Timothy Stokes

My name is Timothy Stokes. I’m a student working towards a Visual Arts Major and a Literature Minor. My artwork is split between 2D illustration (mostly in pencils and pens) and 3D sculpture, primarily with Sculpey clay.

Throughout most of my life I’ve been influenced by artwork displayed in Video Games, Graphic Novels, Manga, and various animated films and TV shows. My dream goal is to become a graphic novelist, so my work mostly revolves around character design, illustration, and building a narrative.

One of the main ideas that inspired me to become an artist is how different forms of media can take the same characters and settings and reinterpreted them in different ways: Hercules, for example, was pretty ruthless in the original myths, but in the Disney version he’s pretty chill, and some companies like DC comics can turn him into a superhero. And DC’s Sandman, originally a superhero who put people to sleep, was rewritten by Neil Gaimen to be part of a pantheon of ancient beings that affected mankind behind the shadows.

But one of my favorite examples is Sonic the Hedgehog and the many different iterations his series had: the straightforward good-guy v. bad-guy conflict of the games, the cyberpunk dystopia story told in the Sonic SatAM cartoon, and how Sonic developed a Jekyll/Hyde persona with his Super-Sonic ability in the British Fleetway comics.

What I’m saying is that I hope that I can create a work that inspires originality like the stories I just listed, whether it’s original or derivative.

Tsarah
Timothy Stokes
2015
Graphite on paper
11” x 14”

Portrait: