by Joshua Chiang

If you have gotten this far, chances are that you want to find out a little bit more about me, or this space called Cerealbox Studios (which really isn’t so much a fixed place but an idea; anyway, more about that later). 

You might want to know the really dry stuff, like the clients I’ve worked with, or a laundry list of things I’ve done related to the services you’re looking for, you know, my resume. 

Or maybe, if you have the time, I can humour you with a short story. 

It begins with two boys chasing a football across, I would presume a completely white background.

And they were followed by a scrawny third boy, barely catching up.

This is the part where you might feel sorry for him because you can tell that he’s just not that good at playing with others.

Or maybe he’s just more interested in other things.

Such spending hours and hours poring through all the picture books he can find at home or at the library. It didn’t matter that he didn’t always understand the words. ‘Cos he’ll simply make the stories up from the pictures in the books.

Sometimes he’ll just act them out.

Other times he would draw. Why is this picture of a caveman drawing on a wall relevant at all? I have no idea.

It didn’t matter that he was partially color-blind, with a penchant for mistaking orange for green or purple for blue.

By the age of nine, he had sold the only copy of his first original hand-drawn comic-book The Adventures of Hercules and Odysseus to his mother for a meal. The realization that he could make money from his art would come much later.

The boy would continue drawing throughout his adolescence, producing amazing works such as this illustration of Spider-man with banana fingers.

Years pass. The boy is now a man. A man pursuing a career in television, and in film.

At the age of 28, he co-wrote and co-directed the digital feature film S11, working from an initial draft by his friend. Those were fun times, but something didn’t quite feel right.

He felt that he was always living other people’s ideas about who he should be.

So much so that he didn’t know what his own voice was.

He realized he needed to reconnect with the little boy who loved to make up his own stories. The boy who really loved to also sing and draw (though not always at the same time).

So he embarked on a journey that sometimes feels like a terrifying free-fall.

But whenever he felt lost and alone and scared, he would draw.

And along the way, he started collecting more and more hats.

And it made him wonder if he was doing too much, if he was doing it all wrong.

It took him some time to finally realize that all those things that he loved doing were simply expressions of the one thing the child had been all along.

And in that instance, the child and the man became reunited.

“Cerealbox Studios is my story. Well not all of it. But a darn huge part of it. It has to be. Because drawing and telling stories is what I love. And everything I do at Cerealbox Studios is an expression of that love. And if you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably gonna be a part of it.

So be surprised.”

– Joshua Chiang