Art was my first hobby, striking me at the age of 3 when my parents introduced me to the beauty of simple shapes and how they make up everything around us. Then came video games, at the age of 6, when my older brother bought me my first ever console – the Nintendo DS. Creation was my passion, I wanted the world to hear my stories, and at the same time, I gained new inspirations through playing games made by others.
>Created – 2018
I never dropped my love for art and creation, neither did I abandon playing video games. My love for gaming began once I took on the role as the hero of the story, beating back the forces of evil and gaining the glory of victory. This was the very first impression I had about role playing games. This directly translated into my style of drawing from the years of 2007 to 2010. I was naive, I thought that I was invincible, as would most children of that age. I felt that my story would never end. And basing on that belief, I never stopped drawing my story.
Though unable to show the image of it at the current time, I had a cylindrical scroll of my drawn out adventures approximately 5 centimeters in radius, spanning over 5 years. It included every design of all the games, cartoons, and TV series that I’ve observed over those years in my young perspective. It was back then that I hoped to make the story shown in the scroll into a full fledged game. My childhood was a blessing, I had a loving family who rarely fought, and I was able to see a lot of the world, in honest words I lived out a fantasy of my own. All the memories I had with and without games, I still have them in my memories, each shown as their individual time frames that I could reprint out as a piece of art. As time passed, I grew. A change occurred at the age of 12 for me, a change that would forever change my character and my life.
>Created – 2016
I was no longer doing well in school, due to me hating to abide by academic rules and forced into books like my fellow peers. Peer pressure added insult to injury as I began to isolate myself from others, beginning to walk away from the once sunshine of a kid who did art.
>Created – 2017
For the dark 4 years of ages 12 to 16, I threw art aside and played my mind into deep addiction to the moving imagery and complex stories that teen games and offer me. I was conflicted, and school was even tougher. One day, I finally snapped when peer pressure and family issues made me scream “enough.” Being from a traditional Chinese family, I was always told that video games were a disaster to child, that addiction is inevitable and nothing could be gained out of playing video games. I was told that I could never succeed in school due to my attachment to gaming, I did not believe that sentence for a second, and neither did I even try. I always believed that my success was undeniably contributed through playing those games. I threw myself into deep thought. What are my strengths? What could I do that others couldn’t? For one, I knew that I could play games, but what good could that bring me? I earned no respect over the last few years playing them. It was then I saw that scroll. The scroll of my origins, how I had done all that with the admiration of everyone around me for my artistic talents. I might not be very skillful like many other Chinese kids my age who do art, but I had one niche – I could tell a story from out of nowhere, something none of them could unless they had time to prepare. Was there a way I could somehow tie gaming into art? Games gave me inspiration, art gave me respect from others. I began my junior year in a whole new fashion. A balanced and ruthless routine of mandatory courses and the higher level course AP art that no other male student in my school was attending that year, making me the only boy in my class. The year was a time of strategy and storytelling, jokes aside. I played just as much games as I needed to, but with a different plan in mind. I would no longer blankly play them, I would absorb the elements of design that each game had uniquely. Games such as Final Fantasy had incredible character designs, something I quickly hung on to to try and learn the style of, as well as their form of telling a deep story about different lessons of life and the rights and wrongs of the world. Games like that deeply changed my personality, as I began to develop senses to create darker stories of my own as compared to what I did in elementary school. My images became direct and smaller, putting a whole story behind one frame. I learned to show emotions in my character creations, the eyes, the pose, the mood. All of these elements observed from the predecessors who made those game characters before me. I figured out the need for me to learn through enjoyment. I began doing fan art as a way to improve and experiment new skills in art, creating fan art for games that I played such as Clash Royale, Minecraft, and Pokémon.
With each presentation I made in class, I grew more and more confident in my skill set. I always had my classmates intrigued at my creations, due to the sheer amount of possible stories one can imagine from simply looking at it, I enjoyed the comments they made about how they see their version of the story, and I was able to learn more about how I could adapt myself. A good amount of 400+ hours was consumed in shaping me into the person I am today, solely through making artworks, original or based off of my idols who created games that changed the world. I proved my methods in school to be viable in my senior year.
>Created – 2017
No matter how much I played, I was now able to make every second spent on gaming another session of meditation, if you will, to fuel my creativity to push further in art and other subjects as well. Art spread throughout my subjects as the freedom of our courses granted me to use my art skills in major projects, which I promptly aced. My family began to respect video games more and more as I finally proved my point of there being good in a sheep in wolves’ clothing that is video games. I was challenged when my college application counselor told me that my “shitty” grades from my previous years would severely hinder my chance of getting into a decent school for my professional years of training.
I ignored the salt on the wound and pressed on, doing what I did best. I bested the people in my class in certain games they played, and I became a beacon in my class whenever the subject of art was brought up, someone always nominated me for some art related assignment in homeroom.
The year ended perfectly. I was accepted to Parsons, I felt the reward of a feeling like nothing ever before. I was the only person from my entire grade to enter this prestigious institution. The first person in my class to be able to get into my first choice college. All those who made fun of me, denied me, got what was coming to them at last, and I attribute it all to my eternal love of visual arts and video games, all that made me able to tell my stories in my own ways.
>Created – 2018
