BIO

I graduated from Pepperdine with a major in creative writing and a minor in film studies. (Was the only deaf student during my four years there) During my senior year I made Eleven Eleven that went on to win the audience and grand jury prize at Reel Stories Film Festival and got into Newport Film Festival as well.

I heard music for the first time at twenty two years old, wandered two lost days without water in Ojai, built and flew one of the first large payload drones in the world, and wrote/directed/acted/produced/edited Lacrimosa, a feature film loosely based on my life which has been nominated for best actor and best screenplay at Signlight, and was winner of grand jury prize at Deaf Film Festival in Austin TX

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I also created a comedy webseries with Alec Bewkes- Lost BoyZ-  (Director, Writer, Producer, Director of Photography)  Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4

I released the first limited print of Jester, in 2022. Genre-wise it’s like Game of Thrones/Stormlight Archives but with detailed artwork. (approx 111k words) Over twenty years in the making, the world of Jarkaar was born from the imagination and experience of growing up profoundly deaf. 

Between that and now I’ve been teaching myself unreal 5/motion capture to develop the prequel to Jester in the video game format. The reason why I chose this new platform rather than another art novel is because the prequel’s story uses sign language for most of its dialogue. The beauty of ASL is difficult to capture in words/pictures so I saw a cinematic game as the best fit.

I’ve also been learning how to collaborate with ai to mix real photographs with screenshots from the game to create better artwork for Jester’s first mass market print.

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are some personal heroes of mine because they mastered more than one art form. That’s what I’ve been working towards with my film work/novel/ and soon to be game.