At a very young age, I stood out as very creative individual. However, it took me many years to realize it.  I vividly remember when my 2nd grade class was making mobiles out of hangers, yarn and paper.  Everyone was simply cutting out outlines of objects to hang, but I made mine completely with 3-dimensional paper pop-outs.  I didn’t know at all what I was doing at the time, so I just improvised. One of the objects was 3-dimensional thundercloud, that my parents were so proud of, that I still have it today.  Throughout my elementary school career, I earned award after award for my art made out of toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners, and cardboard, or the designs I made with washable, non-toxic, coloring markers. Until high school, I didn’t really understand what made me or my crappy construction paper stuck to a board with a glue stick, so special.

I was never one of those kids who had the cliche dream to become an astronaut or fireman, policeman or soldier.  The truth is, the very first thing I wanted to do was be a movie maker.  I don’t remember what my first movies were, but even just starting kindergarten, I started envisioning stories in my head that I still think about today.  Being so young, it was mostly stories about aliens and superheroes, but I let my imagination let fly and haven’t stopped since.  A few years later, I started really thinking about what I wanted to be. Around the age of 9, I started using my parents extremely fancy 486 computer to keep a journal of different ideas I had, even beginning to write the first “chapter” of a book, though I didn’t get very far.  I went back and forth between deciding to become the youngest major movie maker in history, to becoming the youngest major novel writer.  To composing music, to playing music, to acting, to writing, to painting, to making movies, to making models and props.  Back and forth I debated what was the best way to unleash my imagination upon the world. All I knew was that I was a storyteller. I was overflowing with ideas to spread and needed find way to get them out of my head.

Going into middle school, there was one thing I started to gain an interest in: Video games.  I was hooked on the likes of Legend of Zelda and Starcraft (and lesser known Homeworld).  I,  along with millions of other boys my age, began to worship the Nintendo 64.  It was decided: I wanted to make video games, and so I began looking into programming.  Long story short, it didn’t work out.  I took several simple programming classes,  and while my think-out-of-the-box creativity allowed me to easily maneuver the various problem solving ,  it wasn’t what I wanted.  I wanted to make games,  make them come to life,  make the player happy,  and this wasn’t the way.  Besides, almost every single person my age wants to go into video games, and I am all about being unique.  At this point,  beginning as a freshman in high school,  I had to start figuring out what I wanted to do with my life.

I soon discovered a little program called Photoshop. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I don’t even remember why I started playing with it, but I was absolutely hooked on it. Being able to alter pictures? Make digital versions of designs and drawings that I can print out or send to others? Count me in! I started looking up every photoshop tutorial I could find. I was making brushed metal and glossy reflective glass buttons like a pro. The first thing that came out of it that I was really proud of was a distant view of a green planet, lens flare on the sun and all. I started making avatars and forum signatures for my (online) friends. I never thought I would make anything out of this little hobby until my short lived dream of programming video games came to an end.

Throughout high school,  I probably took a class in every artistic field. First,  it was studio art,  such as drawing. Though my will was there,  I was not a masterful hand at the pen or pencil. Creative writing was one of the more stressful classes I had. I was able to spill out my ideas onto paper, the only problem was that I had so much to say, sometimes it was hard to keep it within the page limits. Then of course, I had the dissapointment that I wouldn’t be able to tell my whole story.  I never really knew what the others in my class thought of my stories, probably because I was so self-consious at the time I just ignored them, but I am told that the teacher thought of me as one of her best writers.  Drama would have to be my best classes I have ever taken. I loved being able to invoke a character different from myself, step into someone else’s shoes.  But what I enjoyed most out of it was the audience. I love so much being able to make someone laugh, or even cry,  if its the intended. I wanted to be able to make them feel an emotion, or ponder a thought. I loved the reactions I get, and it fueled me.

The most important class to me, however, was the digital photography and video class.  Before this class, the only experience I had with taken pictures and video was the screenshot button in my video games and screen capturing footage of World of Warcraft  (nerd!). During my adventures in photoshop,  I began looking at and teaching myself how to use all the other programs, such as premeire pro and audition. I even tried my hand using Flash for a little bit. I made my first real video from captured WoW clips, my voiceover, and shameful editing techniques, and it turned out quite well. I thought,  if I can do this well from teaching myself, I wonder what I can do if I actually took a class. And so I did. And I rocked.  Off the bat, I figured out that I had such a great eye for the frame, almost knowing intuitively how a picture should be taken, or what angle a scene should be shot at.  Not only was I good at it, but I really enjoyed it. Finding new and interesting ways to portray ordinary, mundane things is what photography is all about, and I realized that that’s what I’ve been trying to do for so many years. After making movies for the class, for drama class, and the school’s theatrical productions,   I began to slowly realize, again, that making movies is what I trully wanted to do.

Going into college, I began taking classes on the two things I was best at. Videography and Photoshop. Of course, I soon figured out that it wasn’t actually photoshop I enjoyed, but the graphic design nature that is primarly in Illustrator. Unfortunetly, college has spread my schoolmates apart, and my lack of actors and friends (sad, I know),  prevented me from doing much of the video work I intended to. On the other hand, I began to excel at designing in Illustrator, which I can do all by my lonesome up to the wee hours of night, creating much of the work you see on the site now.

And now we come to today, still aspiring to be all those things I dreamed years and years ago, some as high hopes, some more realistic than others. My great dream is still to become a great movie maker, writer, editor or director, so that I can finally spread my ideas. Maybe one day I will have made some music, wrote a book, directed and act in a movie.  But for now, I’ll keep a blog.