Why did you guys start art?

[Sh0wtime]

I want to know; why did you guys start art? I'll go first.

I started art because I saw so much art by other people like Andrew and Wsx (and many more) that I wanted to start something and start creating as well.

 

[Andrew]

When I was 13/14 I knew I wanted to work for Williams St. Productions, which I believe has since been folded into some greater Time Warner company as the years have gone on. My goal was to do motion graphics for Adult Swim, which for better or worse has obviously not happened. So I started teaching myself graphic design, which eventually led me to where I am today.

 

[Mukky]

I initially started as a way to distract myself from a breakup, but it quickly turned into something that I enjoyed more than what I was currently studying.

The rest from there is history, really.

Before that I played around in Photoshop for fun making memes and stuff and that's where I built the majority of my photo and video editing skills.

 

[Masziiv]

I started taking my graphic design and art practice seriously once I got into low level content creation. I was a founder for a CSGO community and did most of the graphics and videos for them. I rapidly transitioned over to what I do now after rediscovering that neoY2k futurism and metalheart aesthetic from some Web Design Museum posts.

 

[inlinesix]

I mostly got into it since I needed cover art for the music I was releasing 5 - 6 years ago, didn't have a job and didn't have any money to pay a designer, so I just slowly taught myself how to make stuff in Photoshop that I liked. Eventually I slowly discovered what design styles I liked the most and read theory on it, Metalheart being one of these.

Photography is a funnier story to me, I always was interested in it but never really had a camera to use, so I'd just take photos on my phone. Eventually in high school I did Multimedia and had a Photography assessment, so I got to use some ~2010's Nikon and Canon DLSR's (never really liked them lol), but that taught me the basics of DLSR's/Mirrorless Cameras. Still took photos on my phone at this point, and only really bought my own camera like 4 years later in 2022 lmao.

 

[the guy]

I drew in school when I was bored and now I draw

 

[lem]

It was like a stimulation thing to me when I was little, the feedback of putting something down on paper and it leaves a mark and the colors felt nice.
When I was around 13 though I decided to get more serious about it since I started meeting some friends from deviantart and I wanted to do the things they did, totally worth it and rewarding in the end

 

[ethos]

Definitely started with watching Adult Swim as a kid, though started taking art classes at 13/14 and even though I wasn't good at the time, I could see small improvements over the first semester. My art teacher at the time said something along the lines of "most other careers will be automated - art and design will always need the human side of innovation and creativity." It always stuck with me. Then I acquired photoshop, found design forums & tutorials, and the upward spiral took off.

 

[atradaitoshi]

Wanted to make my own forum signature

 

[GhostSnacks]

started out gawking at website layout and design and video game UI graphics when i was a young lad in the early 00s and from there i knew i wanted to be a designer so i bought up books and became a full-time graphic designer by 2009, been at it ever since.

 

[VSoD]

I just started doing graphic design stuff with making Roblox GFX on Blender (rendering) and paint.net in early-2018. I've been mastered on paint.net since, as I've done almost everything (including logos, graphics and memes) on it. I've eventually discovered and learnt more about Neoy2k phenomenon from artists such as Virtual Self and nuphory, and since 2022, I am making art on that genre.

 

[vexastrae]

for me personally ive always wanted to make art since i was a kid, as it was simply a passion of mine from the very beginning
my interests, skills, mediums, and goals have evolved over the years but the passion is always there

 

[halfprism]

initially started art solely for my music projects, then decided to practice my art skills and post them online which gave me a bit of a following. realizing that people other than me enjoy my art made me focus on it way more and thats how i got here. still making art for my music but it means much more to me than it used to :)

 

[databug]

always been a creative person however i hadn't really started making stuff i liked until i was inspired by seeing deskgen's members work online and gave my own spin on it.

 

[aetherphase]

i craved a way to get very complex feelings out into a medium of creation... i was about 13 or 14 when i first started art in general: drawing, trying to make music, then eventually just listening to music a ton and finding other mediums of art!
i came across the (excuse my use of the no-no word) "neo-y2k" design wave in early 2021, it was a wild ass time on twitter but i found a good group of people that really honed my interests in on the metalheart adjacent styles. Then i was off from there!

 

[weedsmoker69]

I got into graffiti as a kid and then it went from there, I wish i could find the images from when i was 10 writing on walls i lost alot of that swag back then lol.

 

[jukemix_]

Captain Underpants and just many other books and comics I read growing up but Captain Underpants just kind of sparked something to me.

 

[Mukky]

Captain Underpants and just many other books and comics I read growing up but Captain Underpants just kind of sparked something to me.

omg this is so true

 

[Digitab]

I want to know; why did you guys start art? I'll go first.

I started art because I saw so much art by other people like Andrew and Wsx (and many more) that I wanted to start something and start creating as well.

I originally started cause I ran into Storytime animators on youtube and I was like, "YOU CAN DO THAT!??!?" So I started learning how to draw so I could be a youtuber like those guys. Time went on though and at the current moment I don't do animation or anything. Atm I'm just an illustrator and manga artist man. Funny how dreams so big can change like that.

 

[hunktwink123]

I want to know; why did you guys start art? I'll go first.

I started art because I saw so much art by other people like Andrew and Wsx (and many more) that I wanted to start something and start creating as well.

Short version: brother installed a WinCustomize theme into my PC & me observing the elders around me being frustrated at using tech. I love & want to make stuff like the WinCustomize theme, I also hate how tech is quite stupidly designed, I didn't know how to solve those things, went to do the research myself. Tried numerous pathways. Now I kinda do art

Longer version:

Younger me and my brother shared a computer until he gets his first laptop. He installed a Rainmeter / WinCustomize theme into our PC and I was like woww Windows allow us to do that? what the hell? and who made this? (not to his face because um we're brothers). At first I thought it was because of coders who coded the computer to generate those skins. At the same time, when my uncles and my parents got their first smartphones or their computers they are quite frustrated at how to perform basic stuff. It makes sense why too because their dumb phones were way more efficient. They only bought a smartphone because it has more features. And I was madddd like I gotta work in this field to help change things!

So I tried learning: compsci 💀

I tried looking up how to create an OS on your own. That of course failed, but I remembered those corny Windows 9 concept on YouTube and I thought about how they can be recreated on PowerPoint. Tried a few times, fun but never finished anything. Sixth grade I discovered Illustrator & a bit of Photoshop. Illustrator was a bit similar to PowerPoint so I didn't face any big challenges. During that time I was active in a local forum and they were looking for Illustrator users to make banners for events on the site. I joined and it was great. Then there are clubs and activities in school that needs designers. Joined those too. So I went down the design pipeline instead of compsci pipeline, and I realized that's what I really wanted to do the whole time.

I also had a Twitter account to response to a demo video about spatial aware phone OS or something idk, I thought it was cool and I wanted to talk to the author. Fast forward there was the whole you know tech sphere thing on Twitter, and I jumped in the bandwagon of creating Windows concept and stuff (thanks to #FluentFriday hashtags, apparently you can get noticed by Microsoft's directors or something and there will be a extremely small chance they'll hire you). First time trying Figma also. Fast forward again after Windows 11 and WinUI 3 kit came out, after you know concepts like File Explorer has been done a trillion times, I'm left with no idea of what to design and what to post. But eventually I found a way, and I expanded my circle way beyond the Fluent Design people. You know, onto the product design twitter, the UI engineers, the y2k preservationists, the aesthetics sites, etc.

I don't know if I can say I do art tho, as my designs are also technical as they're artistic.
I wrote this at 2AM in the morning so it's not all that entails or it's not all coherent but it's nice to recapture a bit of my journey