The work I create is focused around graphic novel illustration and using open-minded views to teach about perspective and how it changes the stories of everything. This work has had a huge impact on my niece and nephew as they are just 5 and 7 years old, a crucial learning age, I do not have my work published yet but this still has shown my family how to understand right and wrong, to look at all sides of an argument or opinion. Doing this they have not only grown smarter but rather fond of the characters and stories I tell, I absolutely adore this. Them running up to me asking eagerly when I'll have more for them to read warms my heart and makes what I do worth it. A big challenge I have faced in this is being able to have the time to commit to it while supporting myself financially, furthering my career, and continuing my education. There are times where I have no spare time to write or draw. In these times I have struggling continuing because the momentum slows and my focus has to go elsewhere. The solution I had to this was to make the storytelling and art my actual career. I chose the major of Industrial Design, this allows me to draw and create these for a living and make enough to support myself at the same time, by combining the aspects that slowed me down into one and using them towards my passion I can continue to share the stories and illustrations to improve literacy, lessons, and stories to remember. The main project I write and previously mentioned sharing with my family is called "The Knights of Krelm" a project I have worked on since high school. This world is one where good can be questioned based on what character you are following. The perspective of each character also tells a different story to encourage literacy and intelligence to grow the next generation of readers into critical thinkers and intellectuals. For example, my favorite story, the sinner and the saint. This present Zachary and Deanne, The two of them are from disputing religions and their story tells how believing is what is important, not always what you believe in, as well as, its okay to have disagreements, its all about how we handle them that creates impact. This scholarship given by #AllKidsNeedBooks can help me pursue this degree and cover the financial struggles I carry that may very well determine if I can continue this course or not. If I can get this degree not only will I be in a career where I can make an impact in books, storytelling, and literacy, but I will have the financial stability to be outwardly generous and assist in the efforts to get books into homes and schools not as fortunate to have them already. To give books left and right to the upcoming generation of students. I know that even if I don't get this scholarship, I am determined to find a way to get there and do this.

One investing tip that I have taken to heart and will always remember is something that wasn’t told to me directly, but rather to basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal. In one of his interviews he was asked a similar question to this and responded with “Invest your money in something that will change peoples lives.”. I heard this piece of advice during a time in my life where I was finally old enough to choose where my money was going to on my own and I chose to take this question into play every time I think about my financial future. Whether it is investing, working, saving, or just thinking about my financial future in general, this investment tip has stuck with me and brought great success when I apply it to my choices/ actions involving money. Not only have I taken this to heart and kept it to myself when working towards investing in the future, I have shared it with anyone and everyone wanting to know how to secure a financially stable future, and even shared with some who I felt just needed to hear it. Because of this occurring I can easily see that this has plunged deep into my heart and will stick with me. The way I know this is because if it is something that has importance to me then i wouldn’t keep it to only myself, so seeing myself sharing it with others proves the impact this investment tip has had on me in my life.

Throughout my life I have experienced so many life impacting events but one that will never leave me is the death of one of my closest friends during the early part of my sophomore year. Being so young and never experiencing the death of someone so close to me, I had a hard time dealing with it initially. After a short period of grieving this experience led me to choose to live a full life where i try to gain as many enjoyable moments as I can before my times comes. It took me from preferring to stay home and playing video games, to someone who will always choose to go on an adventure like, cliff jumping, traveling, meeting new people, and so much more. But a part of this decision was to not do any of this alone, and rather including as many people as possible to help others life a full life and share memories with them. I genuinely think if my friend hadn’t died and I hadn’t been forced to go through a difficult experience, then I wouldn’t be anywhere near the same man I am today.

A piece of art that inspires me is the Hellboy Vol. 1 Cover art designed by Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart. The reason I truly appreciate this art piece is because of the style and effort put into it. The simplistic shapes and harsh black shading for inkwork comes off looking so sleek, clean, and simple, yet is heavily complicated. Where my inspiration from this piece goes to is into my own art and style, I adopted the deep inkwork style from the cover into my own art style and my own pieces over the years, it has inspired me to create my own monstrosities and characters similar to the fantasy aspect one would see in Hellboy. I regularly go back to this cover and its brother comics to learn from and keep growing. It is by far my favorite piece of art which I look at on a regular basis.