Nutshell
As a kid, I loved to create my own worlds. I loved to draw, I loved to write, I loved to fantasize. I had my own imaginary animal species, the “weetmier” (all-knowing ants). Whenever we went on a vacation to somewhere, I would look at the exotic maps of that area and draw up fictional ones of my own. Whenever I dreamed off in class, which happened all the time, I would clench my fists and shudder them, which my classmates found quite peculiar.My future dreamjobs were creationistic; I wanted to become a writer or a construction worker (building entire cities had a nice ring to it). My favorite drawing topics, besides maps, were dinosaurs, knights and transformers. Until one day, my dad comes home with a NES.
My favorite games were the Mario series and a game we called “Robin Hood” because it featured a hero clad in green, slashing swords and shooting arrows. Sounded way cooler than “Zelda” or something. Anyway, without knowing it, those games became my first contact with the art of game design, as I loved to draw out my own maps for Zelda and my own levels for Super Mario Bros 3, as the example shows! (Remember, I was 8 or 9 or something)
Flash forward a few years to the same green-suited fellow, but now in 3D. It was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that metamorphosed me from a boy who liked to play games into a gamer. It was the perfect execution of the archetypical Hero’s Journey. The dream of becoming a game designer has grown ever since.
The first serious opportunity to create something BIG came in highschool, when the computer science teacher asked his students to participate in an educational game project from the iEARN organization. 12 students signed up, one of them was me. I wanted to concern myself with story and gameplay (then already I gravitated towards a narrative design position). In the end, iEARN was so contented with what we had made, Legend of the Seven Seas, that they allowed us to present it at their world conference in Dakar, Senegal! A truly unforgettable experience.
After highschool it was time to really solidify my wishes, so I started studying Game Design and Development. Today I’m on the very brink of graduation but that will be the history of another day.
A coconut shell, but a nutshell nonetheless.