I have always had a creative mindset. In school I was distracted most of the time because of my imagination. Lost in my imaginary world, drawing whenever I got the chance.
My father presented me and my siblings a Commodore 64 and Amiga and other old skool consoles for playing games.
Yes. I am a Millennial and proud of it!

I decided to go to a design academy.  Grafisch Lyceum in Amsterdam. Now goes by the name MA College. I passed the exam back in 2004 for the course Multimedia Designer.

Not finding any interesting courses to follow after graduation, I started applying for work. Just one problem. Even Though I got design experience through internships, that didn’t include programming. So in the end not a single employer would look my way with only experience as an intern. "Houston, we have a problem!

   

After working in retail for years, I never stopped designing. And stayed active with creating personal 2D concepts like characters, apps, logos and more. By the way if you want to see some examples of my work, check out my gallery here!

I looked around for traineeships. I found tons. Because I figured, if I learn how to program I can brind my personal projects to life, plus find myself a fun job in the future. Sounds like a good plan to me! Unfortunately, in a lot of cases when it comes to coding traineeships you need to have at least a HBO Bachelor or HBO diploma to be able to compete. And I had neither. Also had neither the time nor money to enter a 4 year university. That’s when I found out about Techgrounds.

 

Techgrounds gave me the opportunity to learn how to code. And I couldn’t be more happy about it. Ever since I started, I felt like a little kid walking into the candy store. This changed my life big time and am very gratefull for this opportunity. 

Thank you for reading my orgin story. Feel free to email if you have any questions or feedback.

So! With that said, I am ready for a new adventure captain! Permission to board your ship?