FUCK YES… I just got accepted for a grant to go back to school and study animation!

It’s hard to believe… Almost exactly 2 years ago I drew this eye ^^. I just wanted to try drawing for a month. I bought myself this $10 online course and promised myself to draw an hour each day for a month. Boy, I had NO idea where that decision would take me..

I didn’t stop after a month. A basic drawing course became a course in colored pencils, figure drawing, character drawing and perspective. I tried pencil, waterpaint, colored pencil, charcoal, gouache and pen.

Somewhere along the lines I found what it was like to be passionate about something. You get up and can’t wait to do it again, you happily listen to all negative feedback, you think about all the skills you haven’t mastered yet and all the possibilities.

But with realizing I’m passionate about drawing, also came the understanding what was nagging for the last years. Is what I am doing 8h a day, truly what I should be doing? How did I end up here? Is my current job a choice I made or a consequence of a decision I made when I was 18 and went to College? It’s scary questions, I agree.

One day when I spotted a poster on the street advertising free animation courses I disregarded it as SPAM. Until a couple weeks later when, on a grey morning, I pulled up the pic I took and researched it. And it was legit. Without hesitating and much thought, I applied for it (using this work in my portfolio:)

And here we are.

It’s funny how life takes you places you could have never foreseen. And how opportunities come your way at exactly the right time.

I’m so excited that as of September 16 I can really step it up what I am loving and get actual classes several hours a day, all while being surrounded by professionals in the animation industry.

I’ll cheers to that!

(As this is a part time study, I will keep working at Stripe. Fulltime by sacrificing my holidays and weekends. As a great man once said “Find what you love and let it kill you”.)

(All art by me)