About

Nathan Made It is a digital artist that specializes in Character Mashups, Parodies, Cartoons, Nostalgic and Pop Culture inspired artwork. Nathan Made It's mission with his artwork is to help others that battle depression, stress and/or anxiety (just like him) to feel happy, excited and less stressed every time they see one of his creations. 

 

BACKSTORY:

Nathan first started drawing when he was 3 years old. Back then he would make children's books with multiple crossovers, such as Barney the Dinosaur helping the Ninja Turtles and the Power Rangers to save Winnie the Pooh from flying away in a Hot Air Balloon. Nathan would draw all of the pictures and have his mom write all of the words on each page. His grandpa was always telling him that he should do something with his artwork because he saw the potential.

In school, Nathan was a dreamer of sorts. Every change that he got he was drawing, which led to a lot of angry teachers running up to him from and either ripping up his drawings and throwing them away for being "distracting," or would grab his notebooks full of drawings that throw them across the classroom into the wall and scream "NOT IN MY CLASS!!" and leave him embarrassed and confused. (1st grade through 6th grade)

Since 1st grade his teachers tried to correct his use of his left hand to draw and write. His first grade teacher was the first to get physical. One day she looked up from her task of grading papers at her desk, saw that Nathan was using his left hand to practice his writing, smacks her hands on her desk, flies through the air like a lion pouncing on a gazelle, grabs the pencil out of his left hand and dramatically SMACKS it into his right hand, closes his hand around the pencil and spastically starts moving his hand on the pencil to trace the words on the paper and says "IS THIS CONCEPT TOO HARD TO UNDERSTAND FOR YOU??" as she is biting her lip, shaking and her eyes bugged out. Through grade school he developed a sense of being targeted, which led him to become a loner and keep my head down to avoid being noticed.

In Junior high (Middle School), Nathan continued on being the lone wolf, silently doodling on the side of each assignment and drawing after he was done with his work in the back of the class. Peers would admire his work and ask if he could draw something for them, which would lift Nathan's spirits for the small window of time just to crash back down when the person being shown his artwork would respond with "Hmm. That's cool. Have you seen so and so though? His art is REALLY good." Art teachers would change his work, such as editing the tongue on a clay mask he was making because "it looked demonic and that's not allowed in my class" which the assignment was to replicate cultural artifacts and a scary mask used in tribal war was what he chose and he replicated it to a "T." 

In High School, Nathan was enrolled in several art classes to further his knowledge in mixed medias, anatomy and design. He was doing well in those classes and making friends with similar styles of art, but then Nathan got a girlfriend. While enrolling for the next semester of classes, Nathan saw that him and his girlfriend didn't have any classes together or lunch together, so through poor judgement, he dropped out of all of his art classes so that he could attend a trade school studying drafting and design to become an architect just so that he could dangerously rush back to the high school when the class was over and run in the building just to see his girlfriend at lunch for 10 minutes. DUMB DECISION. Nathan ended up dropping out of Drafting and Design due to a lack of interest and didn't enroll into any other art classes.

The year after graduating, Nathan enrolled into Graphic Art in the same trade school. Hated it. The teacher gave everyone an assigned area after every class that they HAD to clean (like Kindergarten) even if they never went over there and there wasn't any drawing or practicing on the drawing pads collecting that were collecting dust. Nope, just sitting all day and listening and taking notes. His girlfriend and her family was about to move and asked Nathan if he would like to move as well. Nathan dropped out of the Graphic Art class and packed his bags.

Upon arriving to the new place, he started working LONG shifts (36 hours straight) at a Farmland Foods Meat Plant. Nathan would carry blue index cards in his work shirt pocket along with a pen. Every change he got he would take out one of those index cards and doodle something just to keep his mind at ease. Co-workers would run up and draw all over it because a lack of value of other people's work. Nathan saw an add on Facebook for schooling for Computer Animation at Full Sail University in Winterpark, Florida. He was EXCITED. He filled out the criteria to receive more information about the school and the course. Full Sail's Computer Animation course sounded perfect! Every student would receive a brand new Apple Laptop, the latest software for animation, a drawing tablet, and other necessary tools for the trade. This course lasted 2 1/2 years, which was half of the course online and half in person, and after the course ends and each students portfolio of work and experience has been built a member of Disney Pixar Studio would personally come to the school and hand pick some of the best students. Around that time he was working on an animated movie idea about a kid and his pet baby T-Rex that escaped from a science lab. Nathan's plan was to be the best in the class, have the script, storyboard, character design, etc fully prepared for his movie, be hand picked from Pixar, work for them and build up a repour, hire his grandpa to be his "manager" and pitch the movie idea to the bosses, direct and produce and help animate the movie, give most of the proceeds to his grandpa and his mom for always having his back and inspiring him to do better, eventually start his own animation company, hire some of the best employees from Pixar and make a difference in the world.

Nathan told his girlfriend at the time his plan and she starts crying and said "Don't go. Please! I'll miss you! Just wait until I graduate high school too and I will go with you" So put his dreams aside and waited. 

After his girlfriend graduated from high school her and her mom went and enrolled in a community college. Nathan was confused because he was under the impression that she would move with him once she graduated. Nathan asked her if she was going to stick to the plan and she said "No, I'm good here where I'm at. I'm gonna go to this school. You can do whatever you want." So therefore Nathan wasted his time waiting on her and putting his artwork on the back burner just for her to change her mind.

Living with her parents at the time her mom busts through his bedroom door one day after Nathan worked a 26 hour shift at work and says "I need you to get your shoes on and go enroll in school right now or you'll be on the next greyhound back to your mama... I told you if you were gonna be living with us then you had to have a job, a nice car and going to school." So feeling backed up into a corner, Nathan went with her to the community college and enrolled in basic classes. Later on her mom started demanding rent payments because she had an antique addition and would spend all of their money on it and decided that I needed to pay her to stay to help fund those additions. So here he is working long hours, enrolled into a community college that he hates, paying rent when before they moved there was told they would never ask for rent, 9 hours from family and in a relationship on the rocks and more importantly not pursuing his dreams. Nathan started to become resentful towards her parents and her as well as he started taking on more hours at work, going to the gym instead of coming "home" for hours, going into work early and just sitting in the breakroom just to be alone and avoiding her and her family at all costs.

November came around and Nathan racked up enough vacation time to go see his family for Thanksgiving. No one knew that he was making the trip except for his grandparents. He drove in the night through the early morning 9 hours back to his parents house. They were thrilled to see him after over a year. Later on that day Nathan's dad walks up to him holding out his phone and says "What's this?" On the screen is a Facebook post from his girlfriend that states "Moving back to Texas!" Confused, Nathan walks outside and calls her. She says "Don't let it ruin your trip. We're done." So Nathan drove 9 hours back and packed all that he could inside is little Ford Fiesta, retracted himself from the community college and had to pay $1,800 for retracting early, quit his job and left.

Nathan started hanging out with old friends but those old friends were mixed up in drinking and partying all the time. Nathan decided that his life was downhill from there so he started along with them and became an alcoholic and went into a downward depression. His grandpa kept telling him every chance he got that he should really do something with his art skills because he could really do something  with himself, which now Nathan just blew him off and said he didn't care about that stuff anymore. Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years. Drinking from the time Nathan woke up until the time he literally passed out. Partying and chain-smoking and getting in trouble. Nathan switched his focus from artwork to making beats for rappers and other artists to write to and to freestyle at parties. Youtube search "N8TE BEATS" if you're interested.

Nathan eventually met his now fiancée (Kristen) at a Christmas party that their mutual friend was having at his apartment. Nathan and Kristen both were in different relationships at the time but held admiration for each other. Fast forward to a time they were both single and his fiancée showed up at his friends apartment. Nathan got excited and asked for her number. They started hanging out more and Nathan saw that she had an interest in art and crafts. He was hooked. They started making clay figures together and completing each others drawings. Their friends started to disappear after they tried to get them to go out and drink but Nathan and Kristen wanted to make crafts. They ended up only having each other. They moved in together and Nathan started working for Coca-Cola and Kristen started working for a law firm. A while later they found out they were expecting a child. They moved to Arkansas and Nathan transferred to the Coca-Cola there. Their son was born. Nathan was missing out on the first staged of his sons life due to long hours at work and high volumes of stress so one day him and Kristen mutually decided for him to quit so that they can spend the first few months of their sons life together as a family. Nathan started focusing on artwork to potentially give them money to live off of. Didn't happen. He tried Fiverr, selling paintings, services, etc. Nathan ended up selling his car to pay bills and picked up a job at Whole Foods. Horrible place to work for someone that is known to be a lone wolf. The demands of the bosses is for YOU to give everyone high fives and hug every time that someone takes out the trash or answers the company phone line. Nathan left that job to work for 7up (Keurig Dr. Pepper). Nathan and Kristen found out they were expecting another child. Nathan ended up transferring his job back to his hometown and settled into the "new" house. Nathan started doodling here and there while on break at work or when the kids were asleep. He remembered his grandpa saying he should do something with his artwork. So he started an Instagram account and posted some of his drawings. They were getting average responses. So he decided to trace back to his roots of drawing crossovers and mashups as a kid. He started obsessing over the feeling he got when drawing new character mashups and designs and seeing how well his followers were responding to them. He loved knowing that he was making at least one person laugh or happy with his artwork. Nathan set out to make a difference in other people's lives with his artwork by helping others battling depression, stress, insecurities and / or triggers to feel happy and to laugh and to socialize about positivity instead of focusing on all of the negativity that goes on in the world and the news. Nathan wants to also show himself the light in the darkness with the excitement of working on artwork, the joy of great feedback and responses from an awesome community of people that take value in art, and the relieving of stress by laughing and having fun in order to be a better dad, partner, friend and human being in general.

 

Conclusion:

I really appreciate you taking the time to read my back story to get a better feel of who I am, my past and what I'm setting out to do in this life. I am truly blessed for everyone that supports me and my artwork and walks along side me in my journey to make a difference in the world. Thank you!