I plan to make a positive impact with animation. Animation gives life and movement to art. Many are drawn to the different styles and messages that each story gives. The moral or the simple life that animation can draw. Certain colors or styles can give different moods. It's not just lighting that can be done, but just the simplest style, from a sharp design to soft. A cozy cafe or a dangerous dark alleyway. The color palette can determine how the viewer feels. Animation in 2D and 3D gives different feels as well. I always wanted to help make a show or start my own, and work on something that many would look back on with nostalgia. Like back then with Saturday morning cartoons. I want to make a show that kids gush and tell their parents about. Just to be able to help create those stories to move hearts, and even make kids figure out what they want to be in the world or how to be kind. Morals that shape everyone. That is the impact I want to push on the world.

Hello, I'm from Texas, i'm not from the town that is included, but will take my shot. I'm from Beeville, Texas. I lived out in the country with my parents and older siblings. The youngest, I had a lot of pressure at the start that slowly left as my art improved. I always wanted to be an animator, but my parents wanted me to be a vet or an art teacher. You've seen how teachers get paid. I think I would rather not, especially with how students are forced to take those courses in high school. I pushed and pushed to get into the college I am going to now. In the fall, I'm in my last school year as a senior. I love animals and have had many pets. Doves, dogs, cats, fish, and even a lizard. My love for animals is shown in my art, but I also enjoy fantasy creatures. I looked at Phillip's art, and I can see he was incredible at character design. My future goals are to continue pushing to improve in art and work for an indie studio. I put some character design, sticker art, and a full piece.

I always enjoy doing quirky names with my sticker sheets. Purr-Patch is one of them as each sticker is a pumpkin cat of a kind. I don't know if it is humor, but I do quite enjoy it. I love doing play on words. In the sense that it has Alliteration. Puns are also fun. Animal and food puns can get you some interesting mismatches. Turtle candy. It a candy with caramel, chocolate, pecans, and salt. Some bakers make the snack look like a turtle. I don't know here the name came from, but I had fun figuring out how to draw it out. Like the pumpkin cats I love to reference real world objects I'm basing the piece off. So I drew a turtle with a chocolate caramel shell. The head, body, legs, and tail I drew them as pecans. I enjoy making animals out of food. Smore cats another fun piece I enjoy to draw. When i'm at markets I love to see people point out my stickers and see their smiles and some even talk about how that them when they see two characters paired by each other. So just giving someone a smile is what I love to do with my art.

I’m an artist from Texas. I enjoy nature, animals, myths, and food. Most of my art is a mismatch of such categories. I have been drawing most of my life from simple scribbles to the pieces I make now on my computer. I’m going to college for animation because I enjoyed Saturday cartoons and all the stories that were able to be achieved through the screen. I still love watching animation and back then I wanted to make my show. Now that I have grown some I still wish to pursue animation, but more of the one who helps the creator make their show. Most forget the character designers, story-boarders, layout, and background artists. The one who red lines the piece and gives it shape. It is a whole team not yourself who makes the shows that everyone adores. Just being part of that team. That changes where kids or adults stare at what you helped create. For them to learn lessons and morals. To cry or laugh. Show raw human emotion. That is what I wish to achieve in life. Many have dreams of fame and acknowledgment, but I’m someone who would rather be behind the scenes. I rather be the one in the background who works on the project but is not the main one. Not the main director or show runner. That sounds rather stressful. I know many tell you to push for a spot, but sometimes it is better to find a sweet middle where you’re comfortable and not working yourself to the bone. Just being part of a team. That team gets many praises for a frame of animation. The public talked about how gorgeous the backgrounds of a scene were in that one show. Just the validation of being the one who worked in that team would be enough. Just knowing someone is watching and waiting for that next episode or the next show from the studio. The want for a story to be fulfilled in a drawn form. For that writer to get their chance to have it all performed on the big screen. I wish to stay creative and not burn out. I want to inspire people and get them into wanting to pursue their wants. Whether it be animation or another job that many look down upon. You need to keep on that path and stay happy. Stay dreaming about that day. If you dream you have the energy and thought to push it into reality. That is my dream.

I usually feel the most creative in the mornings and at night. I wake up with new ideas, and later, those ideas brew for a bit until I sit down and start drawing. I always enjoyed creatures and mythical beasts in the media. I used to read books about clay dragons coming to life and foxes with magic trying to survive in the modern world. Magic. It was just so inspiring, and it had fewer rules than reality. Television and books helped me scrap up my perspective over them. I enjoy nature and I believe that because I live out of town back home. Most are roads and small houses with a lot of space for animals. My parents used to raise goats, and doves for fun so I was around animals constantly. We had chickens, dogs, cats, and even a fishpond. With my art, I mostly do animals and myth because that’s what intrigued me the most. My favorite animal is foxes because of a show I watched as a kid, but also because of the mythology of kitsunes and their trickster-like personality. Most stories wrote them to be bad guys, but some gave leverage and left them more of the exploring curious creatures. Lizards were always my favorite as well because they looked like mini dragons. I was very much the kid with a big imagination that never got over it. Though most would say as an artist just being a little childish helps. That imagination helps you build a piece especially if it is through fantasy. I enjoy gardening when I can. I have some succulents back home. I tried to grow pumpkins once. I was pretty young, but my dad set up a garden area in our backyard. He built boxes for them and planted fruit trees. My mom's key lime pie was to die for. It is a shame that the tree died one winter because she would make that pie every time the tree started to produce limes. The pumpkins on the other hand did grow but then rotted. We had fun using my bb to shoot them as targets, but it was still sad that I couldn’t even carve them. Texas Heat would do that. I also remember the time back in elementary school when one of the counselors took me out to walk around the garden. Showed me some bluebonnets around the area. I have been surrounded by flowers a lot in my life. So sometimes I draw plant animals. Mix them up. I drew Tulip monkeys last spring and sketched out some plant foxes based on plants with the name fox in the name. Flower language is fun to play with as well in pieces. The viewer may not know the meaning, but if they did figure out each flower on the piece. The emotion and meaning would go tenfold. Most of what I incorporate in my pieces is imagination and fun. Nature and fantasy. Animals and beasts. I draw what I love and what I learned from my peers back then about the world. How to grow and build up your mind. It helps with how much you can put on a page of great emotions. Art is my livelihood and I’m excited to make it part of my job once I finish college. I have many plans this year to push my creativity and improve like a blooming flower in the spring breeze.

A lot say video games are escapism. I agree because even in my hardest times of stress with college. I always sit down and play a game. Most of the time it is to take a break from art projects being an animation major you get a lot of burnout if you don’t put the pen down. Sometimes to refill your creativity you must play another’s creation. I have been told you need to take breaks in between workpieces because then you don’t get creativity burnt. So I always sit down after a piece to play a game. Most of the time now it is a two-player game that I play with a friend online. We mostly try puzzles to cozy. Some action, but just having that breath of fresh air is nice to have. I love to go back and play some old games that are still active online to buy. From Zelda to my childhood favorite Okami. How exciting it is to get a proper sequel after eighteen years. I wouldn’t lie I cried during that Game Award announcement. Okami was an artistic game, and you can tell. The studio that made it was shut down by Capcom after its creation. Even after its failure, the game was released many times and now Clover Studio is back as Clovers. The paint strokes of the brushwork made my love for art all the more expanded. The style of Nippon in the eyes of a wolf goddess of the sun. When you save an area a blast of flowers and cherry blossoms burn into your vision. Such art direction that went through made me wish to draw like such. I can proudly say Okami was one of my inspirations for my art style. How I love to add swirls on the character designs I work on today. From color palettes to how brush strokes are done I started by looking over the main character Ammy to try to get the structure of the character drawn out. Most video games I play for the art first. So I’m rather picky about what game I pick up. The soundtrack is second in the fact that it adds mood to each scene. I listen to the Okami soundtrack a lot when I’m working on my art tablet. Just being able to hang out with a friend or escape into another world with a story RPG is what makes video games such a light in my life.

What I wanted to be as a child was an animator or a HEB worker which was just a grocery store job in Texas. Funny when I looked back the only reason I wanted to work at the grocery store was because my mother worked at that store. When I grew some animation was more on track in my mind. I used to watch those Saturday cartoons and stay up late to see all the international shows they showed. All the dubbed anime and cartoons from Japan were always played late. The shows fascinated me, and I never stopped liking animated cartoons and movies. Most nowadays even feel like they draw out messages better than live-action series, and movies. Just looking back at the amount of time I worked on improving my sketches of the characters I used to watch on screen. How much I wished maybe one day my character, or even my art would be on the screen. I wanted to make my own show as a kid. Don’t we all have that dream? That imagination of a child wonders where you wish to do anything that you see your family or on TV shows. That thought you can do everything if you keep trying and working on your craft. I have to say that stuck with me because even after being told I should do something simple. Something less risky. I wanted to do what makes me happy. Art and working on each project is what I enjoy the most. Now that I’m older and picking animation as a career I do understand burnout possible. So I’m trying to work on background design or even red lining which is the line art stage of the show. I have thought of going into storyboarding. Loose sketches that your team can interpret and draw over. Just picking something that won’t make me tired in the end where I can still have fun doing pieces in my free time. I work hard on my art and even print out stickers and art prints to sell. Just feel good when someone buys a piece of my work and sees their smile. That is what the child in me wanted and surely even now. To see someone change from seeing my work. To be inspired and have such work adored. I don’t care for the popular expect, all I wish is for someone to drive or walk through their door. Grab the remote and flick on their favorite show and they see part of my work and the rest of the teamwork. Be able to know that all that work made someone else day.

When I was younger my family used to do road trips with my three other siblings and me. I’m the youngest so I was always watching, but my dad set up the Wii in the car for the road trip. It was a six-seater, so the middle seat was down The TV was strapped to the front, and Wii was on the floor. We had those Wii controllers that looked like wheels to play Mario Kart. I remember a fall-themed map with maple trees everywhere or the coconut mall. We would race each other with the two controllers taking turns. I always play Yoshi and Motorcycle. Even if I always stuttered out and never got a head start in the game. My siblings would always knock me off the map, or I would go backward. This was back when I was ten or younger. My sister always plays Princess Peach. My brothers, I don’t quite remember what they played, but we will always be competitive as siblings. My brothers hardly played games with me, so these were the moments that I enjoyed cherishing. Mario was a family game. Not the hardcore Xbox games as my siblings used to say to excuse me from playing with them. So that road trip was memorable with Mario Kart being what we played the whole way.

I grew up with the Wii and the original Xbox. One game that has impacted me the most beyond Sonic, and FNAF has been Okami. Okami is a game where you're a goddess wolf who has elemental powers with a stroke of a brush. In this game, I have beaten more than twenty times. I can beat it in two days. It is compared to Twilight Princess from Zelda, but from just the plot of being a wolf protagonist they are greatly different. The game story is a long grueling one but has so many surprises. From heartache, and mystery, to overall many twists. You think the game is small with you going up to fight the boss that you think is final to being opened up to a bigger open world to explore. What impacted me the most was the art style. The stylization of the game of classical Japan is based on the Shinto religion folklore. I remembered seeing the character draw on screen making me want to draw as well. The painted art style and creatures that were shown. I drew that wolf so many times in class that I even wrote a poem back in elementary school. My art style which contains swirls and a love for folklore and mythical creatures came from this game. One moment in the game even got me into space. There is a scene where you are standing on a cliffside and have to interact with the stars to form a whirlpool galaxy. It makes the dragon palace open up with you able to jump into a whirlpool that formed in the ocean. I made my parents buy me so many space books with that galaxy just because the game got me interested. Games are also a good escape in my daily life. I mostly play two-player games now because I struggle to finish long story games. Excluding Okami. It's nice to get on a call with a close friend and just play for hours on end when I’m not drawing or doing any college work. Just communicating and going for the same goal. It's nice and even if I’m rather slow at learning games or just bad at timing. The fun you have and the joy it brings is all but enough. No need to challenge anyone or think you have to be great. Just have fun, because video games are an escape, but also entertainment and opportunities to learn about other cultures or many game developers’ fantasy worlds. Go play a game. It makes us happy.