I was born in Groningen, but left at nine months old for Curaçao, where I grew up with my mother and stepfather Harry Lauffer, brother of the Dutch-Antillean poet Pierre Lauffer. I was always drawing, always looking at things. Give me a pencil and a blank page and I could disappear for hours.

It started at a party I had no business being at. I was a bored kid surrounded by adults until someone sat me down in front of his NES. The second I touched that controller, that was it. Mario. Star Fox. Mario Kart. I would not stop begging my Mom for one.

The day we went to buy it, I found the NES in the shop, stood in front of it, and told her: this one, not the others. The shop employee had other ideas and convinced her to go with the black box that looked nothing like what I wanted. I was furious the whole ride home.

I opened it anyway. It was a Nintendo 64. 3D graphics, a generation ahead of anything I had seen. Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Donkey Kong 64. I forgot everything I was angry about. Then someone moving to the Netherlands gave away their kid's game collection before leaving. I got Conker's Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, and GoldenEye 64 in one afternoon. That's when it clicked. People make these for a living. I was eight, and I already knew what I wanted to do.

"Movies get two hours. Games last much longer — and build a connection that nothing else comes close to."

Consoles along the way: N64, Gaming PC, PS2, PS3, GameCube, PS5. Motorsport has always been a second obsession, which is a big part of why vehicles and hard surface work feel so natural.

I always attended art class. At the International School of Curaçao I paid close attention in both Art and Computer classes and started building a real portfolio. To push further, I went to Adriana's Academy of Art alongside school, studying realism and sharpening the fundamentals everything else is built on.

I applied four times to NHTV Breda (now Breda University of Applied Sciences). Saxion gave me my shot, and I took it seriously. That's where I found 3D. Not because it was the obvious path, but because it matched what I was good at and actually got me interested. By the time I finished, I'd figured something out I hadn't expected: I enjoy making games more than playing them. And I love playing games.

After Saxion I joined Lukkien, doing photorealistic CGI renders for Rituals cosmetics: modelling, UV mapping, shader networks, texturing, and rendering across their product range. I'm grateful for what they taught me. But CGI was never where I wanted to end up. Games always was.

Since 2020 I've been shipping props, vehicles, and character assets for TimeSplitters: Rewind with Cinder Interactive, the largest free-content game ever made. Getting to work under Cameron Williams (ex-Rockstar, Infinity Ward) and Samuel Freeman (Splash Damage) has pushed my craft further than school ever did.

I'm now based in Ede, working on what I set out to do at age eight.

The gaming industry is having a rough stretch. The layoffs are real and the uncertainty is real. I'm not blind to it. But I believe in this medium, in the people making it, and in what I can bring to the table.

I'm open to roles in 3D environment art, prop art, and hard surface. Remote, on-site, relocation, freelance, contract. I'll go where the work is and where I can keep getting better. The goal is to get in the door. Everything else follows.