Bio

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:47:00 -0700

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to draw comics. My first solid attempt was at the age of three when I scribbled two comic books about the Ghost Busters. I told my Grandpa what I wanted the characters to say and he wrote in the dialogue as I wasn’t able to write or spell yet.

I continued drawing for most of my childhood years. At age ten I created a team of super heroes I called the Cosmic Soldiers. I had fun with them for a few years, even writing a short story about them for a junior high English class, submitting a seven page story when three were all that was required.

It was around that time in junior high when I made my first attempt at a comic in strip form. I created a character named Kyle that was loosely based on myself (mostly in physical appearance). The strip (also called Kyle) ran in my junior high school paper for my entire 8th grade year. I got a kick out of seeing my strip in the paper and knowing that people at my school were reading it. I got the occasional “great comic, dude!” and even the “I don’t get it…” in the halls and either one made me happy.

I abandoned my dream of being a cartoonist in high school when I took advanced art classes and was blown away by how great at art other students were. It was hard for me to come to terms with, but I finally pushed cartooning aside and considered it a fun hobby I did in junior high.

College time came about and I enrolled in generals classes with the intention of being a psychologist. I was tempted by the art classes, but thought I knew better. I talked to a school counselor about what classes I should be taking and she informed me that I had an entire semester worth of credits in the art department that had carried over from high school. Surprised, I decided I would just jump face first into art, since I could be done a semester earlier than I planned. So, I enrolled in the animation program, for some insane reason, thinking it would be easier than cartooning.

I got my first animation job when I was only half way through college and learned from some amazingly talented people. I spent four years in the video game industry and despite some really rough times, I met some of my best friends.

When I bought the domain name channelate.com, I was originally intending on making animated cartoons that I would post on the site to create an online cartoon channel, hence the name. For a year and a half I worked through many iterations of a cartoon I called Tested on Animals, planning to launch channelate.com with the series. I wanted to get something on the website to act as a place holder, so I started a little webcomic called Random Hilarity. It only lasted four strips. It wasn’t until a year later that I launched Note to Self with help from my wife, Vee. Though I finished many different scrapped shots and even finished a short episode of Tested on Animals, over the year of working on the show I felt my writing had matured past the quality of it. I gave up and focused on the comic, which nobody ever referred to as Note to Self, but by the name of the site itself.

When I finally did have animated cartoons for the site, I purchased the domain channelate.tv to be their home, since channelate.com had grown an audience as a webcomic.

So, here I am almost two years in to channelATE.

You just sat through a really long bio.

Ryan Hudson

Bio