Accidental Coder Part 1: Aspiring Concept Artist

My journey towards writing code professionally was not a straight line. Before I could become a software engineer, I had to fail at becoming a concept artist. And before that, I sabotaged my high school career.

So, did you even know what you wanted to do out of high school? I certainly did not.

I was killing it in Grade 9. My parents, highly educated Chinese immigrants, demanded excellence. For a while, I delivered. Report card loaded with As, math contests, the works. My future, whatever it was, was going to be just fine.

Grade 10 hit - I got dumped by my girlfriend and it knocked me sideways. Grade 11, worse: my mom banned me from playing basketball - literally the one thing keeping me sane. Out of spite and frustration, I began skipping classes. Homework? What homework. And the future? You get the idea. The first C on a report card stung. Then it became the norm. I immersed myself into gaming and stopped socializing altogether.

By the time Grade 12 arrived, I watched most of my friends and classmates settle on their universities and majors. I didn't want to actually end up homeless and had to pick something.

What about Art? That was something. My parents had enrolled me in traditional drawing classes on weekends throughout my childhood, which I enjoyed. Loading up on sketchbooks, I was back at it.

One night when I should have probably been working on an art assignment, I stumbled upon Craig Mullins' website www.goodbrush.com (now lost to internet history). It was probably the first time I'd doom-scrolled a website. Loose, atmospheric, impossibly skilled. Here was someone digitally painting sci-fi mechs and fantasy landscapes with the same confidence traditional painters brought to bowls of fruit and biblical disasters. And here was proof you could make a living creating imaginary worlds.

That was it - I'd found my calling. A concept artist. Should be easy, right?