Published: 10-23-2023
I have been an artist since my childhood in rural Northern California. I spent most of my free time creating and designing fictional vehicles, characters and creatures to be featured in a comic book series one day. As a teenager I began exploring my ability to produce music while continuing to practice illustration.
As a top art student I was granted the opportunity to attend the CSSSA program (California State Summer School for the Arts), located at the CalArts campus in Valencia, CA. There, I gained a world of knowledge and experience in traditional animation.
The next year (1998), I moved to Southern California, where life now seemed to be traveling a million miles per hour. I held various jobs until I landed my first design opportunity in 1999, at a web marketing agency called Success Makers. Within the first two weeks they asked me to learn HTML, so I quickly began my career as a web developer at the same time.
In a few years' time, I began picking up small side jobs, drawing for acquaintances who needed illustrations for marketing campaigns and other purposes. Soon I became familiar with the processes of freelancing. Freelancing has also greatly facilitated the opportunity to self-train and gain a wide range of experiences.
And the rest is pretty much history. I have been working graphic design and web developer jobs since then. 🙂