How has your creative output changed/evolved over time?

[WokiBakoki]

Always drew a kid, I would fold up pieces of paper and make comics that I put on the classroom bookshelf. Around 13-14 I slowed down on drawing a bit. I got a drawing tablet to go digital and my abilities and ambition started to split apart. I could envision myself drawing great digital art and animations but my brain absolutely hated practice and experimentation. Fundamentals and the tedium of practice and inconsistency is why I could never learn an instrument or pick up anything that didn't resemble the really good stuff quickly.

After a couple years of frustration and started to get too hooked on likes and comments from posted work. I started to look for new ways to create without having to draw stuff. I had a real affinity for video editing. I could make hours pass like minutes making videos, so I really started to latch onto that for creative output. Plus since graphics in college meant free photoshop, I had about a year long phase of really enjoying making very abstract art. Which I can actually show you here:

The Abstract Weirdo Collection – Google Drive

drive.google.com

That abstract interest, plus video editing with rarely my own original assets. Made me realise I much prefer taking other peoples work and twisting it into my own, instead of dealing with the open ended annoyance of making my own. With video editing, quality is MUCH more black and white. Wheras drawing is too vague for my intensely logic driven brain.

That being said, while drawing is something I pretty much fell out of love with. It's something I've actually come back to very recently for a new purpose. I volunteer as a teaching assistant at a local primary school. To give me and the kids something to talk about, I've started drawing cartoons like I did at there age. Stuff I grew up with, so I see what they're into while showing off my older version of the same thing. Plus I feel these kids in particular have a pretty big rift between them and the teachers. Like teachers years ago understood us better than teachers now. But since I'm younger than the qualified main teachers. I can bridge the gap, and meet them on there level. I feel closer to being one of the kids than one of the techers... and right now I'm ok with that. Comes with adorable bonuses, like a drawing of me from one of the girls <3

 

[SorenFireEmblem]

My writing started in middle school.
Had/have friends who were heavily in fandom spaces. Fanfics, fanart, all that stuff- they ate it up like it was candy. However, I was not!
uuuuUUNtilll.
I got into a show called Assassination Classroom. On top of being my gay awakening, it was my first foyer into fanfiction!

What I wrote then was so bad it was comical. I still have it to this day and it makes me cringe and blush and scream with just how terribly written it was. But at the time, I thought it was great. It struck something in me I hadn't felt up to that point- genuine passion. I spent hours vigorously writing, learning proper grammar, I started to actually read books.
Something in my mind was permanently altered! Eventually though, I got tired of writing fanfiction. A little, anyway.

A depressive state later, a breakdown, and some crying later, eventually I just began writing the first thing to come to mind. I was a first year in high school at this point, and I was going through some major SHIT. But in that difficulty, I began writing my passion project. A very amateur, all-around erratic and all over the place piece about the acceptance of the end. And FUCK- I felt an instant dopamine rush like no other. I didn't even post it and I felt ecstatic to write more.

And well- I eventually wanted to add pictures to these drawings.
All my friends at the time were artists- and so I had plenty of inspiration to join them. I started that venture in SENIOR YEAR. And GOD I fucking SUCKED. I have terrible motor-hand function from my Aspergers Syndrome, that and a complete lack of knowledge of where to even start. And for some reason I was REALLY stubborn about looking up help.
Some years later now, I honestly look back on what motivated me so heavily. I haven't experienced anything like it since.

I think it was a calling or something.

 

[DJPlace]

i use to be very creative with Create Charcter's in the early PS2 WWE games. also i did stick people drawings based on new ground skit's they were some of my fav's but i can't rember them now sadly...

 

[J.B’s rabbit den]

back when I obsessed with attack on titan and also anime fads like popipo and chirumiru during the year 2014 I always used to create my own little comics out of marker or crayon. The attack on titan one was about me and my brother alongside some made up characters living in a mixture between the real world and attack on titan universe fighting off titans and other evil characters while also being titan shifters. While the ones based off the old niconico AMVs were just little doodles copying the things in the vids. Nowadays, I still do make little things like that from time to time while just making whatever pops up in my head.

 

[valosagutas]

Everyone start drawing because of boredom and we do keep drawing until our access to pencils becomes absent. That's why doodles exist. But not many people care to actually create something that matters to them.

I always cared to draw cool cars, invent my designs and draw people I know in funny ways. I never cared to improve on drawing, I was just after having fun. I completely ditched drawing after high school started because I was too focused on being people-oriented and improving myself to make myself to get ready my adult life I dreamed beyond my education and the career I had in my mind. I wanted to be the person I want so I ditched doing what's unnecessary to do. I was that kid who read books about neurology or something between class breaks and then I become bored and hanged out with my homies by doing crazy shit. I'm that kid who jumped out of the window of the school to the basketball hoop and got down like a firefighter lol.

However my care for art didn't exist until my university education. My subject required me to learn about history of art in detail despite it was not an art course. My professor didn't care about our subjects, she demanded artwork from all of us from time to time and she pushed me to my limit. But you know what? I liked it. I liked to create artwork that has no aesthetic appeal whatsoever but I liked to create abstract artworks that means something. But I always cared about developing video games. I taught myself programming, I taught myself producing SFX and music, my subject helped me to learn a lot about how to design video games despite it's not directly about video games, so all that was left to do was improve myself in art. After all video games are also made with visual art. They are Electronic Arts (EA games yo lol)

You know what? Art is the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do. I have no sense of aesthetics. People all say "how aesthetic it looks like" and whatnot which I cannot make sense of it. When I look at a green field and sun shining on it people are like "aww how peaceful it looks" but to me it doesn't mean anything and it doesn't make me feel anything. Sun is just a giant ball of nuclear fire to me lol. As a result anything that only has "aesthetic appeal" is null to me. To further explain how my brain works, until university I didn't believe people actually feel sexually attracted to others because of how their bodies look like, I had to be scientifically educated to believe in why it's so. My brain doesn't work like that. I only loved one girl in my life and it was only because of her personality, however I never cared about sex or the fact that people have sex. This does explain why to me tons of classic paintings are dull and this is why I had to discuss about it with my art teacher for hours. As how I couldn't make sense people actually have "aesthetic sense" she couldn't make sense how a person couldn't have "aesthetic sense". It took me like 5 years of hard work to comprehend the emotional aspect of visuals and it's still a logical emulation of emotions I try to comprehend so I had to write a mental emulator for it in my brain lol.

So these past 5 years I attempted to make artwork that can evoke a sense of aesthetics in me which I barely somehow and somewhat reached that point. I sometimes spend my time inventing new visual styles or just creating artworks that means something to me despite how bad they look. And this is how I met your mother lol.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

My writing has evolved a lot over the years, thankfully. It had a lot to do with the fact that I could finally find my voice after switching to a different language and was able to "rewire" my brain to better suit my narrative flow.

My earliest works feel strangled, as if the words were being brutalized before bleeding into the page and loosely form together.

 

[daughter of janus]

Serious:
Over time, my writing has become less about art and more of a mindset.
I used to create RPG campaigns for a small group of tabletop gamers, covering everything from D&D to Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun.

But now, I don’t do that as much. Not because the group disbanded, but because work and other responsibilities have taken up more of my time.