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Picture Frame Graphic
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Last Updated: January 21st, 2022

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a Graphic Design major. I make both traditional art and digital art. My traditional art consists of pencil and charcoal drawings of humans and fictional characters. The scale of my art is varying, but I usually always like to be detailed. My digital art that I make consists of colored line art and pixel art. My colored line art usually has a specific cartoon style that does not have heavy detail. I make my line art with ProCreate. My pixel art is about as detailed as something like Metal Slug, Street Fighter, etc. I mainly imitate the style of a game called Fraymakers, as I am interested in modding the game to add my own content to it. I use Aseprite to make static and animated pixel art.

I make pencil and chalk drawings because I am most comfortable with making things like that. If we look at other mediums, such as painting or 3D art, I have never been as comfortable with those. I feel like I can completely control what I am able to do with a drawing pencil. I usually like to only do uncolored sketches; usually when I try to add color it ends up looking worse to me. I make digital art because I feel like it complements my taste in art. I like things that look symmetrical and "perfect". That is one of the main reasons I major in Graphic Design. I like creating art that tells you what you need to know through visuals. Cartoons are a general influence on myself as both an artist and art consumer. I like how you can make things that you can not replicate in real life using animation techniques and cartoony designs. I make pixel art because I have always liked the look of it and have come to appreciate it through playing games and seeing how it is animated.

As an artist, I usually just look to complete objectives given to me in the best way I can. I rarely make art for myself or because I want to. I believe being forced to do something brings out my creativity. I like to learn about things and represent these things with respect. I do have a strong desire to one day help in the creation of a video game. I am studying and practicing character animation for pixel art video games right now. I believe that my Graphic Design experience combined with my curiosity about how to make games could make me a competent UI Designer. My art is always clean, it always has effort put into it, and I always try to learn as much as I can during the process of making art. I have a hard time with some things still, like foreshortening and proportions, but I do know what I am good at and I know what my goals are in order to get better. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and I like to make sure that I make accurate representations of what I need to make. I do not pretend to know everything, and I often look to people I work with in order to make the best end product.

About me

Hi, if you scrolled down, that means that you must be REALLY interested in me. My name is Caleb Holden, I live in Pennsylvania. At the time of writing, I am a college student at Seton Hill University. I am a Senior. I major in Graphic Design. I'm not used to talking about myself. If you know me, you know I'm reserved and quiet. But I have many dreams. When it comes to art and design, I do not understand everything. I take steps to get better and better though. I find comfort in imitating things that inspire me. I also find that if I am given a specific task, that I am able to make things that I'm more proud of, more so than the things I make without guidance. So, anyway, you are here to learn more about me. So here are all the things I like to do.

Video Games

I started playing video games as early as I could remember. My first video game was Sonic the Hedgehog 2, on a Sega Genesis. I was horrible at video games for a long time, but I always got sucked right into the worlds that these video games created. Even when everything was just pixel art or low polygons, the fact that you could still feel immersed and invested in a game is a really cool concept to me. I love that video games have evolved so much and look so good nowadays. However, I have a soft spot for pixel art. I grew up playing handheld games more than console games. Pretty much all games I grew up with were pixelated. I also grew up watching flash animation, which used video game sprites a lot. I used to animate things on an app on my Nintendo DS. It was called Flipnote Hatena. Again, I wasn't very good at it, but seeing what people could do on it was really cool as a kid. I used to spend a good chunk of my day, everyday, just watching animations, and trying to do stuff myself. I got really consumed in it. It was very rewarding, and I hope that when I do come back to it, that I get sucked into it again.

I am pretty competitive when I play games anymore. I like playing Super Smash Bros. competitively... at times. I don't go all out with it, but Smash Bros. is one of my favorite games to play in general. It is the definition of easy to play, hard to master. Funny thing is that Smash Bros. is not really the type of game you are supposed to play competitively. It is usually described as a party game. But you can play it as seriously as you want, and it's cool that these types of games give you the freedom to do whatever you want. Making games is absolutely up on my list of things I want to do. Programming is weird though. I have done it here and there, and I don't hate it, but it doesn't click as well as some other things I do. I would love to make the art for a video game one day for sure though. A game called Fraymakers was announced last year, and its game-of-my-dreams material. It's a game that is heavily inspired by Smash Bros. and it has a built in content creator in it. If I begin learning to make games from anything, it's probably going to start with this game. My favorite game of all time is probably Sonic 3 and Knuckles. I don't know how it still manages to be the best Sonic game after all these years.

It would also be pretty amazing to be a streamer, just playing video games all day. I have a youtube channel right now. I think having my own little community, with our own inside jokes, would be really, really cool. Right now though, my focus is on my academics.

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Art

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Now, these things aren't listed from most important to least important, I am just putting stuff as I go here. But video games WERE the first thing that I thought of, and that's because I do spend a lot of time playing games. However, I would say that my relationship with art was very strong earlier in life. Obviously, I am a Graphic Design major, so I still really like making stuff. But I feel like for a majority of my life, I haven't been all that great at making stuff. When I was little, that didn't bother me. Nothing really bothers you when you are a kid. Once again, my earliest memories involve me drawing things. I wanted to draw my favorite video game characters. I drew them, then made up little games and scenarios in my head, and scribbled all over the page when something crazy happened. I always had a wild imagination. I don't really make anything creative with my work, but I really like thinking about doing cool things with pre-existing properties. I got into art because my imagination is always creating scenarios that I want to draw. But man, do I struggle with making things sometimes. Especially dynamic stuff, like things with foreshortening, and anything unnatural. I made cartoon characters when I was growing up, all usually not posing, just standing still. To this day, I struggle with stuff like that.

One of the big advancements I made over college was being able to draw something from reference without tracing. Tracing is usually how I practiced, but at WCCC some things started to click and get easier. But I might be getting ahead of myself here. Before college, I went to elementary, junior high, and high school. In elementary, there were no art classes. Just an arts and crafts session once a year. But I used to draw things all the time at lunch, and recess, and yea, even during class sometimes. I sometimes drew 2 characters and had them fight, and people at the table would watch. I made a couple of comics in my day, just for fun. I collaborated with friends for the dialogue, because they were usually a lot funnier than me. In junior high, there was at least one art class that I know I took. I don't really remember much about junior high, but I do remember thinking that art classes were not as fun to me compared to drawing in Flipnote. And the people around me were all awkward teens, I didn't really know anyone. And I'd say at this point, my love for art started to fade due to me also become an awkward teen. And getting more into video games probably didn't help. In high school, I finally started to get back into art little bit. My best friend from elementary was with me in my first art class, and the person who would become my best friend in high school was also in there (we have so many inside jokes from art class alone). In terms of my art, I was pushed to try and create more realistic looking things. My teacher told me that "In order to create the cartoons you want to do, you have to understand how to make more realistic things first." My response to that was "You know, that does make a lot of sense..." I did try my hardest, and did my best work on realistic faces so far. But our teacher wanted us to paint most of our stuff, and make animals. I don't know what it is, but I don't think I will ever understand how to paint. I hated how I couldn't be precise with my work. I am a perfectionist, but painting forces me to think too hard, I think. When I draw now, it all comes naturally. When I paint, I'm always redoing things and it's not fun. Having limits on which paintbrushes we could use, which colors we had, made me sour on painting a bit too. Not our teacher's fault, of course, but I feel like I didn't learn much with painting because I couldn't experiment, and I just didn't remember or understand the techniques I was told about. Thank goodness we didn't paint that much in WCCC. We used charcoal though, and I did like using it. I learned about drawing something as I saw it and I finally understood shading too. Those were really big steps for me. I think that since this is getting a bit long, all I will say is that my experience in Seton Hill thus far how taught me, or rather, reminded me how much I like visual storytelling. Storyboarding is my thing, I really like it. I am getting more and more confident with my art, too, because I am being pushed to do things dynamically. I have taken a hobby of starting to learn how to make and animate pixel art, and at this point, I am confident enough to take commissions!

Music

I have played a couple of musical instruments in my life. So far, all my attempts in learning an instrument were halted after a year or so. I played the snare drum and guitar. I also had a class in high school where I learned to make music through Garage Band. I don't really listen to "real" music that much; if I do I listen to old stuff. I really don't like music nowadays. It just feels like everything is made to be played in a car at max volume, so you can feel that vibrating sensation. I'm sure some people love it, but I enjoy actual medleys and insightful lyrics. You know, the things that take time and effort to do. The music that I listen to comes from video games (WHAT A SURPRISE). I listen to video game OSTs all the time, because I like the fact that VG music can make you feel something, even without singing. The context of video game music doesn't come from lyrics all the time, usually the context comes from the game itself. I really like when video game music reflects certain areas or story beats in games. I also feel like there is way more catchy video game music nowadays then "real" music. Once again, when the emphasis goes to the medley of the song entirely, you can get some pretty satisfying sounding stuff. Of course, there are video games with music where someone is singing, and that is great too. I'm not against singing at all, I actually sung in chorus for 4 years. I don't think I have it in me to sing now, but I would really like to get back into music later on in life. I don't really create unique music in my head that often, so I wouldn't say that would be my expertise. I would much rather remix music that I already like, and make it better. If I do reach a level where I can make music the way I want to, I feel like that would be really satisfying. Probably just as, if not more satisfying than being able to make art the way I want it.

Electric Guitar

Pro-Wrestling

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© WWE

This one will come off as a surprise, I'm sure. I have played baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey, and I did Crossfit and Amateur Wrestling before. All in varying different lengths. I played baseball the most, I was in it for at least 6 years. Crossfit and Soccer for 2 years. Basketball and Hockey for 1 year. And wrestling didn't even last a week. Wrestling was the hardest thing I've ever done to my body my entire life, and I highly admire ANYBODY who is in shape for that type of craziness. I was never really good at any sport I did, but I didn't mind playing sports as a kid, I am always looking to try new things. My personal preference is playing video games, but my mom just wanted me to go outside more, which is fine. I don't like watching sports that much. I just can't get into the whole "home team" thing. I do, however, have a particular love for wrestling for many reasons. #1 is WWE of course. I grew up watching it, I loved it. I thought all this stuff was real, like I thought the Undertaker really could summon lightning. I still watch wrestling to this day. I don't watch WWE, like, at all. They make some very wild business decisions and have bad storytelling anymore. I look more towards AEW and the indies nowadays. Its one of those things were wrestling is REALLY GOOD when it's good, and REALLY BAD when it's bad. Or it's just plain boring, too. I tend to look more at behind the scenes stuff to get insight on the wacky world of professional wrestling. It is really interesting to see how important it is to the performers. I also find it interesting when other people talk about wrestling. Wrestling discussion is interesting to me because everyone dissects aspects of the storytelling of it all. I once again envy the athletics of it, and I can tell you even though everything is "fake", these people still do crazy things on the regular that probably hurt. Storytelling in wrestling can be super interesting too. Investing in wrestling is hard to do nowadays, but sometimes wrestling can be a true spectacle. I'm sure that it wouldn't be too hard for me to get into the wrestling business one day if I really wanted to. I would want to be a creative writer. Or maybe even a commentator. Imagine that. By the way, my dad was a pretty good amateur wrestler. They used to call him Captain Crunch because he usually always put his opponents in a cradle. I think he has a trophy in my high school to this day for having the most wins in one year (somewhere around 100). Anyway, I just like wrestling because every now and then, it can be really cool to me like it was when I was a kid. And I just appreciate how they have always put their bodies on the line for the sake of their sport.

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