Biography

HTML language started to become popular in 1992, with the acknowledgement of its optimization for information transfer and hypertext navigation. In this period, I had contact with computers that used to make low speed connections through modems, bilaterally. Only in 1996 I began to take interest of what was soon to become the information revolution – the internet. Although everyone thought it had great potential, no one really knew how this reality would become feasible. In 1997, I did my first website. This way, one could say that I develop websites almost the full time of the existence of its main markup language - HTML.

Before attending the university, I worked in a tourism agency pioneer on virtual operation, around 1997. It's goal was to make a receptive service with exclusive use of the internet. Curiously, the strategy was to search for agencies throughout the world, using search engines of that time, like AltaVista, Lycros, Cyber 404, among others. Gather contact e-mails and send a default message with the purpose of establishing partnership with the companies and offer it´s clients tour services in Rio de Janeiro. In other words – SPAM. However, at the time it wasn't called that yet.

After working for a few months in this agency, I had an idea to build a virtual “directory”, that nowadays, would be called a website portal. The name was “The Brazilian Travel Directory”, with equal .com domain name. The ambition was simple, if you compare to today's stands. Put all companies together,  related to tourism in Brazil, that didn't have the necessary financial resources to create it's own webpage. The monthly fee was R$ 8,00 (about $ 6.00 at the time) and was entitled to three monthly updates.

I started out making the web portal by it's logo. Next would come the most difficult part. Developing the page. No rough drawing was made before programming in HTML. The software used at the time was called “HotDog”. It consisted on a HTML library, separated in categories. A mess. It took me a week to get to know the software mechanics and another week to code the page and put it up and running. I remember that the ISP company was called OpenLink (a big ISP company at the time, in Brazil). It would also responsible for hosting the page.

With all up and running, it was time to sell the new product. The strategy was based on making contact through the listings on the yellow pages, because the target companies were the ones that didn't have web pages yet. In other words – the whole segment. The initial thought was to make it possible for companies to engage on the internet which didn't have sufficient financial resources to build their own web page. And in that period, it was much more expensive, and offered fewer technological resources then the ones now.

After setting up some meetings and closing some deals, I realized that the task had to scale in order to work. I ended up leaving the project aside before engaging in the University, due to my lack of financial resources.

Like any other child, I always liked drawing. For some reason, between the age of 9 and 12, I started investing more time on producing these drawings, which resulted in a higher quality when compared to my colleages, at the same age. When people around me started to notice better, it convinced me that maybe I had a little talent for it.

At the end of this period, when I returned to Brazil in definite, after spending some time studying in New York, USA, I had a better relationship with a childhood friend from my neighborhood, called Diego Borba, who nowadays, paints framed pictures. He was a bit older than I, and had already an advanced drawing technique and an amazing talent. When he took a look at my drawings, I believe he had seen some unexplored quality. So, he began to teach me some drawing techniques, including nankeen painting, which was his passion. After some months following his exercises and guidance, I started to use these techniques on my drawings. And the result was really surprising. The work gained a leap in quality.

I identified myself with the grid technique and liked to draw in graphite. The drawings didn't have much concept. The themes were conventional like for any other 13-14 year old, pre-teenager. Rebels, monsters, robots, among others. Anyway, something very interesting happened. Close by acquaintances started to “order” drawings. Friends and relatives, of course. I believe that some, in the intention to show friendship, but others because they really liked what I was doing. I even tried to use the drawings to “approach” a childhood sweetheart, but due to some unpredictable happenings, didn't work out. It was then that I understood that it could be an artistic expression with great value. Started to look at it with a professional perspective.

It was a bit easy for me to work with computers. Did my first logo for my stepfather's company, when I still lived in Frankfurt, Germany, at 14 years of age. AMC - Asset Management Control. The concept was simple. The "A" went together with the "M" and it fused with the "C", inside a triangle shape. Incredibly, the drawing was accepted by the company, which worked in managing financial resources.

Architecture was my first thought. Unfortunately, my father didn't support my choice. Another area that was starting to become popular, was Industrial Design. It had the word "design" in it, so I already liked the idea. Coincidently, that friend of mine, Diego, was thinking about engaging on this area also. Another friend's brother was graduated in this course and had already an office in Rio de Janeiro. I asked my friend if there was a possibility for me to visit his office. Not a problem. After this visit, I knew I had a professional direction - Industrial Design University.

I liked the course very much, differently from many university colleagues. In my evaluation, it served me well to learn about creative process and methodology. It brought us closer to the art world, so that our work could have a solid concept. Showed up close how the real world market place worked. And gave a direction of what fields to study next, in case we identified ourselves with a specific area - Product Design or Graphic Design. Both of the mainstream segments in Industrial Design. At short: Product Design works with planning and building a physical product. Graphic Design works with creating visual concepts for different activity segments. Initially, most of the students would like to graduate in both fields and afterwards try to work in the product area. However, due to my low financial condition at the time being, I decided to study in the area that had the fastest financial return - Graphic Design. For sure, I didn't regret it. Later I started to identify myself with it.

In the fifth period of college, I began to work as a trainee in small agencies. I didn't enjoy the experience so much, because I notice that the companies took advantage of its employees. So at the end of the university, I decided that I would work by myself, even though not having the right profile for sales.

I already had some contact with website design in 97, but now with a graphic appeal, not so common for that period. Back then, we didn't have the definition of a web designer as we do today. The programmers would do the web layouts and, therefore, would have no content organization and a lack of design quality, because of their knowledge and emphasis on function instead of visuals, brand design, setting different weights according to the importance of some types of information, among other details that would make up a good graphic plan.

My folks always had personal computers. So the experience with the digital media was since early on. At this period, the computers worked with command line and rudimentary operational systems. By being this way, it made it easier for me to absorve programming.

After finishing college and working in the field for about one or two years, the demand for projects that worked with database grew. I was working with HTML, which is a basic and easy markup language for web construction. However, to develop in other languages so called "dynamic", I needed deeper knowledge. They are called dynamic pages because their content could change at any time, and their working model is different. Instead of creating your website page by page, you end up creating models for each type of content to work in, which can be harder to do, but it's easier for you to make changes in lots of pages at once. And the remaining pages of that type of content are generated by the server automatically. The demand grew because of the necessity to update content online, at real time, registering users on database and control panel use for signed in users on websites / portals, to accomplish certain specific tasks for that project.

To develop these features, I used to contract programmers, according to the programming language used. The problem is that at many times, the client didn't know exactly what he wanted and always ended up changing the initial project´s scope. That wasn't good for the programmers, as they had to reprogram pages, and in some cases, do a whole new programming. Without mentioning the times that the programmers wouldn't accept the changes for the contracted value or simply wouldn't honor the agreed terms.

It was then when I decided to attend private programming lessons. I met a programming professor graduated in math. At first, he taught me the most popular languages at that moment - ASP and PHP. Both of them have a similar way of working and features. The basic difference between the two is that ASP is from Microsoft and compiles on servers which have the windows operating system with license, and PHP, which is an open source language, compiles in Linux operating system servers and doesn't need license.

The learning process was relatively smooth, as I had already mastered HTML and a small database knowledge, during the period that I worked with sales in my family's business, controlling inventory that used to be done with a program called Quattro. After developing a few projects, I realized I had a certain affinity with programming, which led me to my next big decision.

I started to develop projects even more complex, which at a certain point, after working with web design and programming together, I identified that projects had a lot of common characteristics. And after mastering programming languages, I could create a method to always use the same database and the same base code, so that the projects would be done in less time and with a better quality. I really didn't know exactly what I was developing at a macro scale, as there was nothing similar to it being used at the tech industry. It was only later that it consolidated itself as a Content Management System for web projects, where all project content could be altered / managed quickly, by people with no special computer skills.

In the beginning of 2008, I was hired to develop a relatively big project, that would give me the necessary financial condition to start creating this system / methodology and it would even be used on real scenario to test what I had imagined. I didn't give it a name, until I had realized what I had created. Ended up calling it Sistema Dinâmico ® (Dynamic System, in Portuguese), as I always tried to think of simple names together with the domain name to make it easier for the search engines on the internet.

This system´s main advantage, are:

- Easy system operation by the website manager;
- Possibility for me to adapt the system only for those functions that the client would use. This avoids excess of information to the website´s manager and less resources to explain when I pass on the training;
- Simplified programming for structural changes on the project. Many times this is a critical issue, which can harm the relationship between the contractor and the developer. With the use of this system, the changes are relatively easy to be done.
- Drastic reduction on the number of hours necessary to develop a project;
- Easy migration and installing the system on servers with different setups. When choosing a programming language to develop, I opted for ASP, as it had Microsoft support. Some of this system's functions require specific components installation by the servers, like ASPJpeg for images resizing, among others. And I had noticed that each server worked with different components which made it difficult during an eventual server migration. So I built the system in a way that the component to be used could be chosen. The new versions in other languages (Node.js, ASP.NET and PHP) have the same attention to this matter.

I've already developed more than 100 websites using Sistema Dinâmico®. Each project always ends up adding a new feature or functionality. Nowadays it has more then 10 working modules and approximately 600 pages for its complete execution. I believe having already invested more than 5 thousand hours of programming time on this system. In other words: at each new project I start to work in, it has 5 thousand hours in advance. The remaning work is all about adjusting, configuration and development of specific features for that project. And, as it was I who developed the system from scratch, I know what and where to change without a deep code analysis, which results in building these features faster.

Thinking about a future international operation, I ended up changing the name of the framework to SyncSystem® and giving it new visuals. Also decided to use Sistema Dinâmico® as a label to provide small sized shared hosting service that was being profitable as well.

When I started do draw during my childhood, I also began to nourish a great admiration towards animation. Watched the Disney's classics without knowing the huge artistic value they had, but somehow, I created a bond with them and recognized the importance in creating movement, a character, a story - frame by frame - animation. Don't know exactly what year it was, but I believe I made my first animations between the age of 13 to 14, when I lived in Germany. It consisted in a simple character that always got "screwed". They were animations done in graphite, over file cards so that the thickness could serve to make the sheets go through fastly and giving the impression of animation.

Payback - Animation - Drawing - 76 Frames - 1991/1992 (13 years of age)

Sadistic Machine - Animation - Drawing - 120 Frames - 1991/1992 (13 years of age)

Adventure - Animation - Drawing - 198 Frames - 1991/1992 (13 years of age)

Putting together animation and drawing, I though for a moment to pursue this study / profession. However, there was a big obstacle in my way, for this to happen - the uncontrollable will to go back living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at all costs, even if it sacrificed my professional carrer, that at this age, I couldn't have the slightest idea of future consequences.

However, after finishing university and starting to work in the industry, there was a small way that I could have a connection with animation again - developing flash animations. Incredibly, this technology was gaining a lot of attention during this period, as it transformed the navigation experience into something much more dynamic and interactive, entertainment wise.

Got my hands on multimedia development sofwares on my own and managed to learn the basic mechanism. From there on, I started to create small animations and entire websites in flash, that had a big visual impact, specially due to the text and image animations, screen transitions, among other features. I got a little recognition in this area. I also had a beginner's knowledge on 3D modeling and tiny 3D animations. However, the market was going through a slow change at this time, and a new tendency was about to consolidate itself. Clients were beginning to feel the necessity to update their content in real time and without depending on the availability of web designers. Without mentioning the high monthly costs for maintenance. Also, there were two programming languages on the beginning stages of becoming popular, because of its easy structural construct - ASP and PHP.

Flash's programming language, ActionScript, still didn't have the structural features necessary to build self manageable pages, besides, the values for this were quite above the alternative solutions without the advantages of the animation. More and more, the industry was demanding websites with this capability- websites and portals with Content Management Systems - CMS.

During the post graduation course on Art Directing For Film Making and Television, I began to have contact again and nourish a big dream of mine, since I was young - work with film making. I contributed to some independent projects, in the production company Meninos do Rio, in the editing of a short film and eventually helped with the production of other projects, as it usually works in this field, for pure "love". Each time I took part on a project, made me sure that I liked this line of work, even without payments. However, the Brazilian film industry is not mature enough so that the financial aspect would be enough for me to dedicate full time on it. For this reason, I decided to study slowly, and try to apply film making concepts wherever I can, on projects I handle.

A detail caught my attention. On the making of one of the course's tasks, where I had to come up with the concept for the art directing for a script, ended up also creating the screenplay, as I couldn't find any story interesting enough for my style of work, where I thought it would be worth investing that amount of time. Surprisingly, I created a screenplay with ease which satisfied me. Showed it to some colleagues, without saying that I had wrote it and it was also relatively well accepted, or at least had the reaction I was hoping for. It was then when I began to have interest on screen writing. At this time, I'm collecting ideas and stories so I can, later on, produce them somehow. 

Among the sports that I've dedicated myself to, were martial arts (jiu-jitsu, boxing and taekwondo), swimming and running. Gained recognition in martial arts, as it was the one that I dedicated most of my time on. Besides providing a good physical and mental condition to continue working without stress, it also gives me an athlete's perspective when developing projects related to sports.