CATBEAR.EXE
Being able to fund my hobbies is a dream come true ☺
Before the On-Demand function was removed (they just had to force us to watch commercials), my first exposure to drawing was Mark Crilley when I was around 3rd grade. Of course, it had to be anime as my starter style. However, this interest spiraled into opening my eyes to a whole world of art that shaped my abilities into what I can do now. My starter pack was drawing on copy paper from 3rd grade all the way up until freshman year of high school because I was not aware that there were specific materials that was actually meant for artists. Aside from my special interest in anime, I developed a love for Marvel and DC comics and eventually began to shape my style from my favorite artist, Kenneth Rocafort. At that time, I was also deeply invested in the art style of the One Punch Man series written by ONE and drawn by Yusuke Murata and found a nice medium between the crisp lineart and shading techniques from Murata, mixed with the detail and sem-realism aspect from Rocafort. My digital programs started with Microsoft Paint and Microsoft Video, to Paint Tool Sai, and now Clip Studio Paint EX and Sony Vegas Pro Suite.
Despite having a passion for the arts, I had to put my serious hobby aside to make room for studying engineering. I have always been self-taught and took advantage of using quality supplies at my High School as we had a very strong art program. All of my techniques have been able to develop with the support of my teachers despite having to break their hearts with telling them I am pursuing my degrees in Engineering rather than my actual passion and would only be taking 2 half credit art classes. In 2018, I won the animation award at the Greenfield Youth Film Festival with my 3 minute animation I produced and developed by myself with the voice acting talent from my dear friend, Camille Bautista. It took 6 months to draw each frame and video editing as I had to juggle my other main classes, sports, and retail job.
Once college started, I almost lost sight of my passion as I was a STEM major enduring the most stressful 5 years of my life. Strangely enough, my Tiktok at the time (@Doodle_g0d) made my account go viral for drawing my classmates and racked up my following to over 85k. While COVID made me go dark as there were no more classmates to draw, it granted me opportunities to explore other mediums: sewing, embroidery, photography, polymer clay sculpting, and developing my technique using watercolor and gouache. After finishing my junior semester, I went homeless for 2 weeks as my coping mechanisms for dealing with my crippling mental health has finally took a nosedive. Putting a hold on my development of my hobbies made me lose sight of who I was as a person and I spent every second of my day trying to survive engineering school.
In the summer of 2023, I was commissioned by Widener University's Atheltic Department to paint a massive Bob Ross-inspired landscape for their HUB room, which was a space for students-athletes to unwind. Widener's HUB room project received an NCAA award for Diversity and Inclusion in efforts to make their facilities a welcoming place for student-athletes and staff members.
Eventually, I was able to return to Tiktok under a different name (@catbearstudios) and once again went viral for 2 animatics that involved my experience going cold-turkey from my anti-depressants and my skincare routine when my older sister, Theresa, became a doctor of dermatology. Despite this, I retired that account and renamed it back to the original username that I initially went viral for. I posted my last update of retirement and that I will be posting elsewhere as Tiktok is getting banned but I will be returning to doing what I loved the most... full-fledged illustrations and making webcomics again in addition to streaming, like I used to. I have also returned to Youtube to start from scratch again as I now have confidence in my abilities.
Upon graduating with my bachelors and masters in Mechanical Engineering and Physics minor, I was finally able to retrieve all of my supplies out from my dusty storage unit and continue where I left off. I wanted to be able to see how much I would improve and made my first website: catbearstudios.com which was originally powered by blogspot and google domains. However, since google domains was bought by Squarespace, my 4-5 years of the art I have uploaded vanished overnight as of 6 June, 2024 as I attempted to wrap my head around my website domain could not be managed anymore.
Upon graduating with my bachelors and masters in Mechanical Engineering and Physics minor, I was finally able to retrieve all of my supplies out from my dusty storage unit and continue where I left off. I wanted to be able to see how much I would improve and made my first website: catbearstudios.com which was originally powered by blogspot and google domains. However, since google domains was bought by Squarespace, my 4-5 years of the art I have uploaded vanished overnight as of 6 June, 2024 as I attempted to wrap my head around my website domain could not be managed anymore.