The other day, in preparation for an interview, I looked through some of my old files from my college years. Many of those files were in .cwk formats. I had to look up what that meant and figured out how to convert those files back into word documents. (For those curious, the .cwk format was used by AppleWorks, which was a pre-installed typing software on Macs before they phased out the whole line.)
Long story short, I came across a lot of things I did in college. Papers I’ve written and long forgotten. Artwork and illustrations I’ve done in my 20s. Dreams and aspirations that gave me smiles as I read them today.
My illustration style has changed a lot since. To be honest, I’ve almost forgotten this phase of a style. I don’t draw like this anymore, but it surely is fun to see how I’ve morphed into the way I draw today. (Style is an ongoing process, and it will continue to evolve.)
I even did comics back then in this style.
Much like most passion projects I made for fun in my early years, I didn’t know how to wrap up a project. This meant I would draw a few pages, self-congratulated myself on the effort, and moved on with other things.
While these passion projects did not “go anywhere”, they took me pretty far in terms of growth.
Today-me can look at these comic pages and tell immediately some fundamental mistakes I’ve made as a comic artist. For example, I can tell my younger-self had no sense of “bubble-spacing”. You can see that in some dialogue, there are tons of space around the speech bubble. Other text boxes are so tight, the text are almost touching the box lines.
But those are all pretty simple stuff to correct. Over time, I would learn to make adjustments to avoid these mistakes.
I applaud my younger-self for spending so much time exploring my art style. And while I did not know how to tell a story back then (hence drawing an existing story), I still managed to adapt an existing story from text to comic panels. I was learning how to “translate” from one storytelling method to another. These lessons were very valuable. Each illustration, overtime, helped build and solidify the foundation for me as an versatile artist.
If I ever have a chance to talk to my college-self, I would tell her this:
Keep at it. You’ll be fine.
Monkey King and the World of Myths: The Battle of the Beasts is coming out on August 19, 2025! This time, the story follows Sun Wukong the Monkey King and his bff Cerberus as they journey to the ancient capital of Japan, where they meet friends and foes from various Japanese folklores and mythology! It’s an action-packed, laugh-out-loud graphic novel for ages 8–12, perfect for fans of Dog Man and Percy Jackson!
You can now pre-order the book on your favorite book purchasing platform!
Bookshop.org
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Powell’s
Books A Million
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Or, support your local independent bookstore and pre-order from them. ❤️
Thank you for your love and support!
If you have a chance to talk to your younger-self, what would you tell him/her/them? Share in the comments below!