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Description
So Balancing Act has been around for me in some way, shape or form for well over half of my lifetime. As a kid, my very first cartoon character was as simple as a drawn version of myself. For some reason, cartoonifying myself was something that fascinated me forever and always. Maybe that's a little weird, but considering how I tend to be hard on myself in terms of my artwork, hopefully no one will blame me for being a little "masturbatory" here, if you'll excuse the term. Hurr-hurr.

I had been coming up for stories for early versions of the series as far back as the 90's, but it wasn't until about 2000 that I started taking what I was doing far more seriously...in the sense that I wanted to try and make it a reality, by way of animation. Maybe I didn't know quite yet that I wanted to be an animator, but my creativity an inner-storyteller craved for some sort of medium outside of drawing these characters based on me and my friends. For many, many years I had this tradition of making illustrations of EVERY single one of my characters from the Balancing Act story (before it was even called that).

I recently moved, and came across a TON of old artwork while packing and unpacking over the last two days. I uncovered stacks of these yearly rounds of character illustrations I did dating as far back as 2000. I know I joke a lot but...I'd certainly like to hope I've improved somewhat since over a decade ago. ;]

A lot of these design changes over the years are also in part thanks to Mike Luckas , who taught me a LOT about character design in Middle School and helped set me on a better track than my habit of just drawing someone with a shirt and putting the first letter of their name on it (seriously)...although, I say that, and yet you can see I still had "CHRIS" written on his shirt. Early on I also drew him with shorter, bowl-cut hair and on my way out of High School I started to get more comfortable with the way I looked in real life. So, I started incorporating more real-life traits into him like the blue hoodie, the longer hair and eventually, the bigger nose. Also, I've tried over the last 4 years in particular to meld a nicer blend of western and eastern styles of drawing humans, since I DO have an appreciation for Anime and all (and I don't associate drawing "Anime style" with any sort of immaturity) but I consider myself to be influenced JUST as much by American animation too.

In recent years, as I've learned a lot more about design, writing, drawing and creating in general, I've also tried to differentiate "Frost" as a separate character and not just a self-insert persona. I've seen people have a lot of (understandable) problems with usage of characters like that, but I personally don't find any real problem with it if the character is interesting on their own, regardless of who they're based on or inspired by in the real world. That, and I've always considered people I know as THE best inspiration for creating characters.

I'm still chasing a lot of the same dreams I've had since I was a kiddo; some of which I've come close to achieving. There's still so much for me to do that I couldn't possibly give up now. Thankfully my family, friends and supporters haven't given up on me either. :]

Description
So Balancing Act has been around for me in some way, shape or form for well over half of my lifetime. As a kid, my very first cartoon character was as simple as a drawn version of myself. For some reason, cartoonifying myself was something that fascinated me forever and always. Maybe that's a little weird, but considering how I tend to be hard on myself in terms of my artwork, hopefully no one will blame me for being a little "masturbatory" here, if you'll excuse the term. Hurr-hurr.

I had been coming up for stories for early versions of the series as far back as the 90's, but it wasn't until about 2000 that I started taking what I was doing far more seriously...in the sense that I wanted to try and make it a reality, by way of animation. Maybe I didn't know quite yet that I wanted to be an animator, but my creativity an inner-storyteller craved for some sort of medium outside of drawing these characters based on me and my friends. For many, many years I had this tradition of making illustrations of EVERY single one of my characters from the Balancing Act story (before it was even called that).

I recently moved, and came across a TON of old artwork while packing and unpacking over the last two days. I uncovered stacks of these yearly rounds of character illustrations I did dating as far back as 2000. I know I joke a lot but...I'd certainly like to hope I've improved somewhat since over a decade ago. ;]

A lot of these design changes over the years are also in part thanks to Mike Luckas , who taught me a LOT about character design in Middle School and helped set me on a better track than my habit of just drawing someone with a shirt and putting the first letter of their name on it (seriously)...although, I say that, and yet you can see I still had "CHRIS" written on his shirt. Early on I also drew him with shorter, bowl-cut hair and on my way out of High School I started to get more comfortable with the way I looked in real life. So, I started incorporating more real-life traits into him like the blue hoodie, the longer hair and eventually, the bigger nose. Also, I've tried over the last 4 years in particular to meld a nicer blend of western and eastern styles of drawing humans, since I DO have an appreciation for Anime and all (and I don't associate drawing "Anime style" with any sort of immaturity) but I consider myself to be influenced JUST as much by American animation too.

In recent years, as I've learned a lot more about design, writing, drawing and creating in general, I've also tried to differentiate "Frost" as a separate character and not just a self-insert persona. I've seen people have a lot of (understandable) problems with usage of characters like that, but I personally don't find any real problem with it if the character is interesting on their own, regardless of who they're based on or inspired by in the real world. That, and I've always considered people I know as THE best inspiration for creating characters.

I'm still chasing a lot of the same dreams I've had since I was a kiddo; some of which I've come close to achieving. There's still so much for me to do that I couldn't possibly give up now. Thankfully my family, friends and supporters haven't given up on me either. :]