You can read the first part of my story about drawing here : One upon a time, my conflictual relationship with art

After having quite common start with drawing in my childhood and then dropping it off in my teenage years, I somehow ended up going to art school and studying 3D animation. By this point however, my approach towards art was mainly professional. At school I learned to draw what I was asked to draw. I drew for exams, for class, for homework, for grades, to get a diploma and a job later. I had already distanced myself from art in my teenage years because of intense shyness and lack of self-confidence. I found my way back to art but by then our relationship was one of coworkers at best. Drawing was once a way to express myself but as I grew up I got more and more convinced that no one cared about my feelings or wanted to know what I had to say. I muted myself, in life as well as on paper.

I always liked imagining stories, characters, lores. Maybe because I was afraid of real life and real people, I would often drift away in my imagination to make and watch my very own movies and tv series. I played with dolls as well as plushies, made them walk and talk as I'm sure many children do. I never stopped, even after locking away my toys, my mind would still continue writing stories, inventing characters. My imaginary world would spread, multiply, have continuous timelines, storylines... I would do it so often that at one point I considered myself to have Maladaptive Daydreaming.

Thanks to my older brother, I discovered the joys of Roleplay. He started with the usual gathering with friends playing DnD but I was too shy to do that. I only enjoyed the magnificent drawings and extensive description of the lore in the books. He went on to play with people online via written posts on forums. It took a bit of time before I got curious and got to try it myself.

For those who don't know what Roleplay is, you'll find many types and explanation online. The one type I'm talking about here is online written Roleplay (mostly on forums).

How it works basically : I would go on a forum where each player would write as his own character and interact with each others character through writing descriptions of actions and dialogues. Each forum would represent a "universe" with it's own lore, setting and rules (DnD /StarWars / One Piece / Harry Potter / post apocalyptic world /City of Los Angeles present day...). I like to view it as cooperative and interactive writing since player can only describe what their own character does, looks like and says and the stories are created through interaction. In such a setup, it's not really the writing that's important but rather what your character brings to the table and to other's characters and how your ideas and roleplay affects and influences other's timelines and adventures.

Since I felt like no one wanted to know anything about me and was socially anxious, it felt like a incredible outlet. Via the character you created, you could be a whole different person and meet other people and players and go on incredible adventures. I was like daydreaming with others in written form. While playing with someone, I would be sure that at least one person would read what I write, even be waiting for my answer in order to push the story forward. I went on many different forums, explored different worlds with different characters. It was amazing.

As visual reference, in order for everyone to easily imagine your character without having to read a seven pages long description of their eyes, its common to choose a "faceclaim" or "avatar" an image linked to your profile that should look like your character. They can be pictures of real life people (usually actors, singers, celebrities, etc) or drawings from anime or found on the internet. Since not everyone can draw perfectly their own original character exactly as they want it to be, players will either choose a faceclaim and build up a character from their or imagine their character and then browse the web for an image most resembling what they imagined their character to look like.

I personally loved using actors as faceclaim, it always felt like I had my little casting director moment when I would have to go and hunt on the web for the perfect face, charisma and vibe. People loved to have visual reference for their characters, using gifs and photomontages to try to best illustrate what they wrote. It can be a bit frustrating not to find the perfect words to describe the "dark smooth sideway seductive grin" you imagine in your head. But gifs and photos can only be found from your faceclaim's online material (like movies, interviews, music video, etc...) and they are limited and not always suiting to the character you created. You casted the actor as your character, but have no way of hiring them to actually play out the scenes you want. So you have to deal with what you find.

Except... If you pick up a pen and paper.

With drawing, the possibilities were infinite, I just had to draw decently enough to make the characters recognisable and there it was, the illustration to the story we wrote together, the scene, the characters. Quality wasn't the goal as a drawing would never be more realistic than actual pictures of faces, but it would be the satisfaction to see our stories put in images. Of course, since the stories were something written by several players / characters together, I showed my drawings to other people concerned.

I was amazed by the excitement it met from the other players. People were so glad to see the character they had created “come to life”. When using existing pictures of their faceclaim, they would only copy or borrow from another role, another character, but that drawing was done with their character, their version of the faceclaim in mind.

This made me take a 180 degree turn with how I viewed drawing. I suddenly realised that drawing was not about being good at it, but about creating things. Things that you could only create because no one else would do that for you. When writing, drawing, creating, you are utterly free, free to make whatever you want. And however you make it, it’ll be unique, because you made it.

It never felt right to share a drawing with other people about something they wouldn’t understand or be interested in. On the other hand, I never liked making fanarts as I felt that what I was about to draw had already been drawn a hundred times by others and way better. With Roleplay however, I knew no one had already illustrated what we wrote together, and I was sure to please at least one person with each scene and character I drew.

I started drawing more and more. Different characters, different situations, different actions. As I wanted to illustrate specific moments, I had to be more inventive with posing to avoid the usual “facing standing with hands hidden behind the back” classic. Because I would often have to depict different characters interacting, I had to make sure to differentiate them and avoid “same-face” syndrome. Even though I hated drawing backgrounds or hands, depending on the scene I wanted to illustrate I often had to get out of my comfort zone.

Since Roleplay is based on interaction between different people, it’s always moving forward with each post so I also had to keep up some kind of rhythm. I didn’t illustrate many scenes, but even if I did one drawing a week or a month, I wanted to be of a scene that was still fresh in everyone’s mind. I had to be quick, efficient and understandable in my depictions. I had no time to worry about the details or fine skill of art, I was just telling a story to show almost live to my online peers.

I had been in art school for about 2 years already when I suddenly got into drawing for myself through roleplay. The contrast was drastic between when I’d only draw for school assignments or when I had nothing else to do, and when the “passion” really started kicking in. There was so many things I wanted to draw and eager to share. I forgot I wasn’t the best at drawing and instead focused on the fact that I was the only one willing to draw what we had written. For me it added a whole other flavour to roleplay where I would express myself and my imagination though writing as well as drawing and be able to share that with fellow players was always exciting and encouraging.

The more I drew, the more I wanted to draw and share. I would even start drawing things unrelated to Roleplay for my own pleasure. I was finally enjoying it, with others as well as by myself. Whenever I wasn't inspired by current evens in roleplay, I would illustrate my own stories I continued daydreaming about, my thoughts, express myself again. My imagination has always been running wild and I finally found my way to a satisfying outlet.

I've explored many roleplay forums, many worlds, many characters, had so many adventures with so many different person. Roleplay has been an infinite well of inspiration to me, always changing, evolving, stimulating, convivial... The more I drew, the better I got at drawing, and the better I got at drawing, the more I wanted to draw. And since then I never stopped.

This post (which became two) was supposed to be an introduction as I want to write a bit more about my process in art and how much of it relates to Roleplay. There's so much I want to share and one post never seem to be enough! I really want to get further into explaining the dynamic of working with faceclaims but it seemed wonky to start withouth explaining where all of this is coming from. I hope you enjoyed and that you're interesting in what's coming next.

You can read the first part of my story about drawing here : One upon a time, my conflictual relationship with art

Thank you for reading, don't hesitate to ask questions below or leave a comment saying hi! I’d be so glad to answer and connect a bit more with people here !

All pictures used in this post are mine :

A screenshot of a roleplay "topic" which shows the interaction between me as my character (with Thomas Dekker as my faceclaim) and another player's character (faceclaim Michael Fassbender). For lisibility it's common to write the dialogues with a specific colour for your own character. (from Heroes RPG)
A photomontage with filters of actors Evan Peters and Emily Browning both used as faceclaims of characters on Cover Your Eyes. Perfect example of how I would have to find tricks with existing pictures to make something resembling the stories written. (Posted on Blogspot 14/03/2016)
One of my first illustrations of a Roleplay scene between four characters of Cover Your Eyes. The blond girl and boy on the left actually are the characters using Evan Peters and Emily Browning as FC (faceclaim) from the previous photomontage. (Posted on Blogspot 15/03/2016)
Another drawing of Cover Your Eyes characters. The blond boy was my character and the girl with blue hair was another player's character who I had written a topic with. (Posted on Blogspot 24/04/2013)
A motivational poster I drew for Cover Your Eyes. People were praising me for my drawings as well as putting themselves down saying "I could never draw like that..." I was just reconciliating with drawing and I wanted others to have fun too with me instead of feeling insecure. (Posted on Blogspot 19/04/2013)
A random sketch showing my efforts to depict a complicated action that encouraged me to be more ambitious and learn more in order to be able to illustrate any situation/action/character. I would not let myself be limited by my skills. I really had to improve on many many fronts. (Posted on Blogspot 23/11/2013)
A quick portrait I made of a stranger's original character while roleplaying on Omegle. I chose it because I like that I kept one dialogue line. I liked to share, even with strangers I'd never get to meet again. It just felt good translating written words into images, especially when people write lenghty description of the character they created. (Posted on Blogspot 09/07/2013)
A little doodle of myself that fitted the conclusion of me finally enjoying drawing and wanting to draw more and share more and improving. (Posted on Blogspot 19/07/2013)

zelyn