I’ve been creating characters for my own personal narratives since I was a young child.
Like most kids, my interest in character development began when I was playing make-believe. This includes more fantastical roles and characters like playing as a power ranger with the kids in the neighborhood or being a mermaid while swimming in the pool. It was and is a chance to explore myself and what I want to and could be.
This interest only grew, and exploded, really, with the release of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and an introduction to Japanese anime and manga. I wanted to be in these worlds where I could interact with the grand environments and incredible characters. In order to do that, I would create my own characters and insert them into the settings in what many would call a fanfic, or fan fiction. And those characters that I especially liked, I would make fanart of.
Close friends would also join in. We would each make our own characters and write back and forth about what these characters would be doing and how they would interact with each other and the chosen setting.
Beyond just interacting with existing settings, I started to develop original settings and fictions. Writing them down as if I were writing a novel. I would draw inspiration from books, movies, anime and manga, video games, and everyday life.
Naturally, when you’re creating your own characters, you start wanting to be able to give that character visual life. This is when I first started drawing original characters, whether they were my own, or friends’ characters.
Later on, friends introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games. These games set out rules and mechanics to collaboratively tell stories, in various genres and settings. I continue to play in tabletop role-playing games and have been known to run them on occasion.
The characters that we develop continue to grab my interest as an artist. Thus, majority of my illustrations are fanart creations of my fellow role-players' and my characters.
Comments