I've been in love with the world of animation since before elementary school. I had a deep fascination with the stories that were told on the screen and as my brothers outgrew watching cartoons it was just me staring off into these fascinating worlds. My first exploration into animation outside of flipbooks when I was in elementary school was in intermediate school. There I explored the world of stopmotion, specifically Lego stopmotion. I was a massive fan of several YouTube channels at the time that I can't remember now but that expanded into the works of Laika and Aardman and gave me a deep appreciation of the medium. Following this exploration, it wasn't until sophomore year of high school when I finally started animating again. I was lucky enough to have a high school that taught 3D animation and even luckier that there was a competition called SkillsUSA that let me take what I learned and apply it on a national scale. That same year I was learning the ins and outs of Autodesk Maya, I competed in Virtual Application and Videogame Development with three other classmates and we won nationals in 2015. Following that win, I had the chance to go to Unite Boston 2015 to meet several game developers and take part in several different aspects of game design. Following that year and after frustrations between the three other members of the group, I left to focus on the film production side of animation and I took part in several leadership roles within SkillsUSA Texas, serving as the parliamentarian of District 7 and president of my school's chapter. After graduating, I went to Texas A&M for a year before transferring to Sam Houston State University where I'm still studying animation. At my time during A&M, I focused heavily on storytelling and creative writing classes and now I'm attempting to further my technical skills to apply towards a future of storyboarding or story development. I've been a member of SIGGRAPH off and on over my years of college and have taken part in my campuses Esports Organization, becoming team captain of the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six team before retiring to redirect those leadership skills I've developed into my animation work.