Ok so I've always been a fan of watching Draw my Life videos and wanted to make a draw my life but as a webcomic. I'm revealing some of my personal life a bit earlier then I was going to (some of you are probably curious about who I am) but I want to focus more about how I became an artist.
Just want to say right now that early on in my life I was never interested in art at all, I actually hated the fact that I was put in art class in middle school because it was required. Even though I didn't care about art at the time, my parents and grandparents would always tell me to avoid chasing an art degree as it "wouldn't get me anything in life and was the most useless degree."
While growing up in elementary school I had a friend "N" that I would always hang out with, we'd play video games together. But in middle school, one of the things I liked to do was play Yu Gi Oh with "N" and he had a friend "T." I didn't really know "T" that well as he was just a friend of a friend and that he played Yu Gi Oh. Little did I know that "T" was going to be the biggest reason I stuck to being an artist.
In 2013 I was in high school one I had an online friend "S" that I would play video games with and sometimes when I tried to talk to him he would say he was watching an anime. The most ironic thing was I didn't know what he meant by anime but I would watch Naruto (in dub) all the time thinking it was a cartoon. Over summer break he got me hooked onto anime especially on the series Bleach (I also realized that whenever my friend "N" would come over to my house to watch his anime that it wasn't just another cartoon). When I told my dad about anime you would never guess his reaction.
Spoiler
He was like "I love anime too" then showed me his collection that was sitting out in open the entire time, 3 book cases worth of anime (2 taller than me and 1 half my height). I thought those were just movies he had because every week he would buy movies and because he also has bookcases full of movies. He told me that he always watched it when I was asleep because he didn't know if I was mature enough for some of them (really bloody ones).
After watching Bleach I decided that I wanted to write anime myself, quickly finding out that most animes come from manga I would chase writing a manga. I knew that some mangaka had pen names so this is when I decided for my own pen name. I was a super weeb at the time so I came up with Matsui Kenshin which later became MK when I became less of a weeb. If you didn't know about my signature, it's actually 2 signatures in one. My actual name is Nikholas so if can be shortened to Nik. Signature looks something like /\/\/<. Back to the story... I would just casually write just thinking about cool action scenes with no actual story telling but I watched even more anime for ideas and I mean an insane amount of anime. My dad always wondered why I was tired but here was my real schedule:
Weekday
Wake up at 6:00 Go to school > Come home and play video games > lie about my homework being complete > Eat > "Go to bed" > Watch anime in bed until 2 or 3
Weekend
Wake up randomly > Play video games > Eat > "Go to bed" > Watch anime until 2 or 3
I was probably the worst kid ever and sometimes the video games were replaced watching anime. That is until I mastered the art of multi-tasking. I would use my dual monitors to watch anime at the same as play somewhat intense video games (at first in dubbed but then in subbed and I would almost never have to rewind). During this time I got a lot closer to "T" as he was the only one who mostly had the same lunch times (we had 3 different lunch times) and classes with me
Going back to the stories, I would mostly write them in school but I knew I had to get an artist to draw it for me since I didn't know how to draw. I knew 3 artists at the time:
"T" (same one as earlier) who said he didn't like to draw things besides fan art so I moved on
"C" who liked my (completely terrible) story but always seemed too busy
"J" who didn't care at all
That's when I came to this site, I didn't really get any artists so after a few weeks I decided, I can just learn to draw myself!! I first started copying anime eyes and I showed them to "T" who said he liked them and that I should become an artist. I'm going to be totally honest... I went to Youtube to learn to draw an anime girl and found Mark Crilley's video. The first step was to draw a circle...
Spoiler
I struggled drawing a circle for a few minutes before putting my paper on my laptop screen and tracing Mark Crilley's circle.
Of course I finished following the tutorial step by step with the exact same anime girl and the next day showed my friend "T" who said I was doing good and should keep going. With this encouragement I just kept on drawing trying to improve, I wrote some stories on the side but I thought it would take me much longer to draw professionally than it would to write good stories. Of course I still played lots of video games and watched lots of anime so my family didn't really think drawing was going to be a big thing (and yes I was still getting very little sleep with all the anime at night).
Like I said, I am a trouble child... It's 2015 and barely scrape by high school (it's because of the homework, I did really good on tests despite drawing in EVERY class). I was able to go to a community college somehow but i'll tell you this, the habits didn't change. In fact it got so bad that I was literally cutting classes to go upstairs in the library and draw the entire time. Another thing is that got really depressed but I also started to read webcomics, I loved the color in them and this is when I became less weebish. During that time I came across Yuumei's webcomic Fisheye Placebo and that is when I decided I wanted to my art my life. After a year my parents found out about my grades in college and a bit to my surprise they actually told me that college isn't for everyone (my grandparents still bug me to go back to college) and that they weren't disappointed in me. They didn't want me to do nothing but draw so they told me if I get a job that they don't care how I spend my free time. Since then I've been in and out of a couple jobs but still doing the normal video games/anime/drawing but watching much less anime since I've watched sooooo much anime in the past few years and there aren't as many animes that interest me as much. As for creating my own webcomic, I've redone it like 4 times now because I was just not happy with the art. I'm actually at the point where I know there is a lot of stuff I can improve on but I'm confident enough to let people read my stories at my current art level.
There is still so much more that will come and I am probably the worst role model to follow. Just want to let people know that anyone can become an artist it just takes a lot of practice. June 27, 2018
Edit: Wow, it's been a lot has happened since I wrote this. Well I basically ended up jumping around to a few jobs before getting into the military. I really haven't done much with my webcomic besides rewrite it but I am starting to live stream my art. I am working towards the webtoons contest but I might get overwhelmed with the amount of drawing I have to do on top of my job. May 24, 2020
Topic: My Journey (Read 2215 times)
