2005

Back when I was in primary school, I have this hobby of keeping a book only for my drawings (read: scribblings). Don't imagine a book of artworks, I couldn't draw that well at that time 😂 Instead, imagine a collection of papers that acted as the only thing standing between myself and me damaging my school's tables and chairs.

And I wasn't alone. For some reasons, my drawing book got passed around to my classmates for them to 'contribute' their artworks 😂 My best friend and I back then even created our own characters for a comic; Ann & Alex. Ann was my character and Alex was his. From what I remember there weren't any backstory to the characters, they were just something that we drew and added some dialogs to make it into a comic. They were both friends that would make fun of each other(I think), and that's about it.

My drawings back in 2005, ladies and gentlemen. Meet Ann.

Ann & Alex, by my best friend back in primary school - Amirul Akmal.

Believe it or not, I still have two of those books kept safe in my possession until now. But I won't post the full comic as the level of cringeworthy is too high for the Internet 😂

2018

Fast forward to 2018, I am still constantly learning to brush up my skills on drawing. So recently, I started exploring on drawing human figures. I referred to tons of sources on the Internet - mostly on Pinterest. Learning the proportion of the human body is a new thing to me as I didn't really apply these things in my previous cartoons.

Some lessons taught that on average, a human body height is typically 7.5x the length of his/her head.

I was practicing on drawing a female figure. As I were brainstorming on what type of character I wanted to create, the image of Ann came back to me. So I tried recreating her.

The process of creating Ann.

I drew her donning the hat that has become her identity back in those years. I really love how it turned out to be.

But wait, what is Ann without her partner-in-crime, Alex, right? So I decided to add Alex into the picture. Using the reference I have in the ancient book, I recreated Alex with the guidance of it's original creator (Yes, I am still in touch with him, I recently texted him to ask what color was Alex's hair 😂

Trying to give the 'bad boy' vibe to Alex's character.

And voila! I think they look good together (although I remember them being just friends, no romance was involved as we 11-year-old kids were too young to give a thought about that? lol)