Although he grew up in Dublin, Ireland, Sammy Khalid was born in Saudi Arabia to parents who were not from there. His father was from Sudan, and his mother was from the Philippines. Sammy Khalid mainly works as a concept designer, illustrator, and NFT artist. He specifically works in the entertainment industry (film/TV and animation to be precise) and designs characters, sets, vehicles, and props. In addition to this, as an illustrator, he creates artwork for different brands, games, and publications. Moreover, as an NFT artist, Sammy creates personal artwork that he sells through digital ‘galleries’/platforms to collectors. Sammy also has had the chance to work on some high-profile projects such as Black Mirror, Artemis Fowl, and League of Legends for dream clients like Disney, Netflix, and HBO.
Moreover, last year Sammy challenged himself to create 365 paintings. That’s a painting on a daily basis. These paintings were to be outside of his client work. Despite being an extremely difficult and challenging task, it was also quite rewarding as it helped him grow his audience on Instagram from 600 to over 20000 in the span of just a year. The massive Instagram following was also something that helped him score some great projects and gain success. After gaining 10k followers, Sammy did not even need to look for clients, the clients just came to him.
Sammy is still quite young and yet has managed to achieve massive success. However, along with this success, he also had to face many failures. Sammy states that he has had a lot of failures but he never let the bad times get to him and affect his determination. Instead, he took whatever obstacle that came in his way and used it to grow even more. When talking about his failures, Sammy recalled that he studied computer science in university but failed to complete the degree. However, this led him to pursue his passion for art. In addition to this, he also failed to win his first BJJ competition and lost both fights. However, these events only led him to improve and perform even better. He used these failures to make positive changes in his lifestyle; he took his training more seriously and also started to eat healthily.
Sammy states that there is always some sort of failure and frustration when he is dealing with something new. However, this ultimately leads to a greater understanding and handling of the tools he has to work with. According to Sammy, his life experiences have led him to welcome his failures as an essential step towards gaining success.