Passionate about graphics.

Should I open with a hello? I’m never really sure how to open auto-biographical text, so I guess I’ll just delve straight in. When asked to write about what I’m passionate about, the first thing that pops to mind is graphics. Be it comic book, film, concept art, video game or just an advert in the street, it’ll always grab my eye and interest me. I’m sure this is linked back to my childhood, being raised on ‘The Beano’ takes its toll, and implanted a passion for drawing and art. Let’s delve a little deeper, shall we?

 When I was younger I wrote short comics, drawn with a ball point pen on crudely stapled paper, and covered my floor in doodles and drawings. They were all terrible of course, and I’m sure if you ask my parents they could tell you tales of being pestered to read my latest creations. I was in my element, the most prominent character to date being ‘Super Potato’. This vigilante spud took centre stage in these cartoons, fighting the forces of evil who mainly took the form of ‘Skeleton’. Yeah, I know. Not as creative as Super Potato. As I drew more, I began to take inspiration from other artists, for example Chris Riddell, who illustrated ‘The Edge Chronicles’ and other great children’s literature. TV shows like Doctor Who gave me the need to draw hundreds of Daleks, and eventually in my early teens I discovered manga. These Japanese comic books took over my life, and I remember being sucked into the glossy bright colours and crazy stories. Though my fascination with them has been toned down in more recent years, it was probably them that inspired me to take art in GCSE. That, and my love of the video game; ‘Castle Crashers’.

Castle Crashers is a beautifully hand drawn side-scrolling game in which you crash castles. The wacky animations of the colorful knights and the amazing fantasy scenery reeled me in so effectively, I did an art final piece based in the style of the illustrator; Dan Paladin. The iconic thick lines and big square heads of the characters and environments are so suited to my tastes and age group, I think I completed the game within the week. Castle Crashers is very different to the first game I ever played, way back before I even had a console. ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’ for PC was, upon reflection, mediocre. The textures were blurry, and nothing about the art style inspired me to draw anything related to it. I can probably blame my aversion to the Harry Potter series solely upon that game, I still haven’t seen the last film. I suppose I could sue EA games but honestly I think I’d make them look bad and that’s unfair.

Before you get the wrong idea, it’s not all video games. The film ‘9’ by Tim Burton has been a big influence on my art style, especially for the period when I was doing another art final. His spindly drawings with heavy blotchy ink stains really capture the barren harsh reality of the world in which the hessian dolls live, and comes across as really creepy and dark. I did my piece on a giant grasshopper, giving it that same style, and was pleased with the result. This style is very far from my current, which I developed in my IT graphics/multimedia GCSE. I mainly use the bright thick lines from Castle Crashers, but filled with the detail of Tim Burton’s ‘9’. The piece was a lot of fun to do, and in turn fuelled a new passion for IT (combined with graphics, of course). I don’t think I’d be pursuing a career in IT today if it wasn’t for graphics.