Hi, My name is Simon, I am creative, I have been my entire life. In fact, I don't believe I know how to be anything else if I’m honest.
At a young age I was recommended to go to a practical school, due to my shortened attention span in class while doing tests, but I was resilient and dedicated to having the same education as everyone else by my parents request and through hard work I was able to do so.

Since I was a young boy I have been living in my own imaginary worlds, drawing and putting them on paper has always been a great love of mine. Looking back now, it is clear that attention was not the issue, it was interest.
I could spend hours drawing, playing guitar and making up stories, with no issue of getting distracted or bored, often getting so absorbed in what I was doing that it would be difficult to get my attention, hyper focused on the art, and loving every second of it.

During my high school career I focused on art, design and engineering graphic design as subjects, matching my talents well and offering some consolidation for my “distracted” nature, as these subjects grabbed hold of my attention much better than others.
However when I left high school I was hypnotized by the glamor of music as an artform and the freedom to express myself. So I spent a few of my younger years after school traveling as a musician playing guitar, singing and writing songs. I was successful at this, but it turned out to be far more difficult to make a living from it than expected, often having to get jobs on the side to make any worthwhile living. So after three years I realized that the lifestyle was not sustainable, so I made big changes.

I went to visit my brother in Johannesburg for a month in the hope of learning coding and working on Video Games, but I found the experience of coding more difficult than expected, as it involved hours of sitting alone while he was at work, struggling to understand the cryptic nature of this new language. 
Due to this boredom and confusion I soon started getting distracted with videos of artists. The artist I found that inspired me was the Concept Art of Feng Zhu.
Inspired to start drawing again I felt as though my journey of an artist and storyteller was again reignited.
I decided that pursuing a career in concept art was one I would really enjoy, but I could not afford any of the universities or campuses that taught this subject. So after some negotiation and working very hard to gather some funds, Instead i opted for The Animation School, where I learned much more than I expected and had more fun than ever imagined.
During this time I improved my skills dramatically by working very, very hard, and soon I received a phone call in my second year, informing me that I was going to be receiving a bursary for my second and third year at The Animation School.
I was overjoyed, my mother as well, seeing this took a lot of pressure off of her shoulders as the primary financial caregiver for me during this time.

During my time at The Animation School, I fell in love with texture art, concept art and the process of storytelling. I started writing my book series in my second year, and soon found myself obsessed. I started writing every day, I started drawing the scenes and creating concept art for the environments. This project is still underway to this day.
After Graduating, I soon got offered a job at Roomored, an original South African company focused on 3D VR Architectural Visualization. 
My position here gifted me the chance to increase my skills and advance my knowledge of 3D software and texture art in particular. 

I worked as a texture artist focusing on Substance Designer for the first time and fell in love with the possibility of procedural texturing and smart materials. 
Spending time working on UE4 also made me more interested in Game Design and level Design so when I had some free time I tried to spend it learning new skills.

I moved to cape town into my own flat in 2022, and was able to fall in love with jiu jitsu during my time living in Durbanville, the costs was more than i could afford, and ended up forced to leave my home to live in Muizenberg with my brother ever since.
To help pay my bills I got some freelance work, working for Wondermerk Studios on a Plason advert, i had amazing amounts of fun on this project and this indicated to me i was missing variety.
During my final year and half at Roomored i taught the new employees the ins and outs of Substance Designer and UE4, I was also put in the position of senior momentarily while my senior was on leave, and did so successfully, then later i was given the same opportunity again and found this change much simpler and smoother than the first indicating to both me and my superiors that it was time to advance my position.
But fate was not on my side. 
Our Company decided to relieve Roomored employees of their position as the company was going in a different direction financially, and not only did I lose my job, but I also lost the positional change that I was owed by working so hard.

Currently in my free time i draw, write and increase my skills, 
To keep myself and my mind healthy I also do weight training, do jiu jitsu and surf regularly.

Now I am once again searching for a new home for my art and artistic abilities.