Writing and art have always been my careers of choice ever since I can remember. My brother had a great influence on me throughout my learning years because we shared so many career goals based on our hobbies. We both grew up on sci-fi films and tv shows and the classics and we both wanted to go into film. I even taught myself to draw based on watching his technique. I was about ten when I wrote my first story for a contest in a Disney magazine. It was supposed to be horror but it actually wasn't that scary at all (later I found this to be funny when I showed my friends in high school one of my recent horror stories that they said scared them half to death). I stopped writing for a while after that and continued with my drawing. Two years passed until I wrote my first play just for fun. I continued writing for myself until my brother told me I should go into film. It was then I wanted to be a producer since I wanted all the control but my brother said, "Why don't you just become a director?" I went with that in my head for a while and it was not until I saw a string of bigger than life sci-fi movies that I began to consider filmmaking. That idea soon changed once I entered art school as I grew to love the idea of combining the film with animation to make computer animated films in the style of 3D. Recently, I have gone through a barrage of changes as I graduated art school: My labor of love novel (Cimmerian City) which I have been working on since 1999 has been chosen to be published and released in August of 2007; and I won a film award for a short animation I made with a group of classmates of mine. I would love to continue writing and challenging myself to be a better writer (as well as artist) as I strengthen my writing muscles through different genres, mediums and ideas.