Blue
Well-known member
- Mar 19, 2019
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Long before he picked up a football, Gunnard Twyner picked up a crayon.
“As a kid, I just remember sitting at the table and drawing,” he said. “It started out as football fields and baseball fields.”
Eventually, he moved on to comic book characters.
“That’s really where you get the action of drawing the sports figures and the movement that takes place.”
At 8 years old, he started tackle football. He played all the way through high school and earned a scholarship to Western Illinois where he chose to study graphic design.
While his college years were encouraging for his football career, they were humbling for his art career.
“I thought I was pretty good until I went to college and I got around other people who pretty much did it for their livelihood. It was really all they did and I was an athlete, so it was kind of secondary for me and I don’t know if I put in as much time as I should have.”
Still, he was in a fortunate position - to be able to pursue both of his passions at once.
Twyner went on to play wide receiver for the Bengals and the Saints. Along the way, he did an internship through the NFL at Disney’s Wide World of Sports and was able to make a valuable connection.