Have you changed as a creator?

oh yeah. definitely. i look back on stories i wrote when i was thirteen with this weird sense of nostalgia and hatred. everything was just so, ungodly edgy, even in my cartoony style. there were science experiments and trauma and a lot of baggage to unpack there y'know? it was like every character i made betrayed something about me i needed to work out.

i'm seventeen now, and nearly everything i write has a sense of hope to it. except sugar train, but fuck sugar train. sugar train is me 100% wholeheartedly indulging in shit i would have drawn when i was thirteen.

one thing that's changed my outlook on life and writing in general? trauma. it's the trauma. not to say thirteen year old me wasn't traumatized, but holy shit i didn't know how to unpack any of it when i was a kid, because i didn't know it was there. i unloaded my own issues onto my characters without realizing it. now when i do it, it's intentional at least. i can write more hopeful stories because i've actually opened up to the idea of recovery!

another thing is the media i consume. thirteen year old me only knew how to play overwatch, read warrior cats, eat hot chip and lie. i, the chad seventeen year old me, know how to watch gurren lagann, watch promare, read homestuck, AND eat hot chip and lie. boy am i not kidding when i say my writing now is super inspired by studio trigger and whatever the FUCK is going on in hussie's brain. i have decided i like big stupid media that makes no sense but is really cool anyway! thirteen year old me thought he was a cis girl, can you fucking believe? i am so fucking trans how was i ever a cis girl. i came out of the WOMB with a binder on.

anyway this became me rambling but yeah everything i write is now dripping with testosterone

i actually dont think ive changed very much at all... like, this is one of my earliest drawings and one of my recent ones...

eerie...

I've definitely changed a ton... when I was 13 I was really into anime, and its what got me to start drawing more and i would draw in a really anime inspired art style and i would be really into overpowered stuff. i remember having a couple ocs with weird superpowers... I would draw so much fanart for shit like naruto/hetalia/snk/so much more but overtime i've lost interest in anime in general and now i find most of them bore me quite a bit LOL (especially art style wise). Nowadays im much more fond of western cartoons (more specifically stuff from the early or mid 2000s) because of the lighthearted and silly/fun premises in them and the shapes used in those art styles, and I like to emulate both because I find that kind of art style and storytelling super fun :) My art is still a bit anime inspired, but only slightly... and im glad its far enough away from anime that people probably wouldnt point at it and say "is that anime?!?!?!?!" my ocs have changed a lot as well, theyve changed naturally as projects or characters tend to change over years but theyve also grown with me. when i first made em i was like 15/16 and they matched my ages but as i got older their ages would still match mine... most cuz i like writing stuff relating to my own experiences (like right now im 21 and its college and young adult stuff instead of high school :P)

I also feel like a ton of what I do as a creator hasnt changed at all, but other than being highly inspired by homestuck back then AND now i have no idea?? I don't even remember what I did with my main ocs before i came up with their story a couple years ago TT_TT but anyways... art and being a creator is a journey rather than a destination and im really excited to see how ill continue to change

Definitely. When I was in middle school-freshman year of highschool I was super into fantasy. A lot of stuff I wrote involved magic and dragons one way or another. I still love dragons ngl, but my newer stuff is either sci-fi with robots & monsters involved, or a 'modern' setting (but cooler bc there's magic and robots lmao).

Art-wise I stopped using so many filters/effects/overlays, made my lines more angular, and last year I finally got around to varying my lineweight. I used to be mostly digital & do toy repainting on the side, but nowadays I do both traditional and digital art. Dropped the repaint hobby, just not into it anymore and it got too expensive & time consuming to keep up with. Also tbh I feel like my art's starting to feel more 'anime'? But not in a bad way??? idk if that makes sense, bc I don't think my style's worse because of it, just feels more 'anime' (maybe i've been watching too much lmao)

I think my biggest change is with writing & stories. When I was 12, up until senior year of highschool I wrote a lot of 'epic journeys' that focused more on saving the world or just being bigger than life. But after scrapping many stories & fanfics I found out writing about the character interactions & their personal arcs was more interesting than some "the world is ending and they need to save it" thing. Can't say much on tone? because I swing between light-hearted and serious a lot tbh.

OC on the left in 2018:

OC on the left today:

...let's just say I've changed a LOT in two years haha

Well, I've improved a lot, so I've definitely changed a lot too!!

I think it's easiest to pinpoint with my art-- the contrast between some of the older stuff in my gallery and my more recent stuff is just.  Wild.  I've learnt so much since then!  I think one of the most interesting things to me is my relationship with anime art?  You can see the anime influence in both my old stuff and my current stuff, but it's much more toned-down nowadays and my style is more of its own thing if that makes sense?? 

In terms of writing,,, I feel like I've grown as a writer in the types of stories I want to tell and the way I go about writing them, it's just?  I've got a long way to go.  I'm excited to go on that journey tho!
With the character/age thing, I don't usually have a specific age/range in mind or anything?  I feel like my ocs are vaguely older now, but who knows,,

I think it'd do me some good to practice writing short prose stories, but it kinda scares me tbh!  I feel like I'd be starting from scratch in terms of the actual writing bit.  Story-planning I can deal with, but most of my writing is in the form of comic scripts haha, so I've kinda forgotten how prose works :-P
I also wanna try poetry/more lyrical stuff!  I think that could be cool!!  But now I'm getting off-topic ahh

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With all the changes I've gone through as a creator, I think at least one thing has stayed the same,,,  I live to make art.  I'm honestly not sure I'd still be here if it weren't for that.

A while back I traveled to Mexico with my partner to visit his family. I was in a big art burnout phase. In every bit of my free time there, I really focused on making art for myself instead of commissions and work, and I started re-evaluating what I wanted to get out of art. I spent a lot of time visiting small local art spaces, galleries, and displays while I was there. After I returned home, I took a long break from doing art as work, and really considered what I wanted to get out of it. I also picked up a big love of entomology which influenced a lot of my art and color palettes!

When I returned to full-time art, enjoyed a style that was a bit more abstract than I did before, which I'm still trying to grow and expand on to this day. I stopped sharing a lot of my traditional/mixed media art, which is more abstract and personal, and now I kind of have a different traditional and digital style as a result. But, both skill-sets grew and improved as a result, and I'm having more fun working on both. 

Here's a little comparison of art from 2018 vs my recent art. I hope you can see difference in how much fun and confidence I have in my newer stuff!