Guowei Lu was born in a city in China you’ve never heard of. At the tender age of 8, Guowei’s world was turned upside down when he was uprooted from his birth country and transplanted to Vancouver, Canada. There, he came to be known as Andrew, then Kevin, before finally settling on David.

With limited knowledge of the English language and no friends to interact with, David’s attention gravitated towards television. The quality of television was much higher in Canada than China, so David watched every show he could from Reboot to Angry Beavers. Before he knew it, he had learned English from the Simpsons, and had become proficient at drawing SpongeBob characters. With his newfound skills, David established himself as the artsy kid, an identity he would carry all through primary and then secondary school.

His love for art however, came into direct conflict with his family who were less thrilled about their only child selling commissions to fuel his World of Warcraft addiction. To put him on the right path, they enrolled him in the International Baccalaureate program, an accelerated program where every other kid wanted to go to Harvard or Yale. However, David did not have the intention (nor the ability) to go to an Ivy League school. He had his eyes set on Sheridan College, which was basically Canadian CalArts. When it came time for college, David’s parents refused to fund any art school and only agreed to support him if he got into a more respectable trade. With his animation dream dashed at this point, David went to the University of Toronto to study Computer Science, with one goal in mind: make money.

Luckily for David, he managed to squeak his way into an internship at the #2 (formerly #1) website in the world: Google. And soon after, he found himself working for Google as a fulltime software engineer. David’s string of good luck would continue as he got placed on the Doodles team, perhaps the only art focused team in the entire company. He went on to work on such Doodles classics such as the 2020 Olympics cat game, the one where you cut a bunch of pizzas, and the one with the turntables. What was especially exciting to him was that he got to work on some of the art as well! Even though he didn’t get paid for any of his art, he was grateful enough for the experience.

Reinvigorated by his surroundings, David started on his artistic path once more. With his hard-earned disposable income, he took many courses at the Academy of Art University, the Animation Collaborative, and Schoolism.com. He would go deep into Visual Development, but also branched out into Storyboarding and 3D Animation. After six years of toil, thousands of hours spent in front of a Cintiq, and three continuous years of applying to the Nick Artist program, David was selected for the General Design Track. David was finally given the chance of living out his childhood dream. He is forever grateful to the good people of Nickelodeon for this opportunity and is proof that a career change is possible no matter how far removed it is from animation.