Tyler Nazario, a game art design student at Full Sail University living with von Willebrand disease (VWD) type 1, was diagnosed in sixth grade. Tyler walked away from physical sports and found a new passion in art, turning his diagnosis into a creative purpose.
Transcript
I’m Tyler Nazario, I live with VWD type 1. I spend my time expanding my creative side, basically learning to draw because I can’t do physical stuff that puts my life at risk, so by being on my creative side, I’m drawing, painting, and digital.
I am in Full Sail, currently in a bachelor’s degree — master’s soon next year — so I’m graduating this spring.
I’m excited about hearing other people’s stories, learning about other medications and how they can be more treating and how I can self-infuse, learn about people with me and how I can better connect with the community abroad than in Florida.
My hopes for the bleeding disorder community would be that everyone can thrive with their illness and that they have their dreams fulfilled. And my dream fulfilled is being a game art designer — by being with what I was born with, by how much I’ve gained, how much I’ve learned, and how much I’ve expanded my creative mind.
Taking my art very seriously drove my passion into this pursuit, learning to do video games. Because if I do that, I can just better embody the community and raise more awareness. Like, I would design these shirts. The Team Tyler of my characters, there all representing, like a trend. Like, each character is, like, a different edition. My cat, my dog, and my other characters that have been original for years. This is like the 2024 edition, and the edition is similar above here.
But yeah, I’ve drawn these designs to help raise awareness and funds for the bleeding community chapter of Florida. I was doing a lot of physical stuff in elementary school before I even learned what my bleeding disorder was. I was sent to a hospital in sixth grade in an emergency van to Arnold Palmer, and they diagnosed me with my hemophilia type 1, and that gave me the idea that I cannot do things too extreme, like basketball, sports.
But bowling was a chill sport. It was fine for me, but like, I just aged out of it a little bit because it felt like my passion was just a little bit aimed more towards art and drawing and sculpting and painting and more of a digital perspective of, like, broadening my message with more creativity.