In light of world news, my own health, and the general busy-ness that the end of the year heralds, updating my blog feels like a particularly pointless endeavor. But the crux of any real habit is that sometimes you don’t want to do it. And discipline is doing it anyway.
So here I am, back after a two-week break to talk about what I’ve been up to when I’m not calling my representatives.
When In Doubt, Write
I’m a writer first and foremost. It comes to me far easier than drawing, and has been my coping mechanism far longer. Thanks to that I’ve been able to get quite a bit of writing done over the past few weeks.
I’m not a NaNoWriMo adherent, but in the spirit of the season I’ve been putting in at least an hour of concentrated writing per day. This isn’t limited to just my main projects, it’s an hour of writing about whatever I want.
I’m pretty happy to report that I’ve made some great strides in some projects that I haven’t yet disclosed. The future is looking interesting. I’m not yet ready to commit to “good”. I’m definitely hoping to maintain this momentum. Worry not, I am long winded enough on blogs so I’m not going to aim for 50k words in a script. I am merely aiming to get most of ID rough-scripted by the end of the month. It’s a pretty big – but doable- goal.
Comic Shorthand
Another small win has been a breakthrough in my flow. Previously, I mentioned I used Dubscript to work on my comic script. While it is great for final formatting, it is still a scripting application made for-well- normal scripts.
There is no single standardized method for creating comic scripts, even for multi-person production teams. Scrivener boasts a couple of templates: One is based on older practices while another is made to (hopefully) become the more accessible standard. Both of these templates are pretty similar in layout and purpose: to transfer ideas from writer to art team with as little loss of fidelity as possible.
A noble pursuit. But again, not for me. What I needed was something faster and less formal. I needed a process that matched my typing speed. I needed something I could edit in analog.
What I needed was a shorthand.
So of course I made one.
I won’t yet call it perfect, but it has already paid dividends in my script process. The main benefit being that setting and moving panels only requires a few keystrokes. This is essential when I’m working on my phone or tablet keyboard.
Is it beautiful? No. In practice it reminds me of iambic pentameter worksheets from high school. But it works so far. Here’s an example:
Page break notation is still being debated.
Perhaps one day when I’m a world famous comic author there will be some merit behind this madness. Until then it’s simply another attempt to fit the process to the person. I don’t have any lofty intentions, but if you have stumbled upon this blog and decide to try it yourself, let me know how it goes!
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
This was a heavy week. I had quite a few late-nights trying to tackle my unexpectedly heavy workload at both of my day jobs. On top of that the news this week and subsequent rallying and discourse took a lot of my attention and time. In short: I didn’t get anything drawn this week.
I barely got anything written and even now trying to type out this blog feels like a fight against my mental load. But weeks like this are inevitable. When weeks like this happen I know I just need to switch gears.
Reality is Bleaker than Fiction
I haven’t talked much about the main project I’m working on, as I don’t want to set the copy in stone until I have more to show for it. Suffice to say that it’s relentlessly heavy. The overarching theme of the project is history repeating, constant wars and the struggles of average people against various tyrannies with little hope for success.
The way I get most of my writing done is while redirecting from a dissociative state (thanks therapy!). This is fine when I’m dwelling on my own personal problems, but it doesn’t work as well if I’m hopping from a bleak reality to a bleak fantasy. Reading the news about those tyrannies in real life makes it too depressing to then spend hours building a world with those same atrocities in mirror image.
It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way (See: BLM protests, Arab Spring, etc). With the way American imperialism works, I’ll continue to feel this way for a long time to come.
So to cope, I write fluff.
Backup Projects
For those less chronically online: fluff is a fandom term for stories with no consequence. In original works it may be referred to as slice-of-life or similar, but slice-of-life does not have the key constraint of being angst-free.
The story I’m currently using as my fluff-bucket is Wonda’s diner (more info to come). The entire purpose of this story is to be comforting and explore southern Tex-Creole culture. No historical pedagogy, no big thoughts on the black condition, just fun times making etouffee with the family.
Between you and me I think that’s a niche that is underexplored… but I digress.
This isn’t my only backup story, others are more one-shots or light-novels but the benefit is the same. Mentally I get to spend some time in a fluffy and comforting place, even if it’s totally fake. I get some great ideas while I’m there for both the fluff project and very often for my main works.
I also get a lot of ideas while out running with my sentient tar line.
It was a rough week, I didn’t get a lot done. But I didn’t get nothing at all done. And that’s progress in my book.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
Art-and especially illustration- is about communication. If you made up a language no one else knew, then it’s no use getting upset when you can’t communicate. The same is true of art style. It’s your voice speaking a shared visual language.
There is one thing true about burnout for everyone and any type of burnout. There was once a time when you could do it. Before you burned out you could handle all of your various tasks. Before I burned out I could draw.
And in order to draw I had to learn how.
This sounds horribly trite now that I’ve typed it out but it’s the base of my point. When I first learned to draw back in high school-that’s right I’m not one of those drawing since I could hold a pencil sorts- I had one single reason to do so. I didn’t think my latest story would be best told in words, but rather as a manga (I was 16 and full weeb, sue me).
To reach that goal, I would arduously copy manga and anime that I loved while making changes I thought were cool. After mastering the secret art of the other and visible hands I felt confident enough to start translating things I saw into other angles or poses. After I’d done that for long enough I felt I could draw my own stuff. And I did!
I never lost the habit of marking images I really enjoy. Modern platforms make it easy with bookmark functions everywhere. But I did lose my habit of emulation.
Not the Starter, But the Fuel.
I stopped actively emulating styles when I was confident in my own style enough to work without a reference. I had a particular way of drawing chins, eyes, hair, and noses that suited me for the time. It made sense to stop the practice of emulating others because I was emulating myself.
After a while, the way I was drawing no longer suited my tastes. Tastes change, it’s a fact of life. Yet by the time my taste changed I no longer had a way to get out of it. The result? A circle of frustration that extended my burnout whenever I’d try to get back.
Without emulating artists I liked, I no longer knew what about their art I enjoyed. When I don’t know what I enjoyed, everything I tried sucked.
Finding Myself Again
It may not seem apparent yet, but I have a very fun life philosophy that many other artists and writers share: When in doubt, buy a notebook. I’ve got separate notebooks for tons of things. I was the kid in school who had a folder for each subject, and it stuck.
There’s potential to dive into each one and their purpose, but suffice to say I do actually use them. I have a journal, a commonplace, a thINKbook, specialty media sketchbooks, project notebooks, and a returning champion: The Inspo Book.
The Official F↑ book deserves its own post.
It’s a returning champion because my first sketchbooks were analogous to this. I no longer have them because these weren’t my sketches. They were just observations of what I liked at the time. Going back to that feels like going back to who I was when I first learned to draw.
It feels like it might work this time.
What It Is
Sketchbook might also be too lofty a word for the first version. They were piles of printer paper in cheap brad folders. Archival concerns were a non-issue. They got tossed into recycling with the rest of my class notes at the end of the year.
Now I’m a staunch supporter of perfect-bound notebooks, so the format has changed, but the heart is still the same. Cheap, high volume, disposable. I will be tossing this once it’s full.
I think that’s the most important part of this. It’s disposable. More than anything else this is a tool to be discarded. Keeping it and revering the notes you take would turn it into a style guide. This is also why I’d urge keeping this separate from your personal sketchbook, even if you’re a single-spot sort of person.
The second component is a set of images. Specifically stylized ones. Sculptures, paintings, drawings, animation frames all work. You’re not going to find style in a photo of real objects. Save that for the anatomy/perspective studies. I would also urge that even though this is not something you’ll be sharing online -it’s not your work, it’s an analysis of someone else’s-, you should do your best to find the original source.
Why? When you know who you admire you can see what they admire. Modern social media and the strength of search engines makes it very easy to go down a rabbit hole and find even more inspiration. It’s so much better than waiting on an interview like in ye-olden-days.
The final component is you! This is all about you and what you like, what made you look, the specific things that draw you to the image, the way your eye goes around it. If an entire classroom of people were given a set of identical images and told to do this project, no two would be the same.
How to Make an Inspo Book
The simplest way is to print out copies of illustrations with room on the paper for your notes. You’d want to limit it to one image per letter-sized paper, just for detail visibility. The digital method would be the same, though I do find the zoom capabilities make it easy to get lost in the weeds.
If you’re like me and don’t want to do anything the simple way, here’s what you’ll need:
Materials:
Your images on cheap non-archival printer paper. I used grayscale because I’m not trying to analyze color this go-around. Since it’s B5 I put 4 images per page in A4, this is just large enough to be clear but not detailed. If you want a high res picture, buy it from the artist.
A CHEAP notebook with the size and lining of your preference. I picked this up at DAISO because it’s the closest dollar store to me. Remember, we’re throwing this away in a few weeks.
Scissors to cut out images
Glue, something compatible with the super thin cheap paper (liquid would not work here)
Your favorite marking tools, including one in a contrasting color. Don’t pick anything that bleeds, we’re working on glorified toilet paper.
Optional
Heavy Tape because this notebook is so cheap that the covers had already crunched a bit on the drive home.
Writing board made with an A5 card holder (decorated with a favorite manga page) because again, the notebook is so cheap-
Markers for the cover because I actually do this to most of my cheaper notebooks.
Process
Go with one image per page-no more, no less. If you’re working in a particularly tiny notebook, put the image on one side and the notes on the other. Write down the source somewhere. Right before tossing it’s important to see if there are any repeats. Those are the artists you want to do a deep dive on and look at their inspirations (usually found in their like/follow list if they’re contemporary.).
Next, use your high contrast color to circle parts of the image you like. Number them in order of noticing them. What you notice first is what you like most. Very simple. Don’t turn this into a love fest. I limit it to five.
High contrast ink doesn’t show well in scans so I tried to copy in markup.
After you finish circling, go through and put words to what you like. This is a conversation with yourself, not a judgement of the artist. What you like is what you want to take away from this. Writing it down captures the thought. Even if you’re working digitally, do not type, write.
Now that you know what you like, it’s time to draw. Take the time to sketch out and attempt the very same things you wrote down. Don’t aim to copy, aim to explore what it looks like when you try to reach the goal of “line width conveys depth”. The goal is to spend no more than 5 minutes on an image, including the exploratory sketching. Any longer and it becomes a study. Leave little notes of what you learned.
Then move on!
This is just an elongated process of what happens in your mind when you view an image you like (as an artist), but the act of writing it all down cements your likes in your own mind. This is about removing the mystery.
B-But My Originality
Far greater writers than I have talked at length about the concept of originality. Inge and Voltaire are both more eloquent in their description of it as “unconscious plagiarism” and “judicious imitation“. But this is my blog, so I get the pull quote.
“If you were truly original, no one would understand what the hell you were going on about.”
Me, drunk and bitching on discord,2019
Art-and especially illustration- is about communication. If you made up a language no one else knew, then it’s no use getting upset when you can’t communicate. The same is true of art style. It’s your voice speaking a shared visual language.
In the early days, friends who weren’t familiar with anime always asked my I gave all my drawings mustaches because they interpreted the stylized split line as a Dali-esque pencil ‘stache. I wasn’t failing at the easiest line in a drawing, and they weren’t being mean or delusional. I was just drawing in a different language.
These are both toothy grins, but how did you know they were?
The Inspo book is a method to find that language. Going through this process helps you better understand what it is about an image that communicates things you like. The way mouths or hands are drawn, the weight of the linework, the use of screentones, anything and everything you notice becomes a new word you can use to communicate. This is about learning to speak.
The Final Moral Quandary
I’ve given this process to a young artist before, and their first question was: isn’t this stealing?
Yes, if you post it and say it is yours. No matter how good your stuff looks in this book, it’s not yours. Besides, thinking of it as such removes the disposability. If you stumble on a process you really like, try it again in your sketchbook. Taking all of these dissected thoughts and making it your own is a whole other process.
One I’ll get to when I finish this book.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
Welcome to the Burnout Diaries, where I spend some time investigating the reasons behind my eight year burnout and try to fight my way back out.
The secret to curing most things is a proper diagnosis. I spent a lot of time over the years trying to figure out just what was holding me back from creating. There are many reasons that stopped me in the first place but there’s one that kept me from coming back. I fell out of practice.
Stylus Woes
Last week I installed a mount for my monitors to improve my drawing setup. I’m happy to report that it works great! I’m less happy to report that my hand isn’t cooperating.
This is something I’d seen coming. I’d kept it at bay with often belligerent optimism, but the truth of the matter is that after six years away from digital drawing has made the first days back hilariously tough. The biggest issue is the screen. I stare at screens all day, but the luminosity of my tablet means I’ll probably need to invest in blue-light glasses. My eyes were spinning after just a few minutes fiddling around. Secondly is positioning. Most of my life i’ve drawn on a flat surface, ergonomics be damned. The only exception being when I paint or do life drawing. Unlike painting, digital drawing requires a short grip on the stylus, so the hand angle feels particularly uncomfortable.
There’s nothing to be done about it except practice.
Stylization Woes
I did manage to get a little bit drawn digitally this week. I didn’t like the results nor did I expect to. the most important part of these exercises was seeing where I was. The frustrations that lead to my burnout have somewhat cooled and I’m better able to determine what was ticking me off. It’s stylization!
Mostly, I don’t stylize enough. It takes a lot of effort and provides a mediocre result that’s too close to realism, but not close enough to be realistic. In short, I hate how lackluster it is.
The source of this particular issue probably comes from my desire to be able to draw different faces in my style. It’s actually important to certain plot points in ID that certain people look noticeably alike versus the general populace. There’s only so much you can do with weight and height if everyone has the same doll face.
Unfortunately attempting that in my style means I leaned too much towards detail and not enough towards shape. I’m sure if I continue to work at it I’ll find a happy medium, but I can confirm that it’s not a fun thing to continually miss the mark while trying.
Saddle Sore
Getting back in the saddle when you’re older is always harder. It was harder to learn to run after breaking my leg as an adult than it was to learn as a gummy-boned baby. It was harder to learn how to use my ergonomic mouse after years of using flat handed ones. Everything is harder when you’re aware of how it’s supposed to go.
Probably because of all the time wasted remembering how easy it once used to be. It’s far quicker to lose muscle memory than to forget it, and I think the same is true of my art block.
I find it significantly easier to putz around with making thumbnails or color studies in my sketchbook than I do in creating a focused drawing. These are the sort of things that I did during the several years of my worst art blocks – and even then only rarely. However if I were to sit down and think: “I want to draw this character”- I’m in for an hour of frustration before giving up.
I’m exceedingly happy with the quickly rendered thumbs for future paintings, but quit this Kaeya drawing out of frustration within an hour.
So how does one solve this? How do you reach a point where you no longer reminisce as you attempt to work? That’s a question I’ve yet to figure out, whether for running or for art. If I do figure it out, y’all will be the first to know.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
I’ve been working on quite a bit both this week and the last, but nothing is as exciting as getting my project pages up! I’m loathe to leave this post as short as a tweet, so let’s do a brief recap of the week.
Art’s Better with Friends
Contrary to popular belief, I am not immune to peer pressure. I just happen to have fewer peers. I have been excitedly awaiting the release of Sky: Children of Light on PC, and the constant chatting with my streamer friends has rekindled my interest in streaming myself. I’ve already got most of the setup for it, so it’s more a matter of restarting, just like art.
It’s been three years since my last stream and I’ve learned quite a lot about what I do and do not like in presentation, as well as what assets are necessary to have a comfortable-looking setup. I’ll need a lot of them, and because I’m particular, I’ll need to make them myself.
This is where the fun begins. I’ve been looking for an excuse to begin learning Blender, as well as get back in the swing of working digitally (I haven’t removed my tablet from its box since I moved into this house over a year ago.). Making Twitch assets will provide a great ramp to both of those goals. Not only do I need emotes and channel panels, but also I want to have complete control over my follow and sub animations- so they match my overlay.
I spent a good chunk of the week playing in Canva to make an overlay concept that I liked.
Did I mention I’m also making my overlay, and since I am not going to steal the work of the great Takehiko Inoue- I’m going to make a comic page to go in the background. Oh, And a PNGTuber to preface my eventual VTuber. And maybe some opening/closing animations. And-
As usual, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Someone should probably take away my scissors.
Remembering my Roots
Working on my imminent Twitch stream has made me consider what I enjoy about creating. I found myself happily planning and plotting out what I’d do next with none of the self-deprecation that’s plagued my art for the past decade.
Part of it is because it’s new. Part of it is because I know I’m bad at it. Most of it is because I don’t have any expectations of excellence. My relationship with Excellence is best explored with a therapist, but suffice to say that it’s a big hang-up for me when it comes to doing anything. If I don’t feel that I’m expected to excel, I can pursue it without issue. Otherwise it’s a near insurmountable task.
Separating my fear of excellence from my art has been a challenge I have yet to defeat by attacking head on, but I may be able to get to it in a roundabout way. I know I’m terrible at non-organic forms like buildings, cars, and robots. I also need a ridiculous amount of those non-organic forms to complete a sci-fi comic.
So why not (re)start there? Finding base models I like will take a lot of iteration before I have something that I can bring to blender for final rendering (there is absolutely no way I’m drawing the pod system by hand every time it appears).
I spent a lot of time in my thINKbook (more on that later) this week doing just that. And against all experience in the last decade, it was fun. It was fun enough that I want to do it again until I get it right. It was fun enough that I remembered I wanted to make comics because writing can’t convey just how cool the pods and other little bits really are.
It’s like remembering where I came from. I missed this, and I hope the feeling stays this time.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
For the rest of creatordom, I’d say the vast majority of creatordom, they are not creating content. They are writing, drawing, painting, horse-training, sharing and just want to share that love with the world. It also happens that the most efficient way to share that love with the most people is through these platforms.
I decided against posting last week because I wanted to devote my writing energies to getting the next chapter of the script for ID completed. I’m making good progress and having some of those fun breakthroughs that only happen when you’re clacking away.
Even though I spent most of the past few days in a bubble of scriptwriting, I still managed to get peeved by a discourse that seems to pop up every few months from different places.
It’s always centered on the same idea, the idea that people who post online are posting content for the pleasure of the great unknown audience. This is often posted by some twenty-something who wasn’t alive for the birth of internet fandom and niche spaces and doesn’t understand the decades of shit creators went through just to have a stable place to share their work.
Going into the history of all of that would be going into the history of the internet itself, which isn’t what this blog is about. What this blog is about however is art. Writing. Maybe some comics and zines.
Not Content. I’ll never be convinced that I’m creating content.
What is Content?
We’re working with the secondary definition today, not the one where content equates to a state of satisfaction. Now that that’s all cleared up, let’s talk about what content means online.
Modern social media platforms all host and generate content. In the eyes of the programmers and profiteers, there are three sectors of the website all designed with one purpose: profit
Infrastructure
Content
Ads
Infrastructure is what differentiates TikTok from Instagram, Facebook from Twitter. Untold amounts of money is sunk into designing platforms that keep you there for longer, whether on the creator side or the consumer side.
Content is what keeps these platforms running. Without creator videos, YouTube is just another channel and TikTok wouldn’t exist. Content is what draws users in so that they will view the most important part of this trifecta (to the platform owners) ads.
Ads are the end-all-be-all purpose of social media platforms. Ads are why content is content .
A Term for the Profiteers not the Proles
Aside from some pretty clear no-go’s, ads don’t give a damn what video they appear on/between/beside, as long as they are seen. The same psychiatric help blurb being mentioned by a girl about to talk about her eating disorder and a guy about to do a Mario speedrun? Sure. An ad for high performance sportswear midroll of a historical masonry video? Why not? And don’t forget to buy RV insurance between looking at kawaii tattoos.
Ads don’t care, and aren’t tied in the slightest to what you’re viewing. They’re predominantly based on your personal search history and some other (potentially unethical) data collections from your internet history. You could be watching videos about rocket science, a high school production of Hamlet, or just colors and shapes and noise. After all, that’s all content is. Meaningless colors-shapes-noise that seamlessly feed you into ads.
Content Generation
It’s completely understandable how people raised on a post-niche internet end up believing the all-is content lie. For one, it’s a really sexy lie. It says that the internet is a walled garden made just for you, Bezos-Zucker-Oogle’s specialist little viewer. Here there are hand-crafted and hand picked niceties just for your viewing pleasure, and the only reason anyone posts anything ever is to get 0.001 seconds of your time through the like button.
Therefore everything posted should attend to your sensibilities, and if it doesn’t you’re fully justified in making a fuss. You can see this in the comment section of even the most bland of paint mixing videos. Why is this on my feed? This is crap. You’re mixing in the wrong direction.
There is no assessment of why this person has decided to post themselves arduously mixing paint to match a CD, what they get out of it, or if they’re trying to spread the color matching hobby to others. No, it’s just content. And perhaps even worse, there’s no internal assessment of whether they might like to do it themselves, or support the hobby.
No, content only exists in the now, and has no purpose beyond the viewer’s pleasure for the few moments it is on the screen. And that’s just the way ads want it to be.
A Tenuous Situation
There are some creators that just create content. All three of the short-form video hosts are inundated with robot voiceovers narrating viral reddit posts over stolen baking clips. These require no thought, no energy, no investment. These could be automated if the creator is tech-savvy enough. There are also those who just steal other’s creations to generate content faster because it’s algorithmically better to post more than to post in good faith. And ads run on them just the same.
For the rest of creatordom, I’d say the vast majority of creatordom, they are not creating content. They are writing, drawing, painting, horse-training, sharing and just want to share that love with the world. It also happens that the most efficient way to share that love with the most people is through these platforms. How else do two horse-trainers across the ocean meet?
Every creator on these platforms has made the choice to deal with the possibility that their work can be sent to the shadows for falling out of trend, can lose their community due to a freak accident, and will very likely have all of their unique ideas stolen without credit by a much more popular aggregator that posts 6 times a day. It’s -unfortunately- the price for the possibility of fame.
But some creators -by choice- revert to the pre-content days of internet and choose to post on niche sites. Sites without algorithmic ads, or sites without ads entirely.
Like Archive Of Our Own. (henceforth referred to as A03)
The Original Discourse (This Time)
This time the discourse arose out of a viral tweet over what is-and-isn’t allowed as a fanfiction commenter. Commenter etiquette as a social common is something of the distant past, which has to do with internet history, which I won’t go into. Suffice to say that many authors left their very justified reasoning: they post to share with fellow fans of the same specific thing they wrote about. Not for improving writing, not for soliciting critique, but for the sole reason A03 exists.
Of course those who believe they’re the internet’s specialist-little-viewer took umbrage to this and thus the discourse began. They were understandably piled on and tweeted (twote? tweeten?) into submission. But this highlights a bigger issue. An issue that wasn’t on the side of the viewer, but on the side of the authors.
Everyone -even while defending their writing- continued to refer to their work as content, just like the original poster did. Content to refer to writing specifically made to celebrate fandom. Writing that would not exist except for someone having enough love for a creation to transform it. Writing that would not be the same if it were about a different series, or had different motivations.
That’s not content, and we shouldn’t fall into the trap of agreeing with what ad sponsors want.
You’re a writer if you write, a painter if you paint, a gamer if you play games, and a fashion critic if you sit around talking about fashion week. It’s not content. You’ll never convince me it is.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
Welcome to the first iteration of my studio chat, where I chat about hat I did in my studio this week. I hope this adds some sort of accountability to my practice. Or it will just add more words to this blog. I suppose my blog days are now Sundays, which makes sense as on Saturdays I tend to do a lot of running around and carrying on-per my grandmother. This week was one submerged in research and renewal.
There was no drawing to be found this week. Truthfully I didn’t expect to. I still had the stack of reference books to get through. I try to make it a point to finish them all at least a week before they’re due. This lets me prep the pull list 1 for my next visit, especially when the bibliographies are as long as the text for some of these (looking at you Zafar). Once I know what I want to look at next, I can put in the holds and the beautifully expedient interlibrary system will have them at my home library by the time I return this stack.
It’s lovely really, especially when I can request out of system books. (I’ll be trying that next week with a book only at the local university. Wish me luck.)
This week’s stack. Support your local library!
This isn’t a book review blog so I won’t bore you with the play by play. I didn’t even read that closely. (Here’s a big secret. Don’t read reference nonfiction cover to cover. Read what applies to your research, make note of the bibliography for more direct info, and move on!). I knew what I was looking for and most of them had the details I wanted to varying degrees…except Robot Ethics 2.0, which was apparently written by people who don’t live in reality.
Yes, I did bitch about it on my BlueSky. How did you know?
Reading
I do admit the stack is a little big for one checkout. But I have an excuse-I am mentally incapable of working on a single project at a time! Of course I have a selection of books for multiple genres. It makes my pull list a little disjointed, but at this point I’ve got my favorite Dewey-decimals memorized ( Space, robotics, future science: 629; Cookbooks 641; Comics and Sequential art: 741; Writing: 808) .
Not to judge books by their covers, but there’s a clear demarcation between the two projects.
I tend to limit my pulls for each project to four, out of respect for my poor desk. It’s already overloaded with all of my art supplies and various really important glass skull bottles (full of nothing, just for lookin’ at). Yes, it does sag in the center and yes I am stressfully saving for a new solid wood top.
The first group is all about space travel, robots, and writing sci-fi. Technically these topics span all of my Future Recurrence series, but for ID-the main project I’m working on now- research is complete and I’m deep in scriptwriting and character (re)design. The topic for ID is also medically focused, so I get a lot more out of NIH/PubMed articles than the more fun-fact and personal writing used in these books.
The second group is so wildly different from the first that I had to hold them from a different county’s library system. Different systems suit the needs of different populations. The suburban system I use has a lot of STEM professionals and their high-pressure children. The city system has several colleges full of African American and local cultural studies majors. Different populations, different book availabilities.
The project I’m working on is also wildly different from Future Recurrence (henceforth referred to as FR). I have yet to do a post overviewing exactly what FR entails, but suffice to say that it is heavy. And that’s not just the amount of research I put into it. The space notes are just fun facts. To be completely transparent: FR has been a disassociative coping mechanism more than an art project for most (over half!) of my life.
Research
Working on something this depressing during a time in the world that is somehow even more depressing takes a lot out of me. I’ve lost countless plot points that I thought were cartoonishly outlandish to actual news events2. Thus the emergence of Wonda’s Diner, one of many lighthearted project concepts that had more potential than just being a nice idea.
I won’t divulge too much now as I need incentive build the project pages on this site. As you can see from the book choices: it’s about food and black culture in the area I grew up. It’s going to be aggressively comforting to the point of occurring in a slightly different reality. Sitcom style, slice of life style. the emotional opposite of FR.
Starting research for this new project doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the main dish. Wonda’s Diner is for when I need a break from ID. I’ve been stuck on the script for a while and working on the Diner got me back into the swing of workshopping dialogue in my head. I’m hoping to be able to do that for ID in the coming weeks. I really need to get over this hurdle so I can get to the fun part.
The fun part of course will be redesigning the characters and suiting them to the details of the plot. It’s been a long time since I did the first (and second and third) passes of these designs. Things change, and I consider this a new launch even though I tried back in 2018. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the project notebook itself.
Before and after reinforcing my project notebook for ID.
I very well can’t replace the notebook wholesale like I tend to do with my Moleskines in the event of catastrophe3. It’s already been transplanted once, and this particular notebook in this particular size is no longer available. This is the risk of any long-term project. Nothing is eternal, especially not in end stage capitalism.
Luckily enough, some things are at least archival. This week marks the retirement of my main journal. The new one arrived just in time, saving me the anxiety of running out of paper mid-thought.
The difference between used and new is always surprisingly stark.
I performed my usual end-journal ritual of flagging all of the pages with ideas for various projects. I’ll spend some time in the near future working through the archive to remind myself of plots and projects that I might be ready to pick back up.
But for now I’m going on a different kind of adventure. I’ve completed all of my chores and blasted through seven research books in little under a week. I think some time in Teyvat is well deserved.
I’m off for some light mischief. See you next week!
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
Figuring out a creative system that suits you is a lot of figuring out yourself.
Before any rise n’ grinders find this post, even though I do have two jobs right now, this sort of crunch only happens once or twice a year. If you’re expecting a long term solution to time management when you’ve given half of it to the corporate machine, you won’t find it here.
What I do have however, is a way to keep my fleeting creative thoughts organized until I can address them. It’s a two-notebook system that’s similar to the more popular bullet-journaling and commonplacing but with enough changes that I can’t neatly fit into either method.
I refer to the notebooks as Left and Right Brain, which will likely come up several times throughout this blog, especially as I begin to gain speed on projects.
(Photo of both books: It also refers to how I place them when I’m about to start a brain dump)
Notebook Junkie
To understand how this method came to be, you must first understand that I am a certified notebook junkie. I will spend hours in a stationery shop assessing every minor detail of a notebook from the way it’s bound to the exact grey of the lines and tooth of the paper. I’m especially guilty of this when it comes to sketchbooks – but that’s a story for another post.
Many systems work to reduce the number of accessories in use but after decades of the less-is-more path, I found that having multiple notebooks suits me better. I guess that makes me some sort of renounced minimalist.
This process took decades to determine. As a child I wrote stories in cheap spiral notebooks, one for each. They were cheaper than candy and available at all of the same places. This is perhaps where my multi-note habit started.
In middle and high school the now-ubiquitous Moleskine was just starting to stock on American shelves. They were fancy and expensive but the pocket-size version really appealed to me as someone who’s parents read their diary on a few occasions.
Ever since, it’s become a habit to have a Moleskine with me wherever I go, and only a Moleskine. Whether journal, planner or sketchbook, I always had one in my bookbag or purse for twenty years.
A one-journal system was perfectly reasonable during school. Books and homework were heavy, and massive Texas schools meant hauling across large swathes of land at a fast clip. Four extra notebooks just-in-case I had a good idea didn’t make sense.
Now I work from home and have for years. Specifically, I work in a sector that was remote before it was cool and will remain remote for…ever? So without the practical need for minimalism I started testing.
The Right-Left Brain System
This system did not sprout fully formed overnight. I did a lot of things that didn’t work. I did a lot of things that seemed like they worked but couldn’t be sustained. I did some things that ended with a frustrated bout of slicing out pages and recycling the whole set.
I say this to say that if you choose to make your own system, don’t get frustrated if the first few tries fail. Figuring out a creative system that suits you is a lot of figuring out yourself.
In the end, I came up with this three-notebook system.
Artist’s rendition
(Right) Braindumping
(Left) Braindeveloping
Project Work
Just like how our left and right brains are cooperative despite the hemispheric separation, my notebooks aren’t separate holy grounds. They’re just in charge of different parts of my process.
Step One: Get It All Out
Once a journal – always a journal. I have been journaling (specifically with this kind of Moleskine) for two-thirds of my life. It’s a habit I’ve had since childhood and will likely have until old age.
It’s also a very fast, low effort habit. I keep my journal within arms reach, even at home. I can uncap a pen and scratch out an idea faster than opening an app to leave a voice note. A quick doodle, a note about inspiration, a name I like, a plot twist can all be put down in a matter of seconds. No analysis, all creativity. That’s why I call this my right-brain.
Even if it’s a busy day at work, there’s enough space between report loads and phone calls to drop in a few notes. If I’m having a dedicated brain-dumping session I can pump out pages and pages of concepts and walkthroughs.
An average page in my journal: Lots of sticky notes, doodles, and of course a full page of daily angst.
But once I get them down and move on to other things, it becomes harder to pick them back up. The are scattered and disorganized across several pages-often months, even years apart. When I am ready to pick up a project, finding all of the bits and pieces and remembering what I meant becomes a hellish task.
Where is the line between shopping lists and project plans? What year did I come up with this idea? What the hell did I mean by “dead butterfly”? I needed a more efficient way of gathering my creative thoughts.
Enter the left-brain notebook.
Step Two: Filter and File
What I now consider my left-brain did not begin as such an all-encompassing project. I learned about commonplace books through curiously clicking a suggested video on YouTube. The original intention was to keep my book notes organized for the book clubs I’m in. Most of the how-to literature on commonplacing has this sort of notetaking in mind.
Early plans for my “Book Log”
As I began using it I found myself falling back on tactics I used in college to keep track of my research. It snowballed very quickly from there to include little bits of project management, key notes to investigate later and so on until it became a catch-all for any idea I want to return to later.
Admittedly, the structure is still under construction. There are still a lot of note types I have not yet encountered, but for now it is a very effective quick reference. It’s especially handy in the calm after the storm of work deadlines.
This week I pulled four all-nighters in a row to get a fix out in time for a meeting -that was cancelled. I’d also spent the weekend before gathering all of my library holds that had suddenly come in, so I was flush with ideas and connections for my various stories- with no time to develop.
Enter the left brain, specifically the parking lot pages. Yes, just like the ones used in corporate meetings. This is where I store the names of books that pop up in reference when researching a topic, scientific concepts I need to explore for Future Recurrence, art safety processes I need to document, restaurants I want to review, and recipes I need to research for Wonder Diner. It’s a to-do list with purpose.
Once the crunch is over I can dedicate time to one of my many projects. I’m not beholden to any particular deadline when I’m developing ideas. I’ll simply pursue the one my heart desires at any given time. This is when the parking lot comes in handy.
All I have to do is pick a topic and continue where I left off. Once I do complete the topic, the lettered pages of the notebook allow me to annotate where I addressed that question. I keep this notebook open when working in one of my project notebooks.
Step Three: Project Notebooks
Not all of my projects are large or complex enough to warrant their own notebook. Those projects are also the ones that don’t really require any research or cross referencing for continuity. For these projects a stream of consciousness filtered into a to-do list is enough.
But for my historical and science fiction ideas I keep them in dedicated notebooks. This is an evolution of the spiral notebooks I kept as a child. School paper is not archival and by the time I graduated high school, many of my middle school writings were falling off the spiral. I purchased a perfect-bound dot grid notebook from Michael’s-now discontinued- and used it to keep notes for the comic idea I’ve worked on since high school (I think this counts as a coping mechanism more than a publishing project now, half a lifetime later. )
Project notebooks are where the work actually gets done. This is where I scope out the plot, plan maps and encounters, count out how many character designs I need to make, and doodle scene thumbnails to get the feel right. Of course the paper quality means that I can’t go through the full gamut of development, some things must be done on paper that can handle ink loads. But the vast bulk of actual story crafting happens here.
Future Finetuning
This system is still relatively new, so there’s still a long list of things to try and optimize. Once I have spent more time and filled up a left-brain or two I might make a more in-depth walkthrough so that others can try the system for themselves.
For now however, I’m happy with how easy it has become to pick up where I left off! It feels good to be able to connect my inspirations at the turn of a page without forgetting what I meant.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
Anyone who’s been on the internet as long as I have has tried blogging in earnest at least once or twice. I’ve kept my thoughts on all sorts of sites, from LiveJournal to Tumblr. Getting the thoughts out was easy, but referencing the key information when I needed it later was impossible. I needed some organization, clarity, and most of all: stability.
When I launched this site in 2017 I was fueled by ambition (and perhaps too many Monster Energies). The interface was overwhelming, and there was too much to do when I had other priorities. The site never made it out of the gate, and languished so long that I simply forgot it existed.
Artist’s rendition of myself after attempting to create a comic, keep a blog, work 70 hours a week, hit the gym 5 days a week, and maintain a semblance of sanity.
Now six years later I’ve found some sense of balance, so why not give it another try?
Actually, WHY?
I’m not one to start a project when there’s only one reason to do so. The six years of struggle at least taught me how to prioritize. When measured against all other priorities: If there’s only one benefit to a task, there’s no benefit at all.
Writing out each and every reason would turn this into a chapter book, so I’ll stick to my top 4.
Memory & Inspiration
I’m the sort of person who always has ten or so projects in action at once. While this is not inherently cause for concern (see: prolific DIY-ers) , I also have a terrible memory! The thing I tend to forget first is why I’m creating what I’m creating.
Once the why is forgotten, getting back into the swing of things becomes an insurmountable hurdle. How insurmountable?
I’ve had artist’s block for six years. Long enough to have lost all of the momentum and about half of the capabilities that I’d built up for over thirteen years.
I’m not sure yet and I won’t be sure until I’ve tried, but talking myself through my art journey in a way that I can return and reference will hopefully give me the confidence needed to keep pushing.
(And a little part of me hopes that this little blip in the great infinity of the internet will hope someone else before they crash)
Practice
I’m not just an illustrator. This blog will remain solely a collection of projects under the scope of Illustration just to keep it from being too overwhelming. I still have big dreams and plans that aren’t limited to just drawing. With a head full of ambition I believe that in the relatively near future I’ll be putting lots of energy into artist statements, blurbs, interviews and Q&A’s-the whole nine yards.
More realistically, I feel that blogging is the practice I need to reawaken my original creative tic-creative writing.
Organization
As my projects continue to grow towards completion I want to have an organized way to show them to friends new and old. Social-media platforms are great for immediate gratification with platform users but are limited when talking to normal people. Or as I call them: The Offline.
Escaping the big two (three?) platforms is not just a matter of wanting to communicate with my real-life acquaintances, which brings me to my biggest reason:
IP Protection
The future of online art is uncertain to say the least. I doubt it will disappear entirely, but there’s no arguing that the landscape is drastically changing. Very few of those changes are beneficial to artists, creativity, or the basics of social connection.
To put it simply, there are bulls in the china shop right now. With only a limited selection of active networking platforms, the fall of Twitter is threatening the networks and livelihoods artists have built up over the two decades since. This is not the first time such a thing has happened (see: The Great LiveJournal Purge, DeviantArt Eclipse Exodus, Tumblr NSFW Ban, ArtStation no-AI censorship) , and it definitely won’t be the last.
It is because it is not the last that I am building my life raft here, independently and under my complete control. Looking at the timeline, I had that same idea in 2018. This time I hope it sticks.
Come along for the ride!
For now this blog will be rather fast and loose. I am still in the process of rebuilding my art confidence. Hopefully I will soon reach the point in my healing journey where I am able to post snippets of my development work to this unvisited website, but not yet.
Until then, I plan to do check-ins for my current ongoing projects. Even without the art there is still much to share about the research process, visual development, and most fun of all-writing!
I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good feeling.
Thanks for reading!
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
fatcr0w 