“From an early age, my mom saw it in me… a flicker of madness and a passion for art”
“Whenever I wasn’t doing homework under the tutelage of Mufasa, I was sitting beside my mom learning to draw”
“Every week, the Daily News had a ‘How to Draw’ section at the end of the paper; after solving the accompanying mystery, we’d practice drawing from the tutorial”
“My mom supported me every step of the way, always making sure I had the necessary tools; in true mom fashion she inscribed words of encouragement on the cover of my first sketch pad”
“Eventually, Mark Kistler’s ‘Imagination Station’, would become my tutor every afternoon”
“Draw, draw, draw”
“The more I watched and practiced, the more I learned how to replicate whatever I saw”
“Kistler’s program not only taught me fundamentals that I would carry with me as I grew, but also sparked in me the desire to continue drawing”
“Taking what I learned from Kistler, I went on seeking anything and everything to draw”
“Cartoons, comic books, Spider-Man with hooves, it didn’t matter; I drew throughout elementary and junior high, always keeping my mom’s advice in mind”
“By high school I could see the difference that years of practice was having on my ability to replicate pictures.”
“My bedroom walls became blank canvases that my best friend and I had no problem covering in art”
“Week after week we’d come together to draw, paint and chill”
“As time went on, the walls began to vanish, replaced by a mural of a young ‘Ex-SOLDIER’ searching amid the ruins of his past; gazing towards someone who was no longer there, and trying to find himself in the shadow of everything he’d lost..”
“You have no heart…and cannot feel any pain. You are just a puppet..”
“Despite my love for the game..”
“it wasn’t all Final Fantasy VII”
“and the art wasn’t limited to just walls..”
“At a certain point almost every shirt I wore was hand drawn”
“ Over the years as I continued to practice and grow as an artist, I began designing my own original concepts”
“ Which I, continued to have printed on shirts…of course”
“ Somewhere in the midst of all those years of drawing, a new artistic medium was bubbling to the surface, one that I was about to dive headfirst into; it had to do with another passion in my life… action figures”
It all began during a lunch date with my wife at our favorite pizza place..
A disappointingly small Godfather figure…
And a suggestion that would change everything…
“This thing is only good enough to lay down in a casket at a funeral!”
“We can make him one!”
