"The old days"

Incredibly dorky bumper sticker made in high school...
0's and 1's referencing binary code

Sometimes I think it is important to remember your roots--where you came from, and yes, that even means remember some of those high school days many of us dread. I stumbled across a notebook of mine that I kept throughout HS, a comic. It's really quite humbling to look back and see where I was just 4 years ago to where I am at now. Embarrassing perhaps, but anime, comics, and video game booklets; those are what kept me in it and, I guess, led me to here. I found folded up sheets of paper that I'd use for a straight edge because I had no ruler among other small ingenuitive things I'd problem solve with (I was in class for most of this after all so I had to get creative). In fact, much of this was drawn while I was in ISS or some other form of solitary confinement for discipline (Mom, don't get mad--remember it's been 5 years now...).

Anyyyway, I told myself when I first started this blog that I was not going to post any work that I had created before the date of the first post because I didn't want to use that stuff as an excuse and just stay content with what I've already made, but I'll make an exception for the sake of nostalgia tonight. So here we go...

 

And of course, I can not go any further without talking comics, self/friend made comics...not the published kind. These stick characters go way back, even to Elementary school...I have been a part of so many. My friends and I were known for them, haha. I even sold bookmarks once for 50 cents to a dollar a piece that had these characters doing random things (whatever the consumer :) wanted).They'd look like this--these are a few pages from a random issue (please don't feel the need to read them...):

Oh man...those were silly. Notebooks full of these things.

And to think, this would be pretty much everything I could put in my "art" portfolio besides the few cheesey flash animations and photoshop tutorials I'd gone through at that point. It's no stretch of imagination to see that I was far from the "art world". Crazy to see how far I've come...Maybe I should of done more of these (next photo). Maybe it would have helped prepare me for the craziness that is that art world from working in this sort of state of "automatism".