Hello!

My name is Rick den Hengst. I grew up in the Netherlands in a small town, Nijkerk, near the center of the country.

Early on in my life, I was bitten by the travel bug. After finishing up high school I spent a year abroad in Hawaii.

Back in the Netherlands it didn't take long before I was on the road again, this time with my father and brother on a road trip through Africa. We drove from Caïro to Cape Town in the span of four months.

Ever since, I've never really stopped traveling. After Africa I spent some time in Canada with my girlfriend (who just happens to be Canadian). From there, many smaller excursians were made throughout North America. One of these took me to Burning Man, a large festival in the middle of the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.

After that, my girlfriend took off to Japan to work there for a year. Naturally, I traveled along and we ended up living in Tokyo, from where we explored the central part of the island.

To top off the year in Japan, we set out on another extended trip through Southeast Asia, bringing us through Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Obviously, having traveled a lot, there's been a lot of interesting experiences. In Japan we experienced the March 2011 earthquake, in Thailand we played around with Tigers and washed and fed elephants. At Burning Man, people from all over the world gathered to be exceptionally free, which also has people come up with interesting mechanical art exhibits and art-cars to show off (and share) with everybody else.

Other interests include film and other interactive media (such as video games). This brings us to how I ended up at the Fab Academy. Together with my brother I've developed a keen interest in certain props and propmakers, together with the developments in digital fabrication (such as 3D printing). Wanting to develop and learn about these skills is exactly how I ended up at the Fab Academy.