thedriveintheatre

Andre, otherwise known as TDIT, runs an open-air cinema called The Drive-In Theatre along Interstate 89, Carburetor Canyon. He's a fan of movies, cars, and movies about cars. He is also passionate about animation, Pixar's in particular, and harbours dreams of working for them or any of the big animation production houses one day. He also enjoys action flicks (of the spy and police genres), and big-budget fantasy and historical blockbusters. He loves reading fantasy and thriller books, as well as historical, technological and philosophical non-fiction.

Born in Malaysia, he enjoyed drawing cartoon characters based on Garfield and Tintin in exercise books as a kid, graduating to passing doodles during class and designing the classroom notice board wall during his elementary school years. Growing up on a staple diet of Saturday morning cartoons and Renaissance-era Disney cartoons from the 90s, he took a liking to cartooning as a career. His parents humoured his interest by sending him for art and creative writing classes, as well as taking him to meet the famous Malaysian syndicated cartoonist C.W. Kee, who does the daily comic serial "It's A Durian Life". After receiving constructive criticisms to "shade-in his drawings", he received an autograph of a bald man running from a rolling durian.

At the age of ten, he got his first break when his short poem with accompanying illustrations on tea-drinking fairies got published in his local newspaper. Spurred by this recent success, he submitted short stories and drawings to his primary and secondary school yearbooks, which were printed to the amusement of his friends and family. When he was twelve, he designed the promotional artowrk for his high-school play on the Pied Piper of Hamelin. His depiction of a giant anthropomorphic rat dressed in medieval clothes were displayed on posters and banners around the school.

Nothing much happened artistic-wise after that, as he was busy preparing for the much-dreaded 'O' Level examinations. During his pre-university year, he watched Pixar's 2006 film Cars in theatres and was completely blown away by the engaging story and spectacular visuals. Realising that people actually made a living from animated films, and to the horror of his parents who had been expecting him to undertake a law degree, he enrolled in the arts faculty of a certain Group 8 Australian university and never looked back.

He resided in the home of Nemo the clown-fish; Sydney, New South Wales for five years to complete his bachelor and later master's degree, before working for six months at a coupon-magazine company that shares the same name as a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Bacon. While working at his first job, he discovered the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and joined the secret cult known as the bronies. He later got a job offer at the biggest print organisation in Singapore, and, with a heavy heart, he had to leave his uni mates and equine-loving friends behind.

He is currently working as a sub-editor and a movie critic for a free national tabloid, in between creating silly trailer parodies and fan music videos on Youtube, while entertaining plans of restarting a long-dormant Cars crossover fanfic on FanFiction. This dA account is but another addition to his wide repertoire of creative endeavours and he hopes he will have a fruitful and super happy fun time with this experience.

Current Residence: Singapore
Favourite genre of music: Film soundtracks
Operating System: Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista
MP3 player of choice: iPod classic & Zen Vision M
Favourite cartoon character: Wall-E