Art & Animation Explorations
This section showcases my early explorations in figure drawing, storyboarding, character modeling, and casual game design during my graduate studies in Game and Interactive Media Design at Indiana University Bloomington in 2004. While these projects differ from my professional UX work, they reflect my lifelong love of visual storytelling and creating engaging experiences—core elements of my design philosophy today.
A few fun facts:
- Back when I studied industrial design, the department brochure proudly described it as the perfect intersection of technology 🚄 and art 🎨. I thought, Sign me up!
- I was obsessed with animation. I’d replay fight scenes or clever cut sequences from movies endlessly to dissect the motion, gestures, and cinematography.
- I love figure drawing and portrait drawing so much that I did as many as I could while taking classes for credit. I even modeled for a portrait drawing group (artists took turns as models) and fell asleep mid-session. No one woke me until the two-hour session was over!
- I devoured comic books for both their art and writing. Favorites include:
- Justice by Alex Ross
- This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki
- The Contract with God Trilogy by Will Eisner
- Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore
- During my time in Bloomington, I created around a dozen casual games, mostly in Flash ⚡️, with a few in Director 🎬. Sadly, they’ve been lost to time—modern browsers refuse to play them. (RIP, Flash. You were ahead of your time, still!)
