I don't start with aesthetics. I start with logic and a concept.
Before I design a character, I need to know what the world they live in values, what rules it follows, and what it costs to break them. Before I draw a prop, I need to know what it does, who made it, and why it exists in this world specifically. Aesthetics come last — not because they don't matter, but because they mean more when they're earned by the logic underneath them.
This is how I've always thought. Television helped me formalize it. Shows like Invader Zim showed me that a world has to make sense before it can look cool — that the chaos only works when it's built on consistent internal rules. I didn't consciously understand this as a principle. I realized it when I started paying attention to how I already worked.
A world should make sense before it looks cool.
My work is IP development. I build original animated worlds from the inside out — characters, environments, props, fictional branding, caste systems, sound — all of it connected by a single internal logic. My first series bible, Moyroid Meow, follows Abby Backstar through an Earth conquered not by force but by capitalism, where alien invaders rewrote the world's branding just slightly enough that most people stopped noticing. Every design choice in that project — the off-brand logos, the alien caste system reflected in body proportions, the protagonist's costume evolving across three phases — exists because the world's logic demanded it, not because it looked interesting in isolation. It's more satisfying when it all makes sense, like a simulation.
I think in systems. Always have. Worldbuilding has no ceiling, no single right answer, and no point where the process stops being interesting. The complexity is the point. My systematic thinking isn't just being logical — it's being emotional while my subconscious stays systematic. I can feel something and still be organizing it underneath.
I'm a first-generation college student, Bosnian American, born with a heart condition I've managed my whole life. I mention these not as credentials but as context — I've always understood what it means to operate in a world that wasn't designed with you in mind. That understanding lives in my work.
I'm currently at MCAD developing three original IPs. The work is systematic, iterative, and never finished until the logic holds from every angle.