To be precise – it started with Commodore 64 – I was about 9 years old when my parents couldn’t stand my whining anymore and got me one. It was all about gaming (obviously) at that time, but few years later I discovered THE SCENE. If you haven’t heard about it – it’s a worldwide community of musicians, graphic artists, coders, swappers, cover artists, crackers (and few more) between age of 8 and 65 who create all sorts of art just because they can!
I was simply amazed and overwhelmed by all that but it was after watching Mathematica by Reflex when it struck me – I didn’t want to be a superman any more, these guys were much more amazing! After few attempts of doing anything in assembler I realised that I should try other things (before I become the youngest stress victim) and that’s how I ended up as a graphician (read: a guy who create graphics pixel by pixel :) in 2 demogroups!
Vector Traced Mathematica Logo
 
The reality check time came eventually and I had to pick a university which, in most cases, was a big waste of time – I was studying Information Technology and Econometrics at Silesian University of Technology and although there were really intriguing subjects like Games Theory or Genetic Algorithms it was not what I wanted to do. It took me 5 years to understand that and it was actually at the very last moment when I decided to drop my existing Thesis and focus on Web Programming Languages.
I graduated with A (w00t) and joined the fairly familiar community of unemployed young people(; Although I was able to find few decent freelance contracts, it was (again) far from my dreams. So one day I packed up my things and I came to Brighton, UK…
 
The goal was to use all the money earned in US and Norway in previous years to stay alive and work only as a ‘creative’. As usual nothing went as planned and I probably killed certain amount of local population while being a chef in one of the popular pubs.
I got my first real job after a while but it was one short email from Aegir Hallmundur that changed my life forever.
I was hired at NCsoft!!! To tell you the truth, it was a seriously wild ride sometimes and, I’m not going to lie to you, it wasn’t easy under the reign of Mr. Aegir – yet everything I know now is thanks to his guidance, wrist slapping and hugely talented team he assembled – starring: Tom Kiss (we share the stubbornness, love for perfection and flashing actionscripting), Mathew Keller (veteran freelancer – great source of print knowledge), William Weaver (fantastic designer, type passionate and one serious biscuit maniac) and few others. Although I loved working at NCsoft it didn’t stop me from exploring other design possibilities – I was in touch with Kreativ’s Head Developer – Bartek Kucharczyk – who was more than happy to offload some off his clients’ problems onto me. That’s how my freelancing career was constantly growing and as of early 2009 it became my fulltime occupation!
 
Part of Hires Inverse Logo I did for The Inverse Zine
It has been 20 years since I pressed Play on my C64 tape recorder for the first time… As you can see the road I have behind me is not amazingly unusual but I am proud of it – being here now – running my own company, doing what I love, learning tons of new things every day and helping people in the same time is truly fantastic!
So, yes, this is happy me… and what’s your story? (: