March 19, 2013

Chief executive artist Kamal Siegel's cool job

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Kamal Siegel is chief executive artist at Digital Double in Redmond. (Kevin Harris / Special to NWjobs)

What do you do? As chief executive artist, I get to run a studio called Digital Double [in Redmond], which does 2-D and 3-D graphics for the games and advertising industries. I get to manage the affairs of the company while also creating toys, animations and music.

How did you get that job? I got a degree at AIS [The Art Institute of Seattle], then worked in the graphics and games industries for seven years, giving it my all. Then I founded Digital Double, and have been running the studio for nine years. I went from emptying the garbage as a graphic design intern to Microsoft to being a technical art director, until finally CEA at my own company (so now I get to empty garbage again).

What’s a typical day like? It varies greatly depending on what’s going in the company’s life. Right now I spend a lot of time 3-D printing little armatures that I’ve begun selling through my website. That gets mixed in with a lot of email, phone calls and drawing designs on my tablet.

What’s the best part of the job? Creative freedom when times are slow, and financial freedom when times are busy.

What surprises people about the job? A typical eyebrow-raiser is the cost of software and hardware needed to do the work and the complex mix of skill sets needed to get a particular job done. A short, 30-second animation (a typical TV spot), for example, can easily involve more than a dozen disciplines and months of work.

--NWjobs staff

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