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I've been drawing characters and stories ever since I first learned to draw, but I didn't realize I could do that for a living until around 5th grade, when I was first recommended to take that path by local cartoonists!

I think I pretty much always wanted to "work on my own show" or "make my own comic" and stuff like that, but when I started taking it more seriously was around my last few years of high school. I realized making art made me really happy and I was encouraged by teachers and friends to go to school for it.

I first realized I wanted to work in the entertainment industry when I was in my early teens. From a young age, I really connected with comics and animation, and I found myself crafting stories of my own in my free time. It didn't really click as a career option, however, until I started learning more about the process of media production in my early teens, and from there it just stuck.

As soon as I saw a cartoon when I was a toddler

It started all the way back in 5th grade, but it was when I had my first pre-college experience (at CIA, actually) that it felt like the right way forward. It honestly felt like turning a corner and seeing the entire rest of the world just waiting to be explored, and I legitimately hope it never stops feeling like that.

I was just a teenager when I started to play Doom 3. Horror has always fascinated me with its story, sound, color and lighting. Once I saw how much work went into designing one character, vehicle, creature ect., I grew anxious to learn more about what it took to watch a project build from the ground up. This is what sparked my interest to become a concept artist.

In my junior year of high school I did an internship for a week or two at Progressive for their graphic design department, everything the department did was so interesting to me and I always adored being a creator . Digital art is still pretty new to me but I have learned and obtained so much so quickly I hope to work in an industry for animation when I graduate the Cleveland Institute of Art.

I started working with 3D two months ago, it's really fun! I want to learn more.

I used to make stop motion Lego videos when I was really young, and while I never continued working in stop motion, my interest in animation has carried over well into my career. I've always loved just creating things, no matter what they were, and watching animations, films, videos, and just about any media always inspires me to want to entertain people the same way they've entertained me.

I knew I wanted to work in animation since I was really young, and I obsessively paused frames of my old Disney VHS movies.

My whole life I have been somewhat unsatisfied with being just one person, living just one life in one world. I have used art and story-telling since I was a wee child to satisfy my craving for adventure, magic and imagination. Now, instead of playing out elaborate epics with my toy horses and dragons, I write stories, draw characters, and animate stuff! Growing up in Los Angeles, I was around a lot of people in the film industry, so it always made sense to me that that was where I wanted to be

I drew my own Garfield comics for fun when I was a kid, and one day I read an interview with Jim Davis where he talked about how he loved writing jokes for a living. It was the first time I had realized that it was possible to be an entertainer for a living, and that's been my goal ever since.