Hi everyone! It has been about 4 years since I last logged on, and I plan on becoming active here again. I’ve been active on tumblr, instagram, and Facebook all this time. Many things happened during these years, I’ve changed a lot, and discovered a lot about myself.
I first created my deviantart when I was a freshman in high school (age 14). Now, I’m going to be a junior in college in September. I’m also turning 20 in a couple of days but art, anime, and video games still remain a part of my soul.
I was introduced to anime when I was in 8th grade, and often stayed up until 4-5am during school holidays to watch anime. I’ve also always been a fan of video games since elementary school (MapleStory, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, MySims, Mario, etc). It was also the year when I started running, which played a huge part of my life and sparked my interest in medicine.
During the summer before 9th grade, my parents bought me a desktop. I became passionate about MapleStory, to the point where it was negatively affecting my grades. At the same time, I started writing my own manga during a cross country meet when I was bored and also inspired by MapleStory. It was called Candy’s Adventures, featuring my OC’s Candy and Apple. I also started my deviantart in April of that school year (2012).
From 2012 - beginning of 2015, I was very passionate about drawing, and drew traditional art almost every day.
I especially loved designing gijinkas and environments. I also experienced a lot of success with running, including placing top 10 at the California state cross country meet, and top 35 in the United States during my senior year of high school. I talk a lot more about running on my lifestyle blog: irungracepace.tumblr.com/
During my freshman year of college (2015-2016, I also got a tablet at the end of 2015 and switched to digital art), I hardly had time to draw. I’m a bioengineering major and was determined to become a doctor. I was also involved in clubs (freshman representative for the Chinese Student Association and wrote articles/took photos for Spoon University), and running Division 1 cross country and track (but actually ended up being injured for most of it). I drew about once a month during that school year and that summer, as I had two internships - at an Eastern medicine clinic and the bioengineering research lab at my university.
During my sophomore year of college (2016-2017), I started to have second thoughts about pursuing medicine. I also got my 4th stress fracture since 2015 and became depressed since running was a major part of my life, and I kept failing at it. I talk a lot about this on my blog and instagram: irungracepace.tumblr.com/about… // www.instagram.com/irungracepac…
I wanted to escape from life, so I started playing MapleStory again. I haven’t felt this happy since the last time I ran a race in 2014. I instantly felt more creative and inspired to draw again. Throughout my sophomore year, I designed characters/environments/stories for a video game I want to create on top of my classes, which were pretty much consuming my life.
I also quit and became less active in clubs, allowing me to have time to draw at least one hour a week as classes got harder. The more I drew and designs I came up with, the more satisfied I felt.
After sophomore year and receiving my grades, I looked at my transcript overall and noticed that I’ve always done better in my math and computer science classes than my biology classes. I also started to enjoy computer science more than biology, and now solidified my decision to not pursue medicine, but video game design and artificial intelligence. I decided to take on a computer science/engineering minor.
My sophomore year of college has brought about many challenges, and resulted in a low self esteem. Art is also something that makes me feel more confident in my own skin because I know that I can design my own unique things, be very proud of it. It helps me become more happy being myself because I can make people happy with my creations.
I’m currently designing a biology-inspired video game called, Cell-fie, and it’s currently my largest source of happiness. Thank you for following along with my journey ~
www.instagram.com/candyleaf_/