Mini Portfolio

I've never draw until I my last semester as a senior in high school, February 2006. I was lazy and I had finished all my high school class requirements. All my friends were taking Advance Placement courses and I was just messing around in track and field and cross country practices. One day, I was hanging out with my neighbor Viet playing Yu Gi Oh cards and started drawing some of the cards while Viet showed me some of his drawings. I started to draw some of the cards that he drew. After I was done with the drawing, I was impressed that it looked almost exactly like the card. Then, I continued drawing some more and showed my friends. However, I was bored at drawing animes so I looked up on the internet to find some portrait drawing examples and began copying them. Then, when I showed Diep, the girl above my drawings, she asked me to draw her. As a sucker for cute/pretty girls and having a crush on Diep I drew her. Then, came other girls requests to draw them... Then those win win situations made me a better artist. My laziness and uninspired self found something that I can do for hours and hours (drawing, not girls, the girls add the extra motivations). My high school teacher told me that it was passion. I thought of it as scoring points... The painting above was done after 3 1/2 years I've started painting/drawing. About the time after 113A with Cameron Chun.

 

I did this piece because I told my friends that the reason why I am an Illustrator is so that I can become an artist to make money for a living. Some of my passionate friends who Illustrate said that they do this because of passion and was mad at me for saying that I want to make money out of this career. I've asked other passionate friends who said they are passionate about what they do and they replied with "I love drawing and I don't do it for money." After years of training at SJSU, and years of searching and asking myself why I want to draw/paint for a career because rumors stated that there is no way I can move forward and become a better artist if I don't love what I do, I've came to a conclusion. Illustration is not entirely my passion. I can draw/paint but there are more to life than spending hours just drawing/painting everyday which waste most of the time I could spend learning about something else. Money is needed because there is no way I can make a living without money and I've never thought of doing anything for money. Passion seems too strong of a word as I don't have too strong of a feeling of what I do. I like to learn many things in life such as making good conversations. I guess everyone has different opinions about their love of a career. I'm starting to have more interest in painting environments. It is super fun. Once this last year at SJSU is over, I wish to design/paint environments for a living. 

I can't upload my video for some odd reasons so here are the links to my video on my blog. 

Intro to 3D Animation

If the Video did not show up, here's the link to where you can watch one of my video. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSOMAkNij38&feature=plcp

The First Post

Sup, 

I'm Dang, why Dang? just a fun name I picked up when I was in fifth grade when my friends couldn't pronounce my first name correctly. They asked me if they could call me by my middle name which is Dang. I said yes and I've been known as Dang Nguyen ever since. I never really care if people tease me because of my name because I chose it that way. It's a good name to remember. What's my first name? Learn Vietnamese names and you'll find out.