Who are you?
I'm Alex. My username's pronounced "kawz-RAL-ecks." I currently study communication science and information science, with cartooning as one of my side hobbies.
When did you start drawing?
I've been at it since 2015. At that time, the 2005 "Doraemon" series was airing on Disney XD, and I just so happened to catch a glimpse of it before it left the air. I became heavily fascinated with the Fujiko Fujio duo's comic work, which sent me down a rabbit hole of Japanese cartoonists. I also came across Osamu Tezuka's work around then via those old anime compilations on YouTube.
However, I found myself sucked into lots of Internet communities not too long after. Before art, video gaming was my main interest, and I was desperate to find groups to play online with. Eventually, through those games, I became involved in all kinds of unhealthy "fandom" nonsense. My interests changed rapidly, and so did the way I draw, almost as if I wanted to prioritize satisfying those around me. It took ages for me to find my footing.
In 2023, right as I began university studies, I started to take researching the arts more seriously. I engaged with TV shows, comics, movies, and music that I missed during my fandom days, and I was more motivated than ever to figure out how they worked. For the longest time, older American cartoons and other works outside of Japan were blindspots for me, but I eventually found some of my biggest inspirations in them. While I did make some wrong turns during my research, I think I'm at a good point to share what I've learned.
Why make this website?
I wanted to get away from the woes of social media. It may have been useful for getting "discovered," but it shouldn't have been my only outlet. Before discovering NeoCities, I attempted to use Carrd and WordPress. I appreciated the other platforms' modularity, but I wanted to experiment with pure HTML and CSS.
Who are your art influences?
Too many to count. Not all of them directly inform the way I draw, but they're still important to me nonetheless.
A list of them can be found here.
What's on the site?
Most of my digital work from 2022 onwards will be here, along with miscellaneous sketches. There's a lot of fanart in my backlog for reasons mentioned earlier, but I still like some of it enough. I have a few characters of my own lying around, too - you'll see more of them later.