Post-Uni, Pre-Everything: Reflecting on My Creative Practice

Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my creative direction. Right now, I'm in this weird space between graduating and waiting to hear if I got into the MA program I applied for. For the past seven years, I've thrown myself into my creative work, but now that my time in school is wrapping up, my art isn't tied to grades anymore. It feels like a great opportunity to reflect on what I've been doing.

I've always loved making stuff, starting with random craft projects on the floor with my mum, then moving on to clay, needle felting, and drawing. Creating characters and telling their stories has always been my passion, just like it is for a lot of kids. That joy is still with me. In fact, I'm revisiting a comic I first designed at 15, bringing it to life with the skills I've built over the past eight years. The first issue should drop within a few days of this going live—shameless plug, I know.

Sometimes I wonder if university was the right choice, but at the time, it felt like the logical next step. I'm super competitive and thrive under pressure, so diving into a tougher environment in a new city made sense. Looking back, I'm glad I did it — I sharpened my skills, found my voice, and grew a lot, even if I had to push through some intense burnout by the end. A lot of my classmates have stopped creating since graduating, and honestly, I understand why. When your work is constantly tied to deadlines and assessments, it can drain the joy out of making. I've been trying to find that joy again, slowly but surely.

A significant factor contributing to my burnout was my passion for working across various mediums. In my final projects, I unintentionally boxed myself in with briefs that pushed me mostly toward digital outcomes. While I did manage to incorporate some sculptural and pencil work occasionally, the majority of my efforts were channelled through my trusty old iPad. This experience made me realise that I thrive when I can generate ideas across different mediums rather than focusing on just one at a time. Moving forward, I intend to maintain this newfound approach. I've discovered that simply daydreaming and sketching in a humble sketchbook has alleviated the pressure I felt leading up to my graduation.

As I have distanced myself from the structured environment of school, I find myself gaining clarity on my creative aspirations. I keep returning to my project "Stars Over Sodom", which I developed during my final year at university. This project was intended to be a short horror game, incorporating art created entirely by me, with a strong emphasis on storytelling and crafting characters that could resonate with its players. Upon reflection, I realised that my approach to this project was more of a job than a true passion; I was sacrificing a lot of my ideas and cutting corners to fit the mark scheme best. This led to a design bible that I'm proud of, but perhaps lacks a little more of my creative voice. However, after taking some time away, I am eager to revisit it and breathe new life into the game. This project holds particular significance as it was inspired by my very first project at university and concluded my academic journey in a meaningful way—a fun little full circle.

One of the main reasons I'm writing this is so I can reflect on it in a few months. By then, I'll either be on a master's course or figuring out a whole new direction. Who knows. Either way, I can look back and see where I was in blissful ignorance of how so much could go sideways. Fingers-crossed it doesn't.

I think that I've come a long way from the wide-eyed kid who just wanted to tell weird stories of magic and monsters, now I'm older, wanting to do the exact same thing, but just with thousands of pounds worth of student loan debts and an iPad.