Ever since he was able to hold a pencil in his hand, Augustine Jorge Pagan was always drawing. Born in San Jose, California his early years were spent religiously watching cartoons and scouring the local swap meets, flea markets and 7-11’s for any and all comic books that he could get his little five year old hands on.
The rest of Augustine’s adolescence would take place in the garlic foothills of Gilroy, California. Caught between the beach culture of the Santa Cruz hills and the strip malls of San Jose, the order of the day was still drawing, reading comics, along with watching cartoons and pop culture movies.
Immediately after high school, Augustine would make the trek to Washington State to attend the Art Institute of Seattle. Upon graduating in December of 1991, he would be given his first break by Dev Madan, a now long time friend, who introduced him into the then emerging field of video game development.
The next 15 years would be spent at two major video game companies; Humongous Entertainment, and more recently Sucker Punch Productions where his skill set would be developed and honed. Working in the fast paced and demanding world of video game development, he would take on a variety of tasks including background and storyboard artist, concept artist, texture artist in addition to animator, all while wrestling with the pressures and technological hurdles that come with the industry. Between these two studios, Augustine’s abilities would be pushed as he worked with a multitude of talented artists and programmers, leading to the creation of many award winning video game titles from both companies.
During the calm between project milestones, Augustine would take the time to travel and further develop his own artwork. Being able to take trips and see artwork first hand in other cities and countries had a huge effect on a kid that grew up only looking at comics and pop culture movies. Traveling through Europe and seeing first hand all the sculptures and paintings of the Renaissance masters to the European comic artists and graffiti artists inspired him to new heights.
In late 2000, Augustine settled into the heart of Georgetown, an industrial part of Seattle where he was exposed to a whole neighborhood of established gallery artists, iron workers, wood workers, tattoo artists, glass blowers, motorcycle manufacturers and graffiti artists.
The new surroundings inspired Augustine’s art in new directions which have resulted in him taking on the challenge of pursuing gallery work. Thus far, he has been involved in a variety of local and out of state group shows in San Francisco and New York.
Still a Georgetown fixture, Augustine now freelances full time and continues to pursue his gallery work between reruns of Bugs Bunny and trips to the local comic book store.
