Tan attended Balcatta Senior High School in the northern suburbs of Perth where he was enrolled in a special art program for gifted and talented students. Tan claims that he had little formal training in the field of book illustration. Drawing was something he'd never stopped doing, claiming ".it was one thing I could do better than anyone else when I was in school." The decision to choose it as a career simply allowed him to make a living from drawing and painting. University studies were taking him along an academic route until he "decided to stop studying and try working as an artist." Tan almost studied to become a genetic scientist, and enjoyed chemistry, physics, history and English when in high school as well as art and claimed that he didn't really know what he wanted to do, even at university. At the age of sixteen, Tan's first illustration appeared in the Australian magazine, Aurealis, in 1990. Of his effort at writing as a youth, Tan tells, "I have a small pile of rejection letters as testament to this ambition!"Įventually he gained success with his illustrations. These stories led to Tan writing his own short stories. Tan cites Ray Bradbury as a favorite at this time. At the age of eleven, he became a fan of The Twilight Zone television series as well as books that bore similar themes. As a boy, Tan spent time illustrating poems and stories and drawing dinosaurs, robots and spaceships.
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