I was going through old photos and I have had so many workspaces over the decades, so I thought it'd be fun to share them to show the progression from a little teenage shithead to a middle-age guy in his 50s. I already posted the oldest one I could find, which was about 2 years after I became very serious about art and decided I wanted to become a professional artist (inspired by anime, manga, sci-fi/fantasy illustrations, American/European comics). I also wanted to write and direct too, and I had no idea back then I'd end up doing all those things professionally and also became a professional musician and photographer as well (which explains the evolution of the workspaces).
There are huge gaps between that oldest photo (from the late 80s) to 2000, because 2000 was the year I bought my first camera, and prior to that I didn't have the mindset to document my living spaces for the sake of preserving memories. During that long stretch, I had gotten kicked out of the house by my mom (who was against me becoming an artist) and rented a room from a friend's home (I was 18 and just graduated from high school and started working full-time in comics), then I moved out to San Francisco and rented a room in a flat with a few other art students (in my early 20s), then went to Taiwan to work as a songwriter and lived with my brother (while continuing to work as a comic book writer/artist), then went back to California and lived with my buddy in his family's house.
In the late 90s I moved back to SF and rented an in-law in a house behind the garage (it had two rooms and I subletted one of them), and that was when I bought my first digital camera, and from that point on, I started documenting my living spaces whenever I moved. It was also around that time I started to get into digital art (in order to get a job in the game industry, since the comics market had crashed). By 1998 I had quit comics and worked minimum wage jobs for a year or so until I got a job working on the Prince of Persia 3D game (with the help of my roommate at the time, who was on the team). It was around this time I became very serious about writing novels, and spent a lot of time writing instead of painting or doing music.
From there, I moved to the next place in the Bay Area because a friend asked me to share an apartment with her. The tons of dolls you see is because I had gotten into collectable dolls (buying and selling) and that ended up inspiring a buddy of mine to open up his own online retail shop that sold BJD (ball-jointed dolls), which still exists today.
The next move was to Kentucky because I got headhunted by a game company to be their art director. It was a nice increase in salary so I rented a nice place, and it was my first time able to afford a place all by myself. Too bad the company went bankrupt very soon so I didn't get to stay long. I loved having a loft and ever since then, always chose places with a loft whenever possible.
After I lost that job, I took a break and accompanied my mom to China (my first time there), then met Elena, my future wife. By our 4th date she asked me to move in with her, and this is my workspace at her place (a tiny two-bedroom apartment):
We got married a year later. During that time, we also converted her dining room into my oil painting studio:
A few years later, my friend Steven Stahlberg (yes, that guy) asked me to go work with him at his studio as a writer/director/art director, so off to Malaysia we went. We rented an two-bedroom apartment that was much larger than her place in China, but my workspace was still not much more than a nook. We were playing it by ear since the company didn't seem stable financially, so everything always looked and felt temporary. The fact it had a literal little nook for her to sit next to me when I was at my desk was my favorite part.
Steven's company did run into financial trouble and we ended up moving back to China and stayed at her place. It was around that time I became very serious about photography and became a professional photographer. Not long after Elena's visa application progressed to the next step and we got ready to move back to California. We stayed temporarily at my mom's place during the moving process and this was my workspace there:
After all our stuff got shipped back to the States, we moved out of my mom's place and rented an apartment briefly while waiting for Elena's visa to finalize:
Once we arrived in California, we rented a room from a family friend's house while I looked for a new job. It took nine months, and during the search, I taught briefly at Academy of Art College and did some freelance work on Spiderman 3 and Surf's Up for Sony Imagework. Then I got a job as an art director at a game studio in SF:
After getting the job, we rented an apartment, and it was meant to be long-term (hahaha, laughed fate). I ended up working there for about a year and a half:
Elena's investments in China prompted us to move back to China, so we left California and rented a temporary place in China while we constructed our new home:
And finally, I had the studio space I always dreamed of in our new home, and I got to enjoy it for about 4 years before moving back to California again:
During those 4 years, we did have to go back to California briefly for a few months while Elena prepared for her naturalization exam, so one last temporary workspace:
And finally, we moved back to California in 2012 to the current place, where we've been for over 12 years now (the longest I've ever stayed in one place). It currently looks like we'll probably stay here for the rest of our lives. When we first moved in, the larger visible music gears I had back then were all different from the ones I have now, and they were all sold off a few years ago, back when I thought I was going to stop making music and just focus on writing novels (but I ended up itching to get back into music again, so I bought a boatload of gear again and got back into making music):
The photos in the first post are of the same studio as this one, but with different gear and furniture and rearranged, and with fancier lighting that's more like the studio I used to have in China.
And that is all the workspaces I've had over the last few decades, not counting some very temporary ones where it was just a laptop on a table and nothing else. To count as a workspace for me, it has to contain more stuff than can fit into a suitcase and arranged to my liking.
