The kid who made the visuals
I always drew more than other kids.
It wasn't just liking cartoons. I was fascinated by the craft of it - how art could have life, how something flat on a page could feel like it was moving. Whenever a school project needed visuals, my friends already knew who to ask.
I took art classes in 6th and 7th grade. In high school I switched to band. But looking back, music taught me more about design than I realized at the time. Balance. Harmony. Repetition. Texture. The principles were the same - just expressed differently.
I also took two Photoshop classes, an Illustrator class, and an engineering class where we learned AutoCAD and SolidWorks. That last one changed everything.
The final project was modeling, rigging, and animating a piston in SolidWorks. Watching something I built move in 3D for the first time - that was the moment. I didn't fully understand it yet but I knew I needed to keep going.
Sam Houston State
When it came time for college I chose Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. They had the third ranked art program in the state and a dedicated 3D animation degree. I started in 2015.
I thought I wanted to make video games. Games were my books growing up - the way some kids disappear into reading, I disappeared into games.
But the more I learned about the industry the less it appealed to me. Games and film both follow the same pattern - you do grunt work for years, work your way up to a senior role, and then the studio lays you off when the project ships. Top triple-A studios. Major film houses. Didn't matter. The volatility was everywhere.
By my senior year I had pivoted toward visual effects. Compositing 3D into live footage. After Effects. Film production. That felt closer to what I actually wanted.
I graduated in 2019 with a degree in computer animation.
The honest part about graduation
Here's something I don't think enough people say out loud about art school.
In class you learn a method. Then you immediately apply that method to a project. Your first time using a skill is also the first time it shows up in your portfolio. That's a hard position to be in.
I graduated knowing how to do things I hadn't done well yet. My technical skills were real. My portfolio didn't reflect them.
So instead of applying for jobs I knew I'd struggle to land, I went straight into freelance. And almost immediately I got work - founders, startups, early stage companies that needed someone to visualize what they were building.
I did that full time for a few years. Through Covid. Into 2022.
That's where the story picks up.