AB
Hello! My name is Alfie Bramley. I am 23 years old, I drink way too much tea, and this is a page all about me!
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I've been making art ever since I was two: ask anyone in my family and they'll tell you how I would boss them around, ordering them to draw me all sorts of fantasy creatures, specifying colours and sizes and all sorts. It's a little bit of a joke that I myself started drawing because my family didn't get my specifications right, so I just got fed up and decided to do it myself...possibly a nugget of truth, but then two-year old me did also have a lot of fantastical/nonsensical demands!
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I am very fortunate to have had a very well-travelled childhood. My father made a point of showing my brother and I new places and cultures, and I have been very lucky to visit some places that others dream of. I have seen the Mona Lisa and toured Studio Ghibli, I have rode camels and drank water from mountain springs. These experiences and more have given me a deep desire to incorporate and appreciate things that are different and unusual into my artwork. It is also very little wonder that my favourite genre is fantasy, given how fantastical our real world is.
My main drive for my own work is a desire to tell a story. In a way, it is both the means and the end. I love the idea of being able to weave a grand complex narrative that wraps up the reader and carries them along like a river, especially if when they walk away, they realise that they'd actually like to jump in the water again. I can credit the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett for empowering this drive: in particular, the way he describes magic and the power of words, which just scratches an itch in my brain. Many other books have fascinated and excited me: his books have inspired me. If I can write a story about the post office that will make someone question their existence then I can die a happy man.
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Growing up as an autistic youth, I found I would often completely misunderstand social interaction. Other people and their subtleties were a source of great confusion to me. As such, having things explained to me, or being given sets of instructions, became incredibly important to me: without something set out clearly for me, I would freeze and hesitate. Over the years I have been able to combat this inability to act through hard work and personal reflection, and I can credit this to two key activities: acting and studying philosophy.
Acting taught me how to look through another person's eyes and understand how they think. Philosophy taught me how to look at existence and question how and why it actually works. Together they taught me how to look at and understand myself, and when coupled with my desire to tell stories, they drive me to tell stories that make the reader question everything.
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Of course that is all rather grandiose and a little exaggerated, but I do truly find that there are few greater pleasures than speaking words and watching someone's eyes widen with realisation. My current Dungeons and Dragons campaign is all about making my players question their character's beliefs and motivations, and my favourite games are all about questioning the machinations of greater things. If it wasn't already apparent, I am also a colossal nerd for lore, and I will happily spend hours either reading on the lore of a game, or writing my own. The deeper and more existential it is, the better. I can clearly point to the Dark Souls series of games for giving me a love of dark, god-questioning fantasy, and I can single out the Elder Scrolls series for fanning my passion for character creation and roleplay. The result is my focus on creating things that entice, enthrall and amaze.
Having just said all that about my own work, however, I must own up to some of my faults. Being so focused on that desire to create intricate, mind-blowing stories with rich narratives means that I can become obsessive over small details. However, this attention to detail serves me very well when I work on projects with other people.
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Working on my own stories, with no need to accomodate the voice of others, my work is intricate and meticulous, but I will also freely admit that it is heavy and laden with so many details that it can, ironically, become even blander.
Working with others is like being a whole other me. Bouncing ideas off of each other, throwing out sketches and concepts on a whiteboard, just trying out new things for fun...it's an amazing feeling. Working with other people who are enthusiastic and open-minded makes creating cool things incredibly easy, and at university, if we ever ran into a continuity issue, I could resolve it very easily because of how used I am to resolving much bigger story issues.
The actual realisation of an idea into existence is something that I treasure and a skill I greatly admire, in both myself and the incredible friends I have made at university. In the last few years, I have achieved a BA (Hons) in Game Art from Falmouth University, and a Masters of Arts in Game Design from Canterbury Christ Church University: during these years I have been privileged to work with people from all over the world, and have been able to grow and improve alongside them. I am currently working on a reverse-whodunit visual novel game called 'Greed and Ruin' with two of these fantastic friends, and I am very excited to realise the idea into an atmospheric, stylised experience!
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Thank you for taking the time to read all of this! I hope it's given you a bit more insight into me. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, growing up closeted, autistic and with the classic British humility that borders on negative ego, I find that expressing and advertising myself can be weird and difficult. I am actively looking for work, and if you have read this far then hopefully my work is of interest to you. I would be only happy to talk over social media, email, or whatever works: links down below!
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Now, I think it's time for a cuppa. Take care!