Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryce Kho.
Bryce, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve been drawing ever since I was three and despite switching to both being a filmmaker and then an independent video game developer in my 20s, I’m back to basics now that I’m in 30s – drawing many of the same things I was drawing when I was three. It’s very Lacanian.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been like Rocky. I mean the movie, though I suppose that also describes the road too. The majority of my early life felt like I had a lot of potential despite it being an uphill battle, and then I suppose my title fight was the four years it took me to Kickstart and release the video game Aegis Defenders. It was a hard fight where I felt like many people expected me to give up or would have given me permission to if I had chosen to — but I fought through it. Despite the game doing okay, it felt like I had blown my one chance to become the World Championship boxer and it hurt real bad. In the end, the lesson I learned was that none of my family or friends cared about that part of it – they just wanted to support me because that’s what friends and family do. That struggle really put things in perspective for me and had me screaming “I love you Adrian,” metaphorically speaking.
Please tell us about BryceKhoDraws.
My actual business is called Guts Department and was the LLC we used to develop the game Aegis Defenders for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam but at the moment, I’m really more of a freelance illustrator and concept artist. Most people know me from my Instagram @brycekhodraws and it’s really been surprising to me how I get a lot of work requests through it. Immediately after we released Aegis, I was trying to get work the old fashioned way but it paled in comparison to amount of awareness I got from just posting on Instagram. I think most people who know my art will probably mention the Pokémon fan art I did of Psyduck in a fish market that’s full of other Pokémon being sold as food. It’s… more cute than that sounds.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I would pretend to be Goku from Dragon Ball a lot when I was in grade school, so much so that I would regularly scream “Kamehameha” at the stairs in my house (because it amplified the sound) until I was tired. My mom wouldn’t even tell me to be quiet. I would be panting from exhaustion and she would be like, “Did you have fun?” *Gulping down Costco orange juice* “…Yeah!” I also actually used my mom’s weights to train my muscles because I wanted to be buff like Goku was – there was a story arc where Goku is training under like 300% gravity for a whole season. Anyway, I got so strong that in 3rd grade I walked over to the big kid’s area where my older sisters were and went up to the biggest kid on campus, a 6ft+ seventh-grader. He was so tall he had a back brace to straighten his back since he was growing too fast. I basically challenged him during recess and said, “I bet I can pick you up!” Everyone laughed because I was very short kid but then I did it and impressed everyone. So yeah, literally becoming Goku seemed possible at that time in my life, haha.
Pricing:
- Freelance: $100 per hour
- Prints & other products: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BryceKhoArt
- Commission Artwork: $100-300 per piece
Contact Info:
- Address: 111 S De Lacey Ave
Unit 109 - Website: brycekho.com
- Phone: 9162671577
- Email: [email protected]
- Twitter: @brycekhodraws
Image Credit:
Bryce Kho
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