My name is Darius Richards and I was born in Harlem, New York. I lived in Harlem my entire life being raised by my loving mother. I have three siblings, which are two brothers and one sister. As a child growing up I always enjoyed drawing cartoons of shows I watched or the video games I played. My favorite cartoon show and game that I loved to draw was Dragonball Z.

What influenced me to draw more seriously was the encouragement from my after school program. I saw a person draw a picture of my favorite cartoon character from the show with such ease, without looking at a picture in a matter of seconds. I was so astonished at his work that it inspired me to draw and practice even more. I was only seven at the time, and very impatient, but the person told me to keep practicing everyday and I’ll get better. Around that time I was in a catholic school named Marc Carmel Holy Rosier and transferred to another catholic school named Resurrection in the third grade.

I continued to draw and became more interested in my artwork. I played sports, but my true interest was getting better at my drawing. When I graduated middle school, I wanted to go to an art school. However, I never took the initiative to create a portfolio and try to join a school that would enhance my skills. The three high schools I went to were Rice H.S, FDA 1 H.S, and Richard R Green H.S of teaching.

During my high school years I started to slow down on my drawings but drew pictures of animations, people, and just random objects on my free time. When I first applied to college, I thought I was going to be an engineer because I wanted to be extremely wealthy in the future but I didn’t enjoy math. With the guidance of my mother and teachers, they told me to pick a career that I would enjoy doing for the rest of my life. I didn’t really know what to do with that advice, but I remembered how much I enjoyed playing video games as a child. I came up with an idea for a career to create my own video game applications or becoming a web designer.