The Long Versus the Short, part 1

Today is day-2 of the company "Hacksgiving" - basically a 3 day marathon event for several small teams to hack together some very simple game prototypes.

I'm working on a game called "Low - G". It's basically To-Fu meets Angry Birds Space. The point is to safely guide your poor little astronaut back to his ship by leaping off walls and using terrain and gravity wells to avoid the myriad obstacles that would end his meager existence on a premature note.

It's incredibly simple, and already fun to just watch the silly little astronaut bounce around the screen. Today is the serious work day - coding, putting together art, and getting it all working for the Wednesday presentations.

There are also several other teams working on some fun ideas: Dog Vs Zombies, Kitten Quest, a Welltris take with some neat twists.

But what I find most fascinating about this kind of activity, is the energy it produces. It's all pie in the sky, but in bite-size chewy bits that you can get your teeth around. There's no chance for that initial fire of potential and creativity to wane. No chance to lose motivation over a 3-6 month dev cycle. Or a two-year cycle, if you're working in the AAA/console arena.

I, quite literally, have today and only today to put together all of the necessary assets in a nice enough way to make it look presentable. I don't even have time to think about it!

Whew.

But this has me thinking about a little something called motivation. And in this case, I'm talking motivation over the longer term - while seeing a project come to fruition over months and years. I'm sure anyone who's spent any amount of time on a creative project has recognized the pattern - 

Day/Week/Month 1 - On fire! Lovin' it. This is gonna be awesome!

Day/Week/Month 3 - Well, I guess we could drop this, let that go. This part isn't working - we'll have to start over...

Day/Week/Month 6 - Man, I'll be happy when this is over.

Many of us have our side projects - our passion projects - and they are no less susceptible to the creeping chilliness of fraying determination. There are numerous answers to this problem. Some artist friends of mine deliberately keep their projects very tiny - very fast - to enable a quick turn around before that fire in the belly peters out. They find that to be highly rewarding, and I can understand why.

But what if, like me, you crave the challenge of something bigger, more complex? More involved. More...interdisciplinary.

What do you do then? When you stare into the face of a burning idea so big and terrible and complex, that whenever you tell anyone about it, they look on in amazement and say "good luck with that..." Even your supportive artist friends and family, from their outside vantage point, look on your goal with a mixture of awe, respect... and more than a little pity and hopeful desperation.

The hopeful desperation comes from the ardent desire that you do take it to finish - because that would then mean it's possible for anyone to do.

The pity comes from the recognition that it's also highly unlikely you will make it all the way through to the end.

But what if there were a way to drastically improve the odds of making that vision happen?

I think there is a way, though I could be wrong. And I will be testing my hypothesis on this as I continue work on Skybound and the rest of the Fate-Shifter Saga. Why not?

I'm sure a lot of people have opinions on this issue. What are your thoughts?

I'll weigh in on my next post!

The "Wall" in the Creative Process, part 2

Sketches from my morning train ride to work over the last week.

'cept Mr.Zom-zom - That was this morning. VERY early this morning...

Enough art-face-rubbery.

To continue from my previous post, what I wanted to talk about today is that cold specter that looms over every artist's shoulder - the inner-critic. The voice of "reason" that kills the imaginative. The voice that says "dial it down", "This is horrible", "Why bother, it'll never work"... And the list goes on ad infinitum.

I sit here, and I listen to that same critic on my back even now, telling me that I should be embarrassed of what I posted above. That I should probably take them down, they're not even finished...

That my writing is silly and simple, and who the hell would be interested in it anyway? See, look! No one even commented on your carefully crafted posts...

And so on and on... You get it by now.

So how do you get over it? How do you beat that horrible critic and shut him up for good?

My conclusion:

You can't.

EVER.

And you don't want to, either. You must accept him.

Why? Because if you shut him up, you shut yourself up - he is you. Or a facet of you. And he isn't necessarily always the bad guy. Sometimes, in some ways, he can even be an ally.

This voice is part of what forms what I call "the Rollercoaster". Some of you just might be nodding right now, going, "yes, yes. That's about right."

Or maybe not. Could be I'm just.... breaking new ground. Or something.

The Rollercoaster is the "ups and downs" type of affair many artists have with their art. When breaking new ground, inspired, or just executing well, we're joyous. We're ecstatic! We've made it. Finally busted the well of our creativity wide open! I'll never struggle again....  Until the next day, when everything we try to execute seems like it came out of the nether-region of a hippopotamus.

Anyway, this inner critic is what forms the two, in my opinion, most fundamentally important conditions to an artist:

First, and foremost: The inability to be satisfied with our work.

Second: The necessity to improve our work.

That voice of dissent, that ever nagging itch, is also the very thing driving you to be better. To give it your all each, and every time. To strive and work to overcome the errors of the previous try.

This is what a lot of people would call "becoming friends with failure."

Yet there is a difference between listening to the critic, and giving in. The critic will tell you where you need to go to appease him, if you listen. But he will be a cruel taskmaster that crushes everything you attempt, if you give in.

You may look at your drawings and say "I do feet so horribly. I suck at feet... God I hope no one notices..."

But there is another way to look at this:

"I am weak with feet.... I need to go practice drawing feet for awhile."

Let the critic guide your steps on your quest to get better. Listen to him, but never give in.

That's the wall I refer to - when you give in to the critic. Now, the fact is, sometimes, the critic is right. Something you're working on just isn't working, it's ok. It's ok to crumple the paper, turn the page, make a new document. It's ok.

Sometimes. In truth, most times, for me.

But sometimes, something you're working on is working, but it means something, and so it's scary. It makes you afraid of it. It makes your critic revile it even more. And so we become paralyzed by our fear, and hit the Wall hard. And give up.

We must be careful to understand that while we sometimes should kill our babies, there's almost always a way to keep one alive if we want to - if it's worth beating off the hungry baby-eating inner monologue long enough to bring to fruition.  For me, right now, the biggest thing is making sure to remind myself that I can always try again. A second draft. Oh, let me try that pose again. There will always be another page, another new document.

Just. Don't. Quit.

And don't be afraid to honestly congratulate yourself when you see something you are satisfied with - even if it might just be a hand in an image of eight people. One day, you will be looking at a whole piece or project or what-have-you, and instead of saying "Oh, I did that one thing there great" you'll realize your inner critic is saying  "Oh that's all really great,  everything except that one thing, right there. "

The "Wall" in the creative process, part 1

Now that introductions are over with, lets start to get to the meat of these potatoes...

So, as I'm working on the script for Skybound (don't worry if you haven't heard of it - If you stick around long enough you will) or should I say struggling on the script, I've been thinking a lot about an artist's perspective on his own work.  About just how fragile that creative spark that drives my hand can really be.

There need not be outside voices of any sort. Most often these voices are encouraging or at worst, unintentionally detrimental. No, what I'm talking about is how my own thoughts betray me. How the most powerful voice against my desire to create is the one in my own head.

This is always the case when we do something for our passion and not for money.

Like the marathon runner at mile twenty, we hit a wall. Not a physical one - an emotional one. Where we begin to question the very validity of the work itself. Is it even worth it?

I've read some few books on this idea, and have long thought on how to deal with it, but it is always there, and never gives up easily.

Not without a fight.

In that vein, I would like to present to you my current project:

A willful young woman with unusual mystical abilities is convicted of a crime she didn't commit, and is exiled.  But when a warmongering general seeking glory discovers the true nature of her power and threatens her with the destruction of her home, she must choose between giving up her freedom in the name of peace, or igniting a war in the name of freedom.

You will see this project constantly as I continue to work on it, and bring it to life.

As I stated above, I am struggling with the screenplay, but I am three-fourths of the way through that first draft - which will be a huge milestone. And, as you will see over time, I have a smidge of concept work already put together for it.

But I would like to open up my original thought for comment.

Everyone deals with self-doubt. But how do we overcome the link between our art, and our worth? How do we maintain the mind-set of completing our dream in the face of this self-recrimination?

I will follow up with my own thoughts on this in my next post, as well as discuss some of those that may appear below.

Opening Sequence...

So yeah, this is the spot where most bloggers seem to put the back-story.

The "Who-Am-I?"

Or "Who-I-Am."

Me, I'm pretty uninteresting. I don't want to bore you with the droll. In the interest of brevity, then, I will keep this short.

I am an artist. I do art for a living, I do it for fun. More specifically, I do illustration and animation. The rest will be revealed as I go along - assuming you are interested enough to discover the revelations.

The other obligatory component for getting a blog rolling is the "What's-It-About?"

Or "What-It-Is."

People want to know, right? Is this something worth my time? Interesting to me?"

For the sake of simplicity I will give you three categories of posts you will see here:

1. Things that I find of interest.

2. Things that I am thinking.

3. Things that I am doing.

I meaning me. If things you are interested in fall outside what will be contained in those categories, you will be unlikely to derive joy from my blogging experience.

At this point, some of you might be yelling "But you didn't actually tell me anything!"

To which I say;

Of course not!  What fun would that be?

And anyway, I'm too shy.