Artist Information

I like drawing cute things.

In elementary school, I was a pretty dumb kid. Back then though, even if it was on rare occasions, I enjoyed drawing cute things... a little Fobbie mascot on the corner margin of my page with the big F written on it from a bad math test could win a girl's smile back then, that was always a good thing.

I doodled a few of robots, dragons, and spaceships, here and there, but it was always the cute and beautiful things with huge watery eyes that got me positive reactions. This is one of the most likely reason that I have a preference of drawing in a cute, child friendly style as a opposed to a graphically detailed more mature style.

I am a person who unfortunately, tends to always be well minded about the horrors of reality, so my drawing is a way of escapism and doubles as an endorphin rush as well. I just don't get quite the same feeling when I'm drawing other things. A lot of artists might know the feeling, you just get a click in your head when you draw something you like, it's hard to explain unless you have experienced it before. My entire artistic journey is in persuit of that "click" with every little success..

I find it ironic however, that although my art style is cute, my sense of humor is quite a bit more mature and cynical. My favorite type of humor though is the type that makes absolutely no sense and only gets funnier the more you think about it.

My two favorite artists are Rumiko Takahashi and Koge Donbo. If you cross their style, you might end up with something pretty similar to mine. I draw many influences from many other artists as well, if you pardon the pun, but they are not quite as obvious in my work.

During my secondary school years, I stopped drawing pretty much all together to focus on my studies, and it paid off... but in retrospect, if I was more interested in actually learning than sticking to what I know and racking up perfect 4.0s each year, then I would have actually taken some of the visual arts classes .I suppose this couldn't be helped at the time though.Very few of us know what we want to do in life from an early age. I try my best to make up for lost time by working very hard.

I was more into computers at that time, webpage design, film editing and the such. I sure did have fun with the sites I made back then. That was when the web was starting to expand from it's nest, and I felt that if I could make great webpages, that I'd have a great power on the internet. Can't say that it worked out as planned, but it was a great learning experience, and many of the skills I learned back then I am still using a lot today..

In an odd chain of events that occurred near the end of secondary school in about the year 2000, I started to take drawing seriously. Before that, it was just another fluffy skill that I had, I never bothered to culture it past when it was needed... so it sat virtually dormant for over 17 years of my life realistically. That is until I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to visual media arts.

One of my sources of inspiration was my horribly done, yet comical gif animation series, "Xyni Tales" about a sweet, innocent, little girl who bounced from one video game universe to another who tried to please everyone, including both heroes and villains, but failed miserably (Or succeeded incredibly well, depending on how you look at it), resulting in hilarity mass destruction on a grandiose scale... It was well received by the small internet community that I was a part of, and that inspired me greatly to try and go onto greater things.

Ever since then, Xyni has been a mascot of mine, and has changed many times since then. I eventually was so captivated with expanding my ability and entertaining as many people as I could that I enrolled in the Vancouver Film School and moved away from the small little city of Vernon that I had spent my entire life in.

The Vancouver Film School Classical Animation course was a very challenging and humbling experience. You never know just how limited you really are till you see better, and in that school, I saw only a glimpse of the capacity that humans have for the craft and it it gave me a swift kick of reality to work harder. There were people several times better than me who already had heroes that they thought were several times better than them, so you can only imagine how I felt at the bottom of the ladder. I learned much more than just animation technique and Life Drawing from there.

I had a better time in the Maya course, where almost everyone started on the same ground and enjoyed it significantly much more. I'd have to say that I have a certain passion for working in 3D that is different from my passion in working with 2D... it kind of feels like playing a video game sometimes and can become very addictive, once I pulled a 36 hour shift and never felt better in my life, it was just me, Maya and itotunes radio on live365 all day long. I really hope to work much more in the 3D field should the opportunity arise.

At the current time, I am self teaching myself to further expand my abilities, but there are three things that would love to gain in the next year:

1. A Mentor: I need a person to look up to as a superior who I can learn under and who I can constantly measure my ability with.

2. A Community of Artists: For the strangest reason, my art has never made it to the net until this site. One thing I should have done a long time ago was become a part of one of those online community for artists.

3. A Job or an Internship. Since I graduated from the school, it has been my greatest desire to work for an animation or game company. I am ready to work hard, ready to learn and ready to be tested. If you don't like me, fire me.

If I had only one regret in my so far, it would be that I didn't start taking drawing seriously at a much earlier age, there's no telling how much better I would have become. It is true that the best artists are seldom the richest ones, but it is just my personal interest that drives me to improve. In any case, there are many artists on the internet I look up to as my teachers. There is a chance that you are one of them.