Category: Thoughts

Another obligatory post to get my site started, but I know I can do always add more of an introductory of myself as an artist, and this website.

For those who haven’t seen my first post, hi! I’m Kaiden, and I’m a 20 year old graphic and web design student at John Abbott College. I’m in the first semester of my second year, and it’s been very busy. I already feel myself getting a little burnt out from all the work, but I’m also working on being resilient. In the end, I love being in this program and meeting so many cool, like-minded artists.

Last post, I talked about what inspires me, but I thought it would be fun to talk about my interests, which may or may not also inspire me. If you’d like to see more of me, please follow me on Instagram or Tumblr! I hope to post my art there soon.

As an artist, I Love Animals!

First, one thing I always loved since I was little was animals. I still love, love, LOVE animals, more so than people. I know so many weird facts about them, and I love learning more about them. I’m particularly fond of bears, but I also love horses, crows, ravens, cats, raccoons… I can go on and on at this point. Bears in particular, I like a lot since I find them cute and a little relatable. Growing up, I watched a lot of Bear in the Big Blue House when I was little, and I still love watching funny videos of them falling over lazily, or eating. I also love bugs, especially finding them in the wild. I’m quite fond of nature photography, my camera roll is full of animals.

It’s funny how my appreciation to animals only extended as I got older, as I’m now a furry and a furry artist. Animals are one thing that will forever make me this artsy; I can’t wait to have more time and money once school is over to be the furry I dreamed to be. I don’t think it’s cringe whatsoever.

As an Artist, I Love Cartoons!

I love cartoons, the same amount when I was a kid as well. I can watch live action stuff, but it’s less whimsical and as thought out as animation is. It’s something I would love to learn at some point, though I know I’m much more of an illustrator kind of artist than an animator. My favourite movies as a kid were Lion King and Brother Bear. After getting into things other than Disney, I also love Studio Ghibli movies. My favourite movie from there is Princess Mononoke!

Outside of movies, I love anime, though it’s hard to have new anime that interests me. As a kid, I loved Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, and a couple generations of the Pokémon anime. As I got older, I got into more girly anime. It’s mostly because I find shounen titles to have poorly developed female characters. Currently, my favourites are Umamusume: Cinderella Gray, Nana, and Fruits Basket. With Nana especially, I love the aesthetics. I remember after finishing it, I had to put so many references of it into my artwork. I truly recommend it if you want something relatable to watch about being in your 20s.

As an Artist, I Love Video Games!

I’m a nerd, it’s obvious. I love RPGs even if I suck at them, I love the girly games too. RPG titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Skyrim are my favourite, though I also love Pokémon games, especially Pokémon Black/White and X/Y. I can talk about that franchise all day. Still, I was good at these types of games overall, but I grew up playing free games only until I grew up and had money of my own, and don’t even get me started on if I were to play something remotely masculine as a kid, I wasn’t really allowed!

I also love going back to nostalgic games I’ve played as a kid, though it breaks my heart that Adobe Flash is no more. I grew up playing Animal Jam back when it was a website and not an app, and you just HAD to be there. Still, it’s sad how a lot of old nostalgic games for me are either defunct, broken, or straight up lost media in some cases. The ones that are still up, have either changed drastically, or have questionable CEOs. Sometimes, they’re Roblox and they’re both of those.

Passions Are an Artist’s Muse

To conclude, I think having things you really enjoy can really make your art have more soul, even if not intended to be. My favourite thing is finding art that references art, or something they love, because it makes me learn more about the artist who made it. Anything you enjoy, likely comes from an artist! Isn’t that cool?Sorry for a lengthy, ramble sort of post, but this is what was advertised, wasn’t it?

Hopefully see you soon!

Kaiden xx

While writing my first post for this website, I was a little lost on what to write initially. I love writing, but I always wrote to be more personal. I’m not someone who craves attention on social media. Still, it’s important as someone learning graphic design to post about yourself, or else your art will never be seen.

Well.. What is there to start with? I’m Kaiden (any pronouns), and I’m 20, almost 21. I’m in the Graphic and Web Design program at John Abbott College. I’ve always loved art as a kid, then hated it at one point, then grew to love it once again.

Rant on graphic design

I went into this program uncertain about the future; generative AI has been available to the public for going on 4 years now. Why would I still bother to learn graphic design when businesses can get tasks done quicker and cheaper with AI?

What inspires me nowadays isn’t just what I grew up with that encouraged me to be creative, but I want to exist out of spite. I want to design with my blood, sweat, and tears. It’s okay to be flawed and to be human after all. My reason to design is so I can speak louder than whatever I can write. Art is political, even when people assume otherwise. I believe art is important to show what it was like to live in that time.

So far in my program, I love using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator a ton. I especially love the two apps to paint digitally. I don’t like Adobe as a company though, they’re an awful company that doesn’t care about graphic designers. They removed Flash and Animate, and replaced it with AI garbage. Every time I see an Adobe advertisement online, it’s always to show off their AI features, and not what you can do without it. If it wasn’t for the free subscriptions at my school, I would’ve sailed the seven seas.

To conclude..

This is only the beginning of my website, however if you wish to see what I’m up to on this website as well as anything else, stay! Follow me on Instagram or on Tumblr(@kaidenfaille) to see my stuff! I really want to get into posting again by the end of this year.

Thank you, whoever you are, for taking the time to see this bare bones of a website, and for reading my small little rant of a blog post. Make sure to eat and drink water today, and you are loved, whether or not you think you are. Hope to see you soon! 🙂

Love, Kaiden xx