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I have a lot of real life experience that I can draw on. And I think that shows in the characters that I play because I'm always trying to find somebody - or find characters to play that I can identify with on a personal level or relate to. And I think it makes for a little bit more of an honest portrayal.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.

I always used to pretend to be different characters - cowboys, that sort of thing. I used to think that the Indians lived over the mountains that I could see out of my bedroom. As I grew up, I started to understand that acting was actually a craft, and there was no question about it, that was exactly what I was going to do.

But what I did think would be interesting is if we created a fictitious story of our own, and then took these stories that we had collected and assigned them to characters who would be played by actors.

Why not take a science fiction comic and put the characters in a small town to gain their particular perspective? A lot of that comes from me growing up in a small town on a farm, so that's what I know and what I'm comfortable with. My drawing style is also very sparse and minimalist, so a rural setting complements that.

I appear to be drawn to iconic characters and what they reflect back to our cultures.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.

Creating a character is about what they look like. The look speaks volume to the audience.

Some of the characters that I played as a kid were rebellious teenagers, and people would see those performances and project a particular image onto me. And 90 percent of the time, I would do everything I could to live up to that sort of image and be that individual.