I started back in 2005 on a platform known as a Second Life as a self-taught 3D artist.

This is some of my work: https://www.artstation.com/cody-rauh

After about 10 years I burned out on making other people's ideas a realization and ended my career as a 3D artist. 

That said I never truly stopped enjoying 3D modeling or building new things, however, these days my preferred medium is voxel only as I never enjoyed the tedious uv-mapping or texturing process all that much. I feel the game art industry has only become more intense, demanding, and competitive between extremely skilled top tier artists producing amazing content at speed and sacrifice for me that is unsustainable. Which brings me to the next point, I no longer feel like a 3D artist or a professional in the industry. 

I now work teaching self-defense to victims of violent crimes, sexual assault, and domestic abuse, as well as providing training to companies via workshops on helping people develop emotional intelligence and empathy for better interactions. Tapping into the experience from the days where I have worked corrections, security, government contracting and used to study various topics provided by the government. Yet I was never a high-speed door kicker, and after several years working various roles dealing with security, safety, and teaching public safety, I don't really fit into the defense industry either.

Right now I am privileged enough to own two very small business about the size of a quarter of any normal single small business but is just enough to pay bills each month and provide me lots of free time to go to school for Digital Marketing and study C# for Unity 3D. Which is my next point, I will never be a Digital Marketing professional, and I don't plan to ever be a full-time programmer for anyone either. Which brings me to the reason I do all things various things every day. I want to reach 30 million people by 2030 with skills for better interactions, aimed at social impact and culture shift.

I was nearly killed when I was 7 years old, held at knifepoint by a co-worker at a job once, sexually coerced in my early 20's, experienced abusive and toxic relationships, and all of this just tip of the iceberg. Those are my vulnerabilities a sorta broken and unremarkable individual professionally and when I started to realize that I am not the only person who has experienced any of these things is when I was able to start helping the most people. That being the biggest guy in the room on the playground isn't what keeps you safe, it is about a community of people where everyone plays well together makes everyone safe. 

I wanted to start off on the right foot with this blog and that is by being vulnerable, I am not a professional or special important anything in any industry, however, I do believe the work I put in consistently every day means I could eventually work up to being able to produce games that can help teach people skills for better interactions. I am terrible at podcasts/youtube blogging, a crap programmer, not that great of an artist, and have a 50/50 shot at best in winning any physical confrontation anymore, yet the only way we get better at anything is to do it, over and over, and never ring the bell, never quit. 

That is what this blog is about learning how to build games that help people without being the best at anything. I hope you will continue reading my future posts.

Thank you,

Cody