Cool! I’ve actually migrated more into a vaguely anime/semi-realistic style over the years myself, and I used colored pencils a lot for a while, but I found myself gravitating toward watercolor as time went on.
I totally get it! my writing started out as disjointed scenes of daydreams I had, but as time went on I started to write more stories/poetry/attempts at novels that never got anywhere lol. Right now, I do the odd short story now and then, mostly work on the outlines of two longer form stories from time to time, and would love to try making them comics one day. But my primary focus is art and a future card business someday.
I enjoy drawing my characters, and large scenes involving landscapes involving their worlds recently. They take me a day or two digitally, but they bring me a lot of joy.
My story WIPs are:
- A future (web) comic script (fingers crossed) about a con-man who learns how to do the right thing over the easy thing the hard way, and his super-genius scientist/doctor brother who is trying to eliminate the result of his experiment before it’s used for evil that would outweigh his positive intentions. It’s genre is kinda sci-fantasy, I’m guessing, since it’s similar to Ray Bradbury and C.S. Lewis in the worldbuilding, even going for a mid-century space-age sorta vibe visually. (except for con-man’s side shave lol) almost how Treasure Planet is, where it’s more space fantasy than sci-fi.
- is a comic script in the future hopefully, but this one’s not as active a project unless I get randomly motivated to write it lol. It’s a fantasy that’s set in a pretty traditional medieval setting, i have my villain, and my primary cast planned, and some plot. It follows a prince who was forced to be used by his world’s clergy as a tool for his ability to see into the future when he sleeps, having him be mostly raised by the equivalent of monks. When he starts having visions of what seems to be a fever-dream apocalypse brought about by use of magic and a God that wants to be worshipped exclusively, he tells them about it as he was told, and is shut down from speaking about these things, embittering him to try taking over the kingdom, which he fails, and is promptly exiled, and winds up as a slave working with a family that owns a distillery to prevent alcoholic centaurs from enslaving their family.
Well, it’s a long story lol. I daydreamt for a while before I was writing. I would come up with fantasy races *cough* knockoff Legolas *cough*cough* and worlds with bad names like Avaron, since Avalon was taken by the back of a Toyota lol. Eventually I developed a love of talking about it with anyone that would listen, willing or not, then about 6-8 years ago, I got the chance to go to a creative writing class at a library, a bit later I found Kingdom Pen (SE’s teen-oriented predecessor) and SE, queue further learning and increased motivation, when I started taking writing much more seriously. I started going to a homeschool co-op, and I got some know-how of prose and grammar, and I wrote whenever I could, up to 4-5 hours at a time. And soon after I joined the Kingdom Pen and SE forums. Then as i was graduating highschool, God dropkicked me into a relationship with a close friend, then engaged, then married. In the upheaval, and with suddenly much more time to write, I found myself getting out of my hyperfixation with writing and more into drawing, realizing i could not make writing my career. I still write, but I can’t be like my teen self lol.
I guess all this to say, I started writing in my early teens, and haven’t fully stopped since, and I started writing for almost the exact same reasons as you, finding that I LOVED doing it, and love creating interesting worlds and characters. God brought me to this hobby, and whether it was just a phase to get me through my teen years (which weren’t too hard, but they were hard) or is leading to something greater down the road, I don’t know.
Any ideas you’re working on?
We crazy people are the normal ones.
