=== THE COMFORT ZONE ===

Looking back now, I think I pretty much followed Wallpaperman everywhere. It was him who started obsessing over Vinnie Veritas back in the day, and from that moment forward, I starting taking notice of Vinnie's work. Next it was Wallpaperman again, who said he wanted to learn how to draw anime. When I heard that, I thought that was a great idea and decided on doing the same thing. Truth be told though, I worried about Wallpaperman's animation skills suddenly far exceeding mine.

Around this time, I signed up to Deviantart. There were lots of iconic artists out there, each with their own signature material. I soon noticed Vinnie Veritas being an active member on there, and he instantly became my rolemodel. I learned how to draw manga from some books I had bought, and my drawing skills took a huge leap forward. Mortalpoet was also very helpful when it came to drawing advice! I remember he encouraged me to step away from anime, as he liked my individual style - which was more cartoony. I'm not sure whether I had a consistant style of my own back then, but y'know. I didn't fully appreciate the beauty of Vector Art back then, and just wanted to explore. I sucked at writing comedy, so I mostly messed around doing music videos instead.

I gained some new inspiration sources around this time. For instance, I started watching several different animes. Some other Newgrounds artists suddenly caught my eye as well. Among these people were David Firth, NCH85, Lazymuffin, Sqeezy and Kingbastard. I also grew fond of surrealism, with Escher in particular. Observing the works of others, I tried to learn new things. Time spent drawing oekaki and Gaia Online avatars might have come in good practise too.

• Reasons To Create: Priority number one was to keep the quality of my flashes up with the standard of my internet buddies. Succeeding that, I explored my options while trying to gain a sense of individuality. I couldn't get over the fact that my solo projects were pointless, but collaborations were safe.
• Creative Developments: Learning how to draw anime taught me some basic human anatomy, and I improved drastically. Everything I made began with a sketch. I also used more interesting angles. It lacked refinement though: The colors were boring, the linework was sloppy, the textures were lacking and the backgrounds were lazy.
• Outcome: Many of my visual works in this period of time were the result of experimenting. I was productive, but my style was inconsistant. On top of that, I abandoned lots of solo projects and only ever worked on collaborations.

"Keeping certain assets for the sake of nostalgia is a really poor idea. It drags progression down for no good reason whatsoever."

- test-object

[INDEX]

1. A FRESH START
2. THE FIRST STRUGGLE
3. THE COMFORT ZONE
4. THE UNDERDOG
5. FUTURE PROJECTS