I am an only child of two divorced parents with a very Italian upbringing. This led to a great deal of familial support from my Nana who believed I could achieve anything I put my mind to.
As soon as I knew I wanted to go into animation I took every opportunity I could to further my education in the field. Beginning this endeavor in the summer of 2012, I took an animation workshop at OCSA, the Orange County School of the Arts, where I was taught the basics of Adobe Flash and created a fun short animation about three cowboy aliens who discover jell-o. In 2013 I began my freshman year of high school and took 2nd place in the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District Art Competition, Artastic. My sophomore year of high school was a year of hardship, learning how to manage my time, and prioritize. I took Advanced Art (Art 3), skipping Commercial Art (Art 2), and created pieces that would eventually go into my breadth for the portfolio I created my junior year for AP Art Drawing. Summer of 2015 I was in the animation intensive workshop at CAPSA, where I would take the L.A. metro for a hour and half into the city twice a day, four days a week, after 5 hours of studio time. This was a turning point in my education. I realized that I desperately needed to go to CalArts and learn from the people around me and soak up the palpable creative energy found among students of that caliber. Spring semester of 2016 was when I had my first off-campus Art Show called A Night at the Bert where I presented my pieces thus far and was able to meet some artists in the entertainment industry such as Daniel Cheng, a concept artist for Call of Duty. Also in the spring semester of 2016, I began taking Saturday High classes at Pasadena Art Center. I took Concept Design Basics that semester. Summer of 2016 was another life changing experience, where I was in the Painting Major for the six week intensive course at the RISD Pre-College. I flew to Rhode Island and lived with people from all over the world. I was taught traditional painting methods, took five six hour classes every week, and learned so much from my major class, but also my Drawing Foundations and Design Foundations. My favorite project that came out of this experience was the final for my Design Foundations where I was able to blend my two loves of animation and oil paint, and created a 30 second stop-motion animation with one canvas, a cardboard box, a desk lamp, my phone, and oil paint. Modeling RISD’s “foundation year”, we crammed a semester’s worth of work into six weeks, and they were the best sleepless weeks of my life. Currently, in the fall semester of 2016, I am taking two more Saturday High Classes at Pasadena Art Center, Figure Drawing and Alternative Sketch Booking. I am also attending CalState Fullerton’s open figure drawing sessions on Wednesday evenings from 7pm-10pm through an on-campus club called the Pencil Mileage Club. My junior year I passed AP Studio Drawing with a 4 and this year I am taking AP Studio 2D Design and AP Studio 3D Design.
