zCreative Journal

Yes, bulldozers, backhoes, excavators, all those almost always yellow coloured machinery you see near construction sites. You might think that it's a normal interests with kids, you know, buying construction site toys, remote controlled bulldozers and the lot. But see, my interests, somehow, are more severe than the next door kid playing a bulldozer toy in the sandbox.

I started with this fad of mine when I'm 10-11 years old. But somehow, I can't remember what is the trigger to it. Maybe a book? I don't know, my mind's blurry.But what I can tell you is, my interests rapidly grows because of *drum rolls* internet! So, other kids might be online playing flash games or updating their Myspace, here I was, in front of the screen, looking at pictures of...cranes, tractors, bulldozers, the lot. I have no idea why, I just love em. And of course, I'll try  to draw pictures of those stuff. God knows how many drawings I had done that is related to this. I can only draw stick figures for humans, but I can draw a decent construction vehicles. My sketch book probably looks like a catalogue for construction workers. Heck, because of my interests for it, I even understand how hydraulic pistons works. Hmm, somehow I think that that part of my brains could have been used to store better information than that.

Whales....yeah. Not cats, whales, those un-cute, oversized mammalians. I knew most of the 'mainstream' whale species (da hell does that means??) like Blue whale, Right whale, Bowhead whale, Humpback whale, Sperm whale and the likes. Heck, I even memorized some scientific names in those days.

I started this interests of mine around the same time as the above fad. Actually, I don't remember which came first. Maybe both. The trigger would be an encyclopaedia I bought, more specifically, the marine section. Up till this day, I still don't understand why I would be interested in such stuff.

I never explained how my previous interests died. Well, this is the interest that killed off the old ones. Not really killed per se, more to slow torturous death. Any ways, I picked this interests when I was 11-12. The trigger would be the browser MMORPG Runescape. I only used to play those Flash games at Miniclip, then  on that website I decided to try Runescape (RS), and it changed my life, whether for the good or for the bad. I liked it, almost addicted to it, I almost converted all my friends to play it. 

Oh, and why did I combine RS/drawing/fantasy? Because from RS->Fantasy/Drawing. One day, I found a RS related drawing. A sketch of the Barrow brothers drawn anime style. It was simple, but I fell in love with it.I saved it, and I printed it. And the first thing I tried is to draw it. But of course, after a long time only drawing bulldozers and whales, I can't draw shit. So I do what most kids would do. I traced it. I traced it and after I finished it, I was proud with it. As if I drew it from scratch. Anyways, since that trace, I started to copy it by hand. You wouldn't believe the amount of sketches I drew that is related to that picture I found. It's basically a huge pile of copy pastes of the same image, with one being gradually better then those before.

.After that, my skills are decent enough to draw my own original characters. And that's when the fantasy and writing part starts to flourish. I started to write adventures of my characters and do short stories and comics about (though all of them are RS related. Creativity and originality has little meaning to me those days). It was bad, cliché  and cheesy. But hey, I enjoyed doing it, and it created the basis for my writing style today. If not for these things, I would not be drawing/writing today.

This interest was never killed. It went through 'hibernation' when my next interest came.

More specifically, firearms. I picked this up when I was 13-14. The trigger was yet another video game, 4 of them actually. In chronological order, Age of  Empires III, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty 4: Modern warfare. I played, I was interested, and a new interest came to me.

AoE III interested me about military during the 1600-1800s. Muskets, cannons, bombards, abus guns and others. CS and CoD4 makes me interested in modern military and CoD WaW made me interested in WW2.

But I was more interested with modern firearms. I googled it, wiki'd it, read about it, and understood how they worked. I remembered most names, models, what type of bullets the used, which countries they are from. And of course I drew all a lot of firearms. The earlier ones are crap, but with practice, I got better, and more detailed. Like the whales and the construction vehicles, my sketchbooks are full of guns, and I actually did a bloody catalogue! complete with the descriptions. 

Till this day, I'm still into these military stuff, though not as extreme as before.

The newest interest of mine. I picked it up when I was 15-16. Yeah, pretty new. Actually, I drew anime style drawings ever since that RS sketch I found, but I just used the style, I never ventured into anime fandom. I only know of the term 'anime' when I was 12. Any ways, my trigger would be pamphlet from a Gempak magazine, for an upcoming anime movie, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa. It's contains the characters, infos, seiyuus, screencaps and release date of said movie. And somehow, I'm interested. But of course, there is no way they are gonna screen it here.

Then, coincidentally, TV3 decided to air Fullmetal Alchemist (the series, not the movie though) dubbed in Malay. Talk about lucky! And I was ecstatic. Every Saturday, 6.30 pm, I would be in front of the TV, watching it. When the series ended, that was it. I have no internet during that particular period, so after FMA finished, I didn't watch any anime for awhile.

After I got the internet back, I realised there's a new series, FMA: Brotherhood, a remake that follows the source material more closely. So I started downloading those episodes. And of course, since I downloaded from an anime website, I tried to pick up other series, though rarely. When I switched schools, a few of my new friends also recommended me some titles. After a trying out a few series, I started to like anime. 

Though most of em are bad, some are really good. The bad ones are usually plagued with anime cliches, moe, annoying voices, ecchi and retarded cheesy plots, but it cant't be helped. Just think of it like those Bollywood movies (people starts to dance in the streets for no reasons, ridiculous fight scenes). I just ignore the bad as much as I can and enjoy the good points. Not saying I only watch deep or philosophical stuff all the time, I do watch other stuff, though if it's really bad, I drop the title faster than the speed of light (fastest drop was 1 1/2 episodes, that anime was so bad). 

And because of that, I start to draw people again after all those times drawing guns. since I already used anime style before, it isn't hard for me to draw fan arts and stuff (but it made me hard to adapt other drawing styles). 

So here I am today, as an anime fan. I'm no otaku though, I think I'm not to that kind of level yet (and hopefully I won't). 

Quite a trip that I went through, from bulldozers to cartoons with big eyes. But hey each of those influenced a lot of stuff in my life. There are a few newest ones that I omitted from this blog post, let just say it's too new to write anything about it. These here are the major ones. 

Who knows what more other weird stuff that will interest me in the future? Knitting? Hyenas? Antimatter? I don't know. All I hope for is that it won't bring any harm unto me.

Well, that's all for this post. Thank you for reading my humble exposition. Till the next time!

P/S: I'm making a short story regarding Axachariyah, now at the final chapter (unfortunately the illustrations have not started yet). So stay tuned for that!