Viktor Madan, 44, is a soft-spoken introvert with a passion for creating whimsical art that makes people smile. The lifelong poet, painter and cartoonist just won a Moonbeam Award for his first published book, “The Bubble Collector,” an eclectic, self-illustrated collection of humorous children’s poems in the style of Shel Silverstein.

The awards ceremony for the 2013 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards was held last week Nov. 8 as part of the Traverse City Book Festival in Traverse City, Mich. The Moonbeam Awards recognize exemplary writers, illustrators and publishers of children’s literature across North America in more than 40 categories (“The Bubble Collector” won in the children’s poetry category).

Madan recently quit his programming job at Microsoft to pursue the creative arts full time, after many years of viewing his “raw urge to create” as no more than a hobby.

He was first inspired to “get serious” about writing poetry after visiting a traveling Dr. Seuss art exhibit with his kids almost 10 years ago, where he was awestruck by a display of painstakingly detailed original sketches. He says this was the initial “aha! moment” when he realized great poets don’t simply pick up a pen and immediately produce a masterpiece – but rather, that “genius truly is 99 percent perspiration.”

“That was the turning point for me,” he says. “I realized if I worked really hard at something, maybe I could produce something I’d be proud of.”

Encouraged, Madan read up on poetry as a real academic discipline and started working to improve his technical skills. Several years later, he was prompted to pursue his second artistic passion, painting, by a visit to the Musee D’Orsay in Paris. By 2012, he finally decided to turn both creative hobbies into something more.

“I took a leap of faith,” he says. “It’s been a very enriching experience making the transition for me.”

Kimberly Walters, his former boss at Microsoft, says it was obvious during the year she worked with Madan how passionate he was about his art – but she could tell it was a difficult decision for him to leave the company.

“I’s always scary to leave something you are good at that’s providing a very nice income for your family … to pursue a personal passion,” she says.

But according to Walters, Madan’s family and coworkers were all very supportive of his decision. She feels strongly that he made the right choice, adding that her own kids are huge fans of “The Bubble Collector,” and she looks forward to sharing more of his work with her family.

Madan wrote, illustrated and published “The Bubble Collector” entirely on his own last summer. He says it was difficult “wearing all the hats as a one-man startup,” but ultimately worth not having to alter his book according to someone else’s standards.

“I had this vision in mind and I wanted to control the reader’s experience of it,” he says. “I felt so close to that vision that I wanted to execute it all myself.”

“The Bubble Collector” is available at many independent book stores throughout Seattle and the Eastside, as well as on Amazon.

Roger Page, owner of Island Books on Mercer Island (which now carries “The Bubble Collector”) says anyone can get published these days, and he sees enough self-promoting “authors” each week to make him “very cynical” going into meetings. But Madan surprised him.

Page says he was dually impressed with Madan’s “serious and thoughtful” pitching strategy – a rarity among self-published authors, according to Page – as well as the high caliber of his work.

“[The Bubble Collector] is beautifully produced, it’s funny, it’s sophisticated,” he says. “It’s as good as anything by Silverstein. I thought it deserved a feature spot in my store.”

Madan has cherished poetry and graphic art since his childhood days in New Delhi, India. He fondly recalls his time as an undergraduate at the University of Delhi, where he’d often steal away to the library stacks and pore over volumes of Pelican Publishing’s “Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year” series.

This would later drive him to work as an editorial cartoonist for The UW Daily while getting his graduate degree in bioengineering at the University of Washington – demonstrating a gift for both right-brained creativity and left-brained analytics.

“It’s quite rare for people to excel with two contrasting brain functions,” says Walters.

Madan’s cartoons won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, The Washington Press Association, and were even published in “Best Editorial Cartoons” itself – an experience that Madan relishes as the “capstone” of his cartooning career.

But now, when he isn’t working on the finishing touches of “The Bubble Collector” (the next step is publishing a full-color e-book), you’re more likely to find Madan with a paintbrush in his hand than a pen.

His paintings are currently? have been featured in which gallery(ies)?)galleries on Capitol Hill and (which gallery?(ies?) in Issaquah. They run the gamut from abstract to new contemporary and employ a variety of mediums. And like his poems and cartoons, they’re always lighthearted with a “good dose of humor.”

“There is still a lot of art I want to create,” he says. “All I’m trying to do is make something that engages people, amuses them and makes them notice the world. And hopefully makes them smile a little bit more.”