Where it all started
3 minute read
Being 32 years old now, I started my journey in high school. Instead of playing video games (which usually took computer power that I didn’t have) everyday after school, I decided to learn how to video edit my favorite anime’s and make anime music videos. I learned how to code my myspace page which turned into coding how-to / tutorial pages for my favorite card game. I learned how to edit graphics and graphic design simply because I like art. I would pull images some of my favorite public figures, remove the background of these figures, and create a whole new environment for those figures. This included learning about composition, quality, asset management, and visual effects. All of this in my “free time” after all the school and homework I did in my later teen years.
My Graphic Design journey started from exploring the world wide web in my High School Years… I was at an age where I needed to figure out how to occupy my time and was quite an introvert. During my World Wide Web journey, around the start to my Website Development journey, I figured I needed to learn how to make graphics for these websites. I then found that community forums focused around what I was working on was the safest bet. I did more research and found out that this community build a graphic design reputation around what they called “tags”. These aren’t related to graffiti per se, but the definitely were a work of art if executed correctly. I learned how to execute certain manipulations myself by cutting out subjects then placing them in a whole new environment of my making. I would either ask the community on how I would achieve a certain look, or search YouTube to see if there were certain skills I could learn to improve my work. Through that, I found myself learning many of the Graphic Design basics and how to use programs to manipulate graphics without really knowing. Now, I’m a seasoned designer that knows his way around design programs. I can definitely tell you how most graphics might’ve been produced by pulling my years of knowledge from my noggin.