Tim van de Vall was drawing and creating stories since he was a toddler and always dreamed of a career in illustration and animation.

His parents, neither of them having an artistic bent, supported his creativity but pushed him to enroll in Georgia Tech. If his art dreams didn’t pan out, at least he’d have a degree, they reasoned.

Van de Vall, who will graduate from Tech with a computational media degree in December, decided to show his dedication to drawing by pursuing it whenever he didn’t have to be studying.

“I did everything on the side to show them my commitment to it,” he said.

That dedication has resulted in the publication of van de Vall’s first book, the children’s tale The Monkey Hole. The book, written and illustrated by van de Vall, follows a young girl who finds a hole from which an unending supply of monkeys comes out. She then has to figure out what to do with all of the monkeys.

Van de Vall downplayed the creative story’s origin.

“I was unpacking the dishwasher and for some reason the words ‘monkey hole’ came into my head,” he said. “I started to think about it, ‘What would you do with a cornucopia of monkeys?’”

To learn the answer, one can purchase the book at timvandevall.com.

Van de Vall created the book during a flurry of activity while on vacation visiting his brother in Houston. He wrote the script and drew pages in pencil at night. Within two weeks, he’d finished it. After returning to Atlanta, van de Vall used a Wacom tablet — a digital drawing board — to “ink” the story. He self-published the story through printing company CreateSpace.

Van de Vall has held signings at Atlanta-area coffee shops and was an exhibitor at Anime Weekend Atlanta in September. He has nearly sold out of the book’s first printing of 200 copies and plans to reprint it after coloring the now black-and-white pages.

The art in the book is a clean and cartoony style. Van de Vall said he was influenced by newspaper comic strips Calvin and Hobbes and Pogo as well as European comics such as Asterix and Obelix.

Though his parents aren’t artists, van de Vall said his ability does have “genetic inspiration.” His great-great uncle was Nico Bulder, a famous Dutch wood-carver.

Van de Vall was born in the Netherlands, and the family relocated to Johns Creek, Ga., when he was 4. His father works for Philips, the Dutch electronics company, and his career brought the family to the Atlanta area.

After graduating, van de Vall plans to pursue a master’s degree in sequential art. For a master’s project, he hopes to scan all of Bulder’s work and build a Web site for it. “Right now, it’s just sitting in a warehouse,” he said.

Van de Vall’s next book, Kao, will be the story of an oak tree’s life, starting with it being an acorn. He plans to self-publish it through his new company, Dutch Renaissance Press.

“It’s an allegory for life and how people wander as children,” he said. “I thought it would be a challenge to tell a story where the character can’t move for half of it. … I want it to feel like an old classic Disney movie.”

Van de Vall grew up on more recent Disney films like The Lion King and Aladdin, and he said that child-friendly aesthetic informs his work. He’s also starting an online adventure comic for kids called Timo.

Disney inspires not just van de Vall’s stories but also his future plans.

“I’d like to create an animation studio and build it up similar to how Walt Disney did it,” he said. “It sounds ambitious, I know. Eventually I’d like to create a school for kids to learn illustration and animation. I have a lot of goals, but those are very long term.”

For now, he’s happy just to use art to tell more stories.

“I’ve just always had a passion for it,” he said. “I have to draw, I have to write and I have to create.”