John's 5 year Anniversary thread

Discussion in 'General Discussion / Real life stuff' started by John_0696, Mar 16, 2017.

  1. John_0696

    John_0696 Donator

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    The Story of John



    Hey IJAH forums, Today’s actually a Special day for me as it is my 5th anniversary of being a forum member. (Even though the date i joined the forum community was April 13th 2013) Man time flies does it? For my last 3 anniversary threads, I just talked about how I found out about the Server, but this year, I wanted to do a little something different. I had a few ideas of what it should be, But after much thinking, I wanted to do something I haven’t got a chance to talk about before, How I got started with Drawing.


    A lot of people ask me perfectly legitimate questions of what goes into the comics and drawings I do on here, and now I feel it is the best time to answer them.


    The Early years

    It all started when I was about 3 years old back in 1998 when I got to use my parent’s Windows 95 desktop, I would play a lot of old CD-ROM games that my mother got my brother before I was born. However over time I began using the PC more and more often cause of how fun it was, For me being only 3 years old, I was a Master at using a Computer mouse and doing basic features such as Loading applications and other things, one of them I had the most fun with however was Microsoft Paint.

    Using a Computer brought out my creative side as a kid, but outside of the Internet I was very socially awkward and barely talked to anyone who wasn’t my parents due to me being diagnosed with Autism. By the time I started school, I had a hard time socializing with other children as I was so used to being at home with my Mom, but I managed to make a few friends here and there. It wasn’t until about 3rd grade when I started this hobby of drawing in a notebook during my class time. I was well into many childrens Novels such as Captain underpants, and TV programs like Transformers, Spongebob Squarepants and many other shows. I would just draw anything that came into my Mind like My own Transformers characters, Stick people and other things a 3rd grader would usually draw. It wasn’t until the day I showed these to my special needs counselor, and she absolutely loved them. That was when I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to draw to entertain others. 4th grade was when this all began to grow more prominent into my life. I was interested into many things as a kid, such as Meteorology (Mostly forces of Nature), Technology, and many other things, 4th grade was a very important year for me as it was the year in school when I discovered Something bigger than life itself, known as the Internet. The internet made a huge impact on my life as I saw that people could Show off their work and have people from all across the world see it. So it made me even more interested to pursue entertainment and Art.

    One of my biggest inspiration for drawing Comics like I do today, was the Famous newspaper comic strip Garfield, You know the one about a Lonely guy with a Lasagna-loving orange cat? Yeah that one. My parents would buy me every book of Garfield comic strips for me to read, and I literally couldn’t get enough of them they were that funny. So it inspired me to start doing comics of my own, whenever we would have free time, I would draw short little comics on the white board and show them to my fellow classmates, It made me feel something I’ve never felt before. I got so many positive reactions from both the kids and the faculty that it made me extremely happy, My mother eventually found out and bought me a bunch of small 99 cent notebooks to archive all my comics in. It was no doubt that all of my old comics Sucked real bad, but as a kid I thought they were awesome. I started to base my comics around one of my favorite video games known as Lego racers 2, Where my character would have to go through many different settings and dimensions in order to save the world, Defeating bad guys and other characters along the way. I even had my own OCs (Original characters) before that trend got popular on the internet, One of them was a Lego man named Johnny, Similar to Emmet from the Lego movie. As time went on, My drawings started to get more and more diverse as I started adding new characters left and right, Mostly characters from my favorite TV shows and games. It was almost like the Ultimate crossover, Many different people all teaming up to fight a greater evil.

    I guess you could say I was learning to basics of storyboarding and writing plots, The only problem I had with these comics is that I never could show them to everybody except my family. Sometimes I would show them to my friends and at times to my counselor, they all loved them.I would usually work on these Notebook comics on a monthly basis, I would make many different stories from just random little comedic skits, To full on Adventure epics. Some of my more prominent comics that comes to mind was “Total Annihilation” where the Decepticons would take over the Earth and its up to my characters to stop them, Another was called “The Return of Zero” Which was based off of another favorite game of mine called Kirby 64, Where many different Characters from different continuities all teaming up to save the world from Zero two, The main villain from the game. They were Stupid yes, but like I said earlier, I thought they were awesome and that one day I would get them published.

    By Middle school, One of my biggest dreams was to turn my drawings on paper into real animation, but I didn’t have any type of technology to pull it off, It wasn’t until I discovered a program called “Pivot Stickfigure animator” that was a primitive Windows program where you animate characters in a simple animation tool, The most famous of these Pivot animations were the Stick figures on Crack series on YouTube. I made many animations with this program and even posted them on youtube, but sadly I lost my account that had these animations and they were all permanently erased from youtube. It made me extremely sad that all of my hard work was gone, but nonetheless I persevered. Some of my Animations I screened at my School and the Faculty loved them all so much that they would have me Screen them in various classrooms for the students to watch, It was the greatest feeling ever that my work was finally being noticed.

    Not only that, I started getting better with Microsoft paint, Whenever I would go to my Grandma’s house I would draw on her PC of various Transformers characters, They were probably my best drawings I ever done as a kid, But like the animations I lost them all and couldn’t find them since.


    After I have lost my old PC due to me not taking care of it properly, I started to pursue other forms of Art, such as Stop motion animation and painting. It wasn’t until High school when I started taking my dreams more seriously, I took many art classes and other programs to further improve my art styles. One of the biggest things I discovered around my Sophomore year was Minecraft, It was the game of my dreams, a clean slate that you could edit into literally anything you want, I loved it. So I started to incorporate my experiences in Minecraft into my comics, using my own characters and other things. The thing was I again had no way to show off my creations, That wasn’t until I found out about ItsJerryandHarry on Minecraft, The server was so welcoming as well as their forum community. I started to post my drawings on the old forums from 2013, and a lot of people saw them I twasnt until one of them said “If you keep this up this could become a thing!” Then it hit me, This could be the best way to Get my comics and drawings noticed.


    We then come to today, That’s basically how I got started with drawing comics for this forum community and in general, Ive gotten so many positive reactions from family and my good friends here on IJAH that it reflects on what I do with my life now. I really can’t thank all of you guys enough for supporting me throughout my time here and I hope I can keep entertaining you guys for a long time.


    Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope you guys got to know a bit more about me or at least got you guys interested. I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon and I hope we can have many more fun memories on this forum.

    A very special thanks to my Friends @StarlightFox @Unprepossessing @RocWolfTheHunter @Cheezipoofs and many more and a Huge thanks to @ItsJerry and @ItsHarry for giving me the possibility to show my work to others here. :)
     
    dreamvlle, ItsJerry, Markend and 11 others like this.
  2. Smg

    Smg Retired | Also known as 'Phaithful' Donator

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    Phaithful_
    Merged under your request. :)
    John, I just want to say that your story is really amazing. To see how far you've come with your art, and to know your backstory on how you started drawing, makes me really interested and happy for you. Whenever you post one of your art threads I know I'll enjoy it, as it just shows your unique and special personality.

    I'm glad to have met you as a person, and I am glad that we have become friends. If you need to talk or anything feel free to just ask. And I really can't wait to see more of your threads soon yo pleeeasee put me in one

    Anyhow, that's that. I don't think you mentioned this but I believe you're in college right now...so I just want to wish you the best of luck with that. And as always, I am really glad I got to join/find this community and meet people like you. Stay awesome, John.
     
  3. Rivenze

    Rivenze Donator

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    Nice story! :D
    Really nice. :)
     
    John_0696 likes this.