Hi, I'm Jayda but my nickname is "moose x3" and I'm a queer poc illustrator and a writer from Essex, UK.
Coming from an artist background, I studied Art & Design and A-Level Graphic Design at Harlow College (2015-2018) to develop my illustration skills and also BA (Hons) Games Design at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU) in 2018-2021. Although, I never used to have an interest in becoming a games designer/be part of the gaming industry when I first started the course as my orignal plans of study was Creative Writing and Illustration since I had high expectations of becoming an illustrator and a writer. However, Games Design became a blessing in disguise as I combined my illustration and writing skills in various different ways whether they were old or new including dabbling into making mods for Sims 4 using Blender and, coding by using Python, JavaScript and Atom thanks to using the visual novel engine, Ren'py, and my ol' rusty coding skills from creating Tumblr themes when I was 15 years old.
Specialising in visual novels, the game genre helped me combine my love for writing dark comedy and breaking barriers by talking about my fears and life situations through every character and used those same writing skills and the knowledge from cosy-mysteries to create my very own upcoming crime novel, which has led me to studying MA Creative Writing at CCCU in 2021.
However since completing my Master's Degree (in 2023) from a different creative field, I've just kind of fell into the deep-end of 'not-knowing-what-to-do-as-a-career' like most graduates; especially for those like myself who went one degree to the complete opposite degree - it's brutal out here as Olivia Rodrigo would say. Nowadays, I just draw character designs for my crime novel including my new upcoming visual novel game and random illustrations for fun via Adobe Photoshop (because I do not like Adobe Illustrator). I KNOW as an illustrator, it's quite hard to get out there into the "real world". And particulary as a designer, I ALSO KNOW my graphic design skills are not quite up to scratch since I haven't properly polished them up since 2019. It's only until recently back September 2023 when I decided to redesign my friend's logo for her small business, S'Luxe Nailz.
I know I'm not the best illustrator let alone designer however, I'm always willing to learn new ways to develop my work! I mean, it only took me nearly 7 years to figure how to create multiple artboards on Photoshop...