About Me
As a kid you could always find me outside building forts or inside in front of a large pile of legos, k’nex, or errector set pieces twiddling away like a mad scientist. It wasn’t until 1995 when I received a VHS tape in the mail on the making of Donkey Kong Country for the SNES that I realized video games could be apart of my creative passion.
I didn’t always know I wanted to be an animator, but in hindsight it’s easy to see the connection. During summer going in to high school, one of my good friends got a special stop motion camera with animation software. I remember spending the whole summer sinking dozens of hours into creating movies with legos and figurines. In high school I was introduced to my first 3d package (3d Movie Maker), albeit a primitive one. I was just messing around and having fun, little did I know I was actually training myself for an animation career someday.
While most people around me moved on from seemingly childish things, my passion for creating animations and video games only got stronger as I ventured through high school. It only made sense that I keep doing the same in college. I originally went to Full Sail to become a game developer. During the game development program tour, an image of a student created character came up on the wall and the tour guide chimed in, “You won’t be creating characters like these, that’s for the computer animation program…they get to have all the fun.” The comment stuck with me throughout the tour, so much so that I decided to check out the computer animation program just to see what it was all about. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked.
Embarking on this journey for my “dream job” has certainly been an intense endeavor. I’ve learned more about myself and what I’m capable of than I ever thought possible. The path to success hasn’t been easy, especially when the definition of what success means to me is constantly changing. As long as there are others out there to inspire and be inspired by, being creative will always be a big part of my life.