Why did you guys start art?

[TheOnlyGuyEver]

I don't know honestly. Probably just because it seemed fun. Way, way back in the Flipnote Hatena days, I was surrounded by so much absurd creativity and beauty and talent, all poured into such a tiny screen on the DSi. I figured that if so many people can do it, I can too. I made a couple (very poor) Flipnotes, and had an idea for a series, which never materialized there.

Flash forward a couple years and those ideas were still rattling around in my head, so I decided to get a $60 Huion drawing tablet (which I still use) and a (pirated) copy of Adobe Animate. I spent a few months developing my skill somewhat, then over the course of a few more months, cranked out a 2-minute-and-6-second cartoon. It felt so nice to finally get some of those ideas and those characters out into the world after so many years. I always intended to make more and turn it into a series just as I originally envisioned, but I wanted to draw more and get better first before tackling another episode, which was a big project. I originally was more interested in animation, but in the end, I got more occupied with drawing pursuits than animating, and though I continued to draw bits of pieces of that world for a while after, another cartoon never did happen. Though, I don't have any regrets about that.

That was about 6 (jeez) years ago now. I've gotten better since then, but I'm still a huge amateur with a lot to learn.

 

[Sonachine69]

Because I had a Lynchian nightmare where I was forced to eat bugs and survive on the streets of Japan. And I took it as a sign.

[<3 my inspiring story <3]
During my childhood, I did random stuff for fun, programmed, played some instruments, and tried to write my own novels. When I started something, I became captured in hyperfocus, spending every single minute doing thing or thinking about it. Nonetheless, I never thought about pursuing something for too long, this idea just never crossed my mind. But during middle school, I met my future girlfriend, who was extremely skilled in drawing, and It just blew my mind. She showed me her sketchbook full of anime girls, Gravity Falls fanart, her many OCs, and I was stunned at how cool it looked. Holding this sketchbook felt like I was holding some valuable artifact, the feeling of human effort and mastery was insane, and I never felt it before. It started this desire of "I want to be able to express things that I care for in any form, and I want to master something for real".

For the next 4 - 5 years I started my grand crusade to find "real passion". Although I knew clearly that I wanted to create something, I made myself believe that I shouldn't pursue just anything and that I need to wait for the perfect opportunity. I tried a lot of things, but as soon as my ADHD hyperfocus started to wear off, I treated it like it was just not my thing, and moved to other stuff. It made my life miserable and it sucked. And what was especially bad - I had this 20s crisis, when I felt like it was too late to start anything, and I was too behind in life.

And here is the ridiculous part.

One time when I struggled mentally really bad, I had this wild dream where I was in my 30s, teleported to Japan, and forced to eat snails and cicadas because I was broke and dumb. Seems goofy, but I woke up in absolute horror and decided to stop the bullshit with passion romantization, and just start doing anything that grabs my attention. I remembered how during my visual novel era I bought some 3D backgrounds, and the rendering process gave me this unique sense of peace so I decided to try 3DCG. I found the Donut Tutorial, started from there, and decided to do it without any sacred purpose, just try to learn something and have fun.

Without any sense of obligation, the whole thing became extremely fun. I found the joy of expressing myself, mastering something, and had this wild journey with art, that has continued for a few years now.

Maybe I have the most stupid reason to start my art journey, but my life never felt as full and happy before, It opened so many new horizons for me in every aspect of my life that's just insane

 

[karnyde]

chocographix's art randomly popped up on my twitter timeline, which sent me down the rabbit hole called desktopGeneration™
got me hella inspired to do 3d art ngl

 

[Lunanescence]

i loved integra's art, so i watched all his music videos and i was like, how can i make stuff like this? and then his tutorial came out and i learned quite a lot from it and loved artists like mikyoku, and yazan and inlinesix.

i wish i could be able to create art more, but can't because of some like strange sensory issues, like maybe texture aversion, maybe its ocd, i have no clue, but its been incredibly frustrating, and i can't really create art like i used to. i've had this issue for years. so to kinda explain it, its like, i can see rough blendshapes in pictures/images and not be afraid of them so to speak, but when i'm directly involved in the project, and i have to pan around blender/c4d, etc. then it becomes really scary, like i just can't do it at all, i can't get myself to move the shapes around and stuff, so i started using some stuff from asset packs very recently to play around with, but it just doesn't feel the same. i wish i could go back and create stuff.

i wish that maybe jwildfire could like randomly generate forms for me or something so i dont have to be involved in the process. i kinda got it to work for a while and then i forgot how to do it after i wiped my pc.

but thats kinda where im sitting at in terms of art, i wish i could change that.
i've been trying other ideas instead of utilizing forms, but i haven't really liked them enough to post them online

 

[D4VT0R]

tl;dr i started art cus i wanted to express myself, my imagination and interests while making music, and other artists have influenced to ultimately start expanding my horizons
-
backstory

i grew up with the 2000s and early 2010s (and also mid-2010s to an extent) and it's two of my favorite eras when it comes to art. i'm also not the biggest fan of how graphic design is starting to be designed (i tolerate it but i don't downright hate it)

2013 when i got a youtube account after i got my first tablet (not an ipad) for christmas. before that i was already watching a lot of stuff; art, animations, even stuff people of any ages have made in the early days of internet

i started off using [powerpoint and mspaint]* to make fake windows versions when 2014 started and then i moved up to photoshop in 2017 to make somewhat higher quality stuff. i also made the occasional windows backgrounds and desktops back then for those fake versions lol
*i didn't know much about art programs as a kid back then, even if i did later i couldnt cus passwords and parental restrictions (LOL). wasnt until i convinced my parents to (finally) get me a laptop somewhere in april 2018

years later to end of 2020 i started this d4vt0r alias to make more than just those things, just graphic design in general, while i was also making music before starting. i found out about and joined the hypertrance discord a month after i found out about nuphory's (before her rebrand) handsup collab with stessie. ive been slowly wanting to branch out for quite a while when it comes to graphic design but there is something about the hypertrance community thats awakening me (for lack of better way of saying it xD). i would say that i have learned a lot being there

2024 im slowly coming back from a hiatus after reflecting on myself as a person and also my visual art direction and tbh i think i like this one im currently doing now when it comes to art. anime branding can still be good depending on the dosage of the usage but its good to try different styles while you are at it as well. desktopGeneration also looks like something i would be somewhat interested in and i have been contemplating supporting their artwork as well. i say i've learned a lot from how long i had been running this alias for

this seems longwinded but whilst making graphic design and music, one day i wanna appear alongside many well-known and (especially) respected artists and musicians, again

 

[Transendium]

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.

to escape, mostly
I started sometime before the pandemic but only really got into making art once the pandemic started, and it was a way to keep my sanity in check
(though now that sanity seems to be lower than ever now, in spite of my attempts to keep it leashed)

 

[enhanced64]

i have been always a huge fan of these design styles used in the early ages and seeing many ppl recreate more artworks of said styles inspired me,,,,, now im trying to learn vectorhead and also im practicing drawing characters! ^_^

 

[shaymin]

idk if i have a "why," until about 2020 i just kinda drifted towards the art / design direction, spurred by flipnote hatena getting shut down in 2013. i think i first considered myself a Designer in 2017 when i did visuals and a logo for pokemon summer megamix 2017 and i kept doing it after that.
then i found out about crossniq+, y2k archive, and CARI in either 2019 or 2020, and exploring art through those (especially CARI and their discord) gave me a reason to keep doing graphic design. now i'm about to start my senior year at cleveland institute of art

 

[vapidcamera]

when i was 13-14 i was trying to get a better curated feed on twitter because mother dearest let me get twitter and i was excited to use it (at the time i was big on fortnite pro player analysis) and someone named serpent who was apart of the organisation "overtime" had a twitter banner that made me go WTF???, seeing his banner made me want to start graphics design, regardless of if he made it himself or not, initally i used picsart to make these really REALLY bad art pieces and i didnt care how bad they were because i thought they were good at the time LOL, overtime i tried harder and harder watching tutorials from vain who at the time made designs on iphone (same as me) and then i hit a roadblock because picsart wasnt cutting it anymore, ffw to christmas 2021 i got pixelmator and was so happy beacuse it was an immediate upgrade to what i had and then i started making some of my best work on it at 16 i got my first pc (it was actually abysmal) but it worked for the most part and i made even more designs (i wish i had examples but i dont know if they exist) and then we are here in 2024 making art better than ever