for a grade. So that helped. But, yeah, when I touched the 3D stuff, I knew that that's what I wanted to do, even more than my whole life of drawing. Yeah. And do you still – you said that you've been doing this for 17 years or so, working in the 3D industry. Do you still feel very passionate about your work, and what has that changed? How has that transitioned since you started? Yeah, let's start there. It's changed, I believe, probably the biggest change is the corporate experience of it. You know, I started out just doing what I wanted, and I was happy just to do a job, you know, 3D for a job. And, you know, no matter what it was, which I have been very fortunate with having jobs that I've liked. I don't think I've ever worked a video game or sculpting job that I disliked, so I've been very fortunate in that. Because you do have jobs that people don't necessarily want to do, but it is an art job. But I forgot the question. So what were some of those early jobs that you – like some of the first 3D jobs that you started doing? I worked on a TV show, Xavier Renegade Angel and Cartoon Network, which was really wild to work on, so it was pretty goofy. And, you know, it was pretty cool to be on TV and see my stuff on TV, on the channel I used to watch. And that was probably the first time that I experienced – you know, I used to watch Cartoon Network when I was a kid, so it was pretty neat. It wasn't the best 3D stuff, but it was recognizable. The brand was recognizable. The job was fun. We did the most crazy 3D stuff, really offensive stuff for that show. It must have felt really cool to see your work on TV and to go from this kid who's getting their art crumpled up and thrown away in Catholic school to actually seeing something on TV that you used to watch growing up as a kid and knowing that maybe millions of other people are also seeing that. How did that feel? Yeah, it felt good. The pay, I think, was really good. That was very surprising because I think that was the first time I would go – you know, I would do something I liked and didn't really think about the pay. I just did my thing, and then I would go and spend money. I bought a car and all that, and I would check my bank account, and I would think that there was always a mistake because my account would always be way higher than I thought. I felt like I was spending money, but they forgot I was spending money, and so I was like, this is cool. I get to do what I want. I bought a sports car and just did whatever I wanted financially and still felt like I wasn't going paycheck to paycheck. I was just like, holy crap, I think there's a mistake, and they're not taking out the money that I'm putting in because I didn't even pay attention. I would just get paid and didn't care, so that would help because I always felt like I would struggle or heard the stories of a starting artist that had a hard time struggling. I felt good at the time that that wasn't the case. Yeah, so do you think that – so that must have been really nice to be in an industry and something that you thought – work in an industry that you never thought would be possible, and then not only that but to also be able to use that career, that pathway to financially support yourself and feel good about what you were doing so your work was passionate and also that you were receiving financial incentives beyond what you expected is what I'm hearing, right? So did you know or think that when you went to school for art that this would be possible for you to have a job that you were financially secure in, or did you think that you would have to have a second job, or did you have to in the beginning, or how did that work for you? I didn't even think about it, honestly. I got kind of sucked up into the whole school lifestyle, and it almost felt like that was the job. I didn't even really honestly think about I would leave school and have to kind of like do my own thing. I did have friends that did get jobs while in school, and I felt confident mostly because I felt like I knew them. I didn't know if I was ignorant or on the right course with my abilities to get a job after or the same job that they had. I think until we had a job fair, and I've always wanted to work at Blizzard, which was the company everyone wanted to work at, and we had a job fair where you'd have to turn in your demo reel. All these companies would come to your school for a day, and you would turn in your demo reel, and they would review it. I went there, and I started to feel very self-conscious about my work because I would start really second-guessing myself. So I remember I'd walk by there and think that they wouldn't care about my work. So I wound up dropping it off. People peer-pressured me and gassed me up to drop it off. I dropped it off and didn't even stay to get it reviewed personally by them, and I left. The recruiter came out asking whose disk this was, and they said my name, and I said it was me. He said it was an interview, and I was very happy that a dream company would be interested at all of my work. That's when the first time that me thinking that it could ever be a job happened. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So it sounds like right after you finished school, you had gone in at the job fair kind of right away. Do you think that that – so what happened with that? Did you work there? Did you go to the interview? How did that go? Yeah, so that was insane, too, because that was the first time that they called me up. Very different from any other job interviews. I'd been working since I was, like, eight years old doing cutting lawns and paper boy work, all types of jobs. I worked at the mall for five years. Zoomies and Mr. Rags and The Gap and whatnot. So it was very different in that they flew me out. They had a plane ticket that was already bought for it. They rented the car for me. They gave me a credit card with, you know, a certain amount I could spend for food. Wow. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And I absolutely did not get the job because it was a – you know, they were the top company at the time. They did the best art. Not because of that, because I was not used to interviews, and I completely blew it on interview day. Did you feel like you just got nervous? Or, like, what do you think you would? Did you not practice? Did you feel like the interview was more than what you expected it to be? Or why? What do you think happened? Yeah, there was a – I feel like there was a lot of stuff. I just didn't have the communication skills to kind of – this was also a more corporate company. When I did have the interview, I didn't know how to dress. I had nothing prepared. I kind of just went in, and, you know, I felt like, you know, I could just do it like this. I got very nervous because the guy who interviewed me was, I believe, the art director to the top game. And this was the top game in the world. World of Warcraft and StarCraft were – you know, this was a billion-dollar industry game a month. And the art director, who I knew who he was, and he was – you know, I idolized him. I did not know he was interviewing me. He did. I got very nervous. Starstruck. I've met celebrities. Don't care. I was starstruck by this guy. And before I left, when I had my flight, because it takes about two weeks for them to actually fly you out, you do an art test, and, you know, if you pass it – so, you know, and I was like, this is the last step. I'm getting flown out. They're spending all this money on me to go out there. And right before, there was a Russian guy, Vitaly Volgov, who did what I was doing for an art test for fun and did the best art – even now. I think this was 17 years ago, this piece, and it's still the best piece I've ever seen. He dropped it on a popular forum, and I was like, oh, I'm fucked. And all I did was talk about him in my interview of how good his work is and if they're going to interview him and that they should. Oh, and did they? Yeah. He was pretty much hired right after me, which was good because I was like, oh, you know, he took my job. He was the best artist I've ever seen in my life. But I'm pretty sure me being nervous on top of talking about someone else's work, you know, that they need to get them at that company, didn't help me. And I did feel after, you know, when I didn't get the job, the recruiter was so nice, which is so rare, that he wrote me why I didn't get the job and what I could do to get the job. And oddly, he kind of supported me and was after – you know, he was like, try again in two years. You know, just get your skills up because it was a very high-skill company. You know, now looking back, it was pretty weird they would even want me there. And the guy, after two years, the recruiter was like, hey, you know, how are you doing? You want to give it like another chance? And, yeah, so that was why I blew that too because I did personal work and I was already working kind of comfortable. And I, you know, I kind of just was doing what I was doing. I was having fun where I was at anyways. Yeah. So it sounds like that was kind of a compliment, though, that, you know, you were straight out of, you know, art school and immediately got an interview with the company of your dreams. And maybe it was just a little too casual, the interview, or, you know, that it was high pressure for a freshly new student right out of art school. Yeah, I was a small – very small fish. And even the interview, you know, there was him in there, but there was also other people that were not like artistically dressed in a T-shirt. Yeah, they felt like lawyers. And that really made me nervous too because it was, again, my experience of one-on-one. It was, you know, about eight people there. Wow. So that really shook me out. Wow. So within that 17 years, that was when you first came out of school, did you work any other artistic jobs? Like it sounds like you've done some video game work. You mentioned sculpting. And what other avenues of art have you taken? Yeah, my first job was for that TV show, and that was for a little bit. Then I left to work at a video game job that did MMOs, which is a kind of, they call it massive multiplayer online game where there's tons of people that run around a video game online and play. I worked there for five years, and they were making three games at the time. It's Cryptic Studio, and they're still around. I left there to kind of work on toys and for a guy, Adam Pooch, who created Kickstarter. While I was working for him, and he struggled to find people, started a Kickstarter for his tabletop game, which I was doing the sculptures for. At the time, he put it out on Kickstarter. I think he was asking for $20,000, got $2.6 million, and became the biggest Kickstarter product for, I think, until Exploding Cats came along and beat him number one, which I still think they are number one. He's still number two or pretty darn close. I stuck with him for, I would say, about 12 years. Then after that, back to video games. Cool. Are there any incentives or things that you were surprised about, like working in this industry? Have you ever had any troubles with financially supporting yourself in this type of work, doing this type of work? In a weird way, yes. I believe working in California is so expensive that they would pay you a lot of money, but the cost of living was so high. It became, oh, I'm getting paid an insane amount of money, but after living in some of these places, video games like a place that accompanies in the most expensive places in California, it became a little bit of a struggle to keep up. I started to realize it's not about how much you make, it's how much you keep. Some of the lowest paid jobs I had, I was able to keep triple what I was able to keep at some of the jobs which were making a lot more money. That was a little bit of a balance I had to get used to, was the cost of living versus the money I kept. For a certain degree, money became important to me as the job. I did not want to eat like crap. I like living comfortably as well, so it was a balance to find passion and also financial stability. I'm hearing that you have been able to sustain yourself financially through just these single jobs, or did you ever have to work multiple jobs or anything along those lines? No, but I didn't have to. Fortunately, I feel like I've gotten paid well for what I do. I do have a bit of imposter syndrome and feel that, especially when I worked for the toys for the guy who did the Kickstarter, that was the first time I didn't work for a company that was a salary job. All my financial taxes, there's no 401K, all that would have to be done manually, so that was new. But I did gain the confidence that someone coming to me for art, that I don't go to them and apply. It gave me a little bit more confidence as far as that goes, that I knew that people wanted me to work so I get to name my own price. Even though I didn't think at the time I was great, I knew how much I was making and that was a good place to start when negotiating for jobs, working freelance. I did feel that they would disappear or they could end at any time, so I got greedy and I would always try to take every job I could. Sometimes I would take too much on, and that also felt good that I could deny some work sometimes. It sounds like going from something that you initially thought would be impossible and really difficult to find your footing in, to now being able to pick and choose who you work for and people coming to you to ask you for work would feel quite good. I'm curious, what is the most surprising positive thing that you've experienced working throughout all of these jobs? Was there anything that surprised you, like an incentive or something fun about working in this industry? I'm not sure. I think that I get to do what I like. I feel very fortunate that I get to do art for a living. I think that's an incentive for me in that it's not a constant struggle and a financial struggle that I'm able to support a family and then some off of just making art. I think the incentive that I have is that I can just keep doing it and it's been proven that I can be financially stable, do the art I like, and keep doing that. I think when I feel like it's being depleted or I might not have it, something comes along that's better than before and I have more fun and that's kind of been it. I've worked jobs I hated and every second I can tell it feels like an eternity. I can't believe I've worked this long doing what I do and have fun. Kind of fun, but also money helps. That's really cool that you're now able to do something that you really enjoy and love and that maybe at one point you never thought would be even possible. Thank you very much for your time and I appreciate you doing this interview. Thank you very much. Nice talking with you.