Assignment 9: Artist Statement Rough Draft

I enjoy creating characters. Ever since I was little I loved creating characters with different personalities and experiences and figuring out how they would react to different situations. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism for my loneliness as a child, being an only child in a family with little to no other children my age. School wasn’t that kind to me either. But I learned to observe, listen to conversations, read books and watch movies, picking up and taking bits and pieces that I liked, and sewing them together into the characters I created. I would figure out how they would act or what they would say if faced with certain situations. Sometimes I even talk to them and ask them for input with certain things. Creating characters helps me see the world in a multitude of different perspectives, living lives that aren’t mine but being able to see through their eyes, walk in their shoes. Characters are powerful, and have the potential to change our world, whether we realize it or not. My ultimate goal is to create characters that have an effect on people. That stir them in ways that only great artists and writers can. I know I could never be a Walt Disney or a Stan Lee, but, put simply, I don’t want my characters to die with me. I want them to live beyond me, staying in the eyes and minds of people to come, even after i’m long gone.

When it comes to decision making, I generally leave things in the hands of instinct. When I have different ways of going about a situation I tend to go about it the way that makes the most sense in my head. However, I make sure to remain fluid in the decision making. If something doesn’t work, rework it, or throw it out and try something else. Creating really is a means to an end, right? If I am questioning a decision a character makes I question whether decision is in line with the character’s personality or not. If a specific decision needs to be made for the story to make sense, I find a reason for that decision to be made. Because an Idea is something that’s alive and always moving and changing, When one finds its way to me, it’s in a form not far removed from a jigsaw puzzle. It’s in pieces, and the only way to fit those pieces together is through trial and error. If a piece doesn’t fit one way, find another way, or find a new piece.

This current comic I am working on is actually a bit of a “Prologue” to a Dungeons and Dragons game I created and am the Dungeon Master of. It shows how certain events take place and how things came to be in the D&D game. While the comic takes place in an “Almost Realistic” world, the D&D game takes place in a world created by the antagonist, where the war between Magic and Non-Magic really flares to life. I wanted to make this comic because I thought it would be interesting to write and draw. In the D&D game magic is everywhere, and quite frankly, commonplace. But writing a story about a normal guy, with very little significance to the main plotline, a person quite literally on the outside looking in, being introduced to the ensuing nightmares to come. A Detective being taunted and tormented by something he can’t understand. I wanted to see how it would play out.