It takes one masterful piece of art or media to inspire and set an artist on his journey. Jurassic Park was that inspiration for Roger Hernandez to seek out his calling in the world of polygons and three-dimensional planes. As a kid, Roger would watch countless hours of cartoons and movies, but most notably Ray Harryhausen movies: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Valley of Gwangi, 1 million B.C etc… But when his parents took him to watch Jurassic Park in the theatre Roger witnessed the transitional evolution of a Ray Harryhausen clay dinosaur to a living, breathing T-rex on the big screen with fluent movement and real-world scale and that was the moment he knew that was what he wanted to do when he grew up.

During his time in community college, Roger started to look for the best universities and art schools to begin his journey; it all came to a crashing halt when reality hit, and he realized that the “best” schools were too expensive and out of reach for a family with limited financial stability. Searching for an alternative, he found California State University Northridge, and it was a Godsend! However, its art program was still in its infancy and its resources were limited, but nonetheless it was an exciting time as he would finally start the journey he craved.

A month after Roger graduated from Cal State Northridge, he found himself at his first studio job at Cosmic Toast Studios as a Generalist, working on projects that consisted of Flash animation, compositing, and 2D art clean-up. Despite Roger not doing CG as his primary vocation at Cosmic Toast, he still enjoyed learning and trying different software’s and mediums. After three years, in an unfortunate turn of events, the studio shut its doors, leaving Roger pondering his next course of action.

Despite a period of hardship, Roger did not give up and decided to go back to what made him crave this career in the first place – his love of CG art. Roger enrolled into Animation Mentor, took classes through Mold3D, CGMA online school and watched hours of online CG tutorials on YouTube, Plural Sight and Gnomon Workshop. During this time Roger would also do freelance work on the side, taking on projects for multiple clients and rebuilding himself from the ground up, making a wide array of connections in the process.

In January 2022, Roger began his new journey with the Nickelodeon Artist Program, and the same spark that started it all has now intensified tenfold! Goals are set and Roger’s venture into an exciting new chapter of his life has him fired up to see what’s next.