About Me

Hi! My name's Jake Hernandez and I'm an Art / Graphic Design student at San Diego State University! I plan to continue working in this field and graduate from SDSU with a degree in graphic design and business / marketing. I aspire to work in a design or animation studio long-term, and eventually start my own mainstream art studio for film, video games, or other media. As an artist myself, not only would I be perfect for the role because of my experience and skills, but also because I am a natural leader with an extremely creative and relentless mind, and my work reflects that. I thrive working collaboratively and alone, and I'm always open to new ideas, which makes me a flexible and useful tool for big time studios.

Why Am I here?

My entire life I had never known what I wanted to do with myself after high school. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always been a huge fan of Marvel, DC, and especially Star Wars, mostly thanks to my dad. And as I'd gone through school and life as a whole, I hadn't really been able to find something that was truly interesting to me that I could make a feasible career out of. Until the beginning of my junior year of high school, when I walked into Mr. Messerle's class for the first time. The walls covered from top to bottom in projects, artwork, movie posters, and comic panels, the glowing LED lights giving the room a soft blue tint, and most importantly, the Imperial March playing in the background. I knew immediately that this was exactly where I wanted to be. And as the course progressed, I only grew fonder of the class and its material. I was fortunate enough to have the privilege of working with San Diego County 2016 Teacher of the Year Paul Messerle, the computer graphic arts & 3D computer animation teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School, which was an incredible experience in developing my skills as well as discovering myself. As someone who despises getting out of bed in the morning and dragging myself to school every day, I can confidently say that those classes (I took all of the available digital art classes at my school) had given me not only motivation to come to school and do my best, but also purpose. Most of the time I feel that the work we do in school is completely useless to us in real life, and most of the time it probably is, but when I was working in Mez's class, and I was actually able to see and be proud of something I made, it gave me this satisfaction and fulfillment like what I'm doing actually means something, and that's exactly when I knew that I had a burning passion for graphic arts and 3D animation.