Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to do something with art and design. From a young age, I was always drawing: whether it was making my own comic books, planning out my own websites on printer paper, or making construction paper Christmas decorations for my playsets, I was always creating. When I got my first computer, I transitioned from printer paper to PowerPoint, using it as a drawing program to make my own creations. In fact, most of the techniques that I use in Photoshop and Illustrator I figured out through my extensive use of PowerPoint.

As I went through school, I would fill up my notebooks with doodles and drawings, sometimes sticking to a theme that I would expand on when I got home – again, in PowerPoint. In middle school, I was voted Most Artistic, and I was often impressing my teachers with how creatively I would take projects that didn’t necessarily require it. I just found it fun to do. Eventually, I discovered Adobe Illustrator – my current favorite art program. Everything that PowerPoint could do was here and much, much more. The first thing I did? Create a board game. To this day, I still love using Illustrator to create things like iPhone wallpapers, custom app icons, and comic books.

Around the same time I got into Illustrator, I started imagining plots to my own animated tv show. Ideas for things like holiday specials, movies, and everything in between were constantly floating through my head, and that’s when I decided that I wanted to take the next step from digital design: I wanted to become an animator. Growing up literally 10 minutes away from Walt Disney World meant that my parents were friends with several actors and animators from Disney who were more than happy to give me advice, and I still keep in contact with them today about whatever I’m working on. I hope that one day I can achieve what they’ve achieved, and I’m excited to see how I can make my own impact on the animation industry.