Meet Axel

October 2019, the initial launch of the Art-Wod platform. Founded by Antonio Stappaerts, Art-Wod was still a rudimentary improvised website.

Nevertheless the intent of the program was clear and a handful of brave ‘Artletes’ signed up to support its initiative!
One of those motivated artists was Axel van Nederkassel. A Belgian based young student with a dream and a lot of determination.

Photo of Axel

Before Art-Wod had all its bells and whistles, the program consisted of just the WOD assignments. A weekly batch of assignments that are designed to improve your imaginative skills for the concept art industry.
To promote community engagement a private discord server was created for students to upload their weekly assignments.
This way Antonio had first-hand insight into student engagement and commitment.

Seeing Axel’s dedicated submissions pour in without interruption was impressive to witness. Even for its creator.
Axel quickly became a poster example of how the Art-Wod program can efficiently boost draftsmanship and help imaginative thinking. And this did not go unnoticed for the growing community.
Axel became a standard to live up to regarding WOD submissions and motivated other students to keep up with the program.

One of Axel’s Art-Wod submissions.

Months since the launch of Art-Wod, Axel had become a fixed value of the program and good friends with Antonio.
It was obvious to Antonio that Axel had professional aspirations and capacity. So he took him under his wings as a mentee to further develop his skills and elevate his creative potential.

Axel was also appointed the first Community Support member for Art-Wod, providing valuable feedback to fellow students and providing Antonio with examples for various WOD assignments to serve as standards for execution.

Organic WOD submission by Axel

Simultaneous to Art-Wod’s growth Antonio was freelancing for various clients as a concept artist, with the aspiration of expanding his company into a multi-talented team!
As life would have it, many good things seem to come in pairs, and Antonio quickly found himself with more projects than he could handle.

Enter Axel….who has been slowly sharpening his skills. Axel was first tested professionally early 2021 and, as expected, excelled in his field!
This gave Antonio the much needed confidence to expand his client pool and grow SQETCH as a business to provide clients with more complete design solutions.

Fast forward to 2022 and SQETCH Studio has welcomed Axel as a fixed member of the team.
Merely 3 years after his humble start at Art-Wod, Axel has already started to carve out a professional career many artists dream of.

And he has only himself to thank for it!

Here’s to many more productive years with an amazing person and artist!

- The SQETCH Team