This Makes Deciding On Color Schemes A No-brainer! I'll Definitely Buy When The Beta Is Over.

Aaaaand of course the designs I finally settled on. It seems to have stuck cos I haven't been interested in changing them much for a few years now (actually I just checked, about eight years holy shit that's not a few at all!). Like I feel it reached some kind of creative maturity because they incorporate everything I learned about actual functional outfits over the years, but of course I still make them as fancy and stylish as possible. Because they are elves.

monica's wardrobe by quantumqstar

I wasted half my weekend with polyvore ugh internet timesucks y u so powerful. Monica's non-superhero clothes turned out a little bit more stylish than I intended I guess I just cant help myself. oops

I started using the internets to teach myself hobby electronics a little less than two years ago and struggling with whatever random 101 sites, blogs, tutorials, and instructables I could find. Slowly piecing together info that is never presented in an incremental-increase-of-difficulty way because its not class... It's always a continuous struggle to find information that is at your level when it is pretty much always going to be something you've already sort of learned, and therefore less useful, or something way too advanced and HOW do you fill in the gap, its always there at every level as you learn more things

I think it's useful to point out that I'm not really a self-taught artist. So while there is a TON of stuff I taught myself (particularly digital art/photoshop/coloring), I had the benefit of classes in the fundamentals (lifedrawing, construction drawing, figure drawing, etc) and that makes it SO much easier to expand from a solid knowledge base. So I'm sayin it is not the case here, while I learn to make gadgets and it is taking FOR EVER and driving me up all of the walls. But I want it so badly.

Then Adafruit put up their revised learning system site and I s2g every time I have a neat idea for a project but not sure how I'd make it, they put up a relevant tutorial basically the next freakin day. This has been happening without fail for SEVERAL MONTHS! I LOVE ADAFRUIT AND ADAFRUIT LOVES ME BACK

I always have a cosplay/props/gadgets wishlist that is miles long and an ever-expanding list of ways to make things blinky, beepy, and/or animatronic and going NUTS because I don't yet have the skills to accomplish what I want to do (which is everything), learning a skill is HARD, harder still if there are parts of it that are not interesting but sort of a necessary evil- which for me is programming, I hate it so much, its so painful, ughhg uugghhh it hurts, I have not studied this hard to learn something I dislike so much EVER but there is a blog I like called HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT and that has stuck with me all this time. It's how to get what I want and I'm not gonna let my hatred of programming actually stop me from typing up terrible buggy code and uploading it to a microcontroller to make leds blink and animate and change colors because I love lights and I love COLORS. Join me!

LETS PUT LEDS IN THINGS

I like em fuzzy.

ww!

cthonicseraph said: Question: Do you find it harder to build a world from scratch, or to build characters and situations in our own world? Like Furies of Calderon vs. Dresden Files (if I can use my extensive Jim Butcher knowledge for anything).

I don't think I've tried anything terribly close to our world to count, Shae's story is just such a distant, distant future that anything goes, and Edie's story is alternate history but I take an... obscene amount of "creative liberties", since steampunk is such an anachronistic mess anyway. Though I would say its still been the most challenging so far, because pulling handy answers out of my butt whenever its convenient won't fly. AU earth stuff is going to usually need SOME basis in our history and geography. Which also means some history or geography nerd is out there ready to point out mistakes and glaring omissions. Scary :|

And totally not the question but I definitely prefer Dresden Files (major bias from living in Chicago for four years, he does it so well!), they're funny and exciting and I enjoy his takes on mythology and magic. I couldn't get into Furies- it's pretty usual srs bsns style of dry high fantasy that bores me to tears. Also its kinda rapey

got infected by marvel brainworm for le reasons obvious. Everyone's got their character they want to see join the Avengers next, mine is Monica Rambeau/Photon which is never gonna happen. Its not like she led the Avengers or anything. BUT still I wanted to imagine her fitting into Earth-199999 continuity, costume redesign, fiddling with origin story etc. I aped her sexy detective look off Lisa Bonet's character in the US Life on Mars cos I loved her, don't judge me.

It's just that UGH she's such a cool character and her powers are AWESOME and because I am a huge nerd who's been reading a book about quantum mechanics (I'm not as smart as I think I am but I don't let that stop me) it did occur to me that using the powers to their greatest creative potential would require extensive working knowledge of quantum electrodynamics and radio physics. Thankfully she has help from resident radiation expert Bruce Banner :3 I can also imagine her tapping into Tony's uplink with J.A.R.V.I.S and asking him to calculate the best wavelengths to cause maximum damage and it would drive Tony so, so crazy. I just can't help but imagine him being a little possessive of his butler supercomputer :p

Worldbuilding Wednesday

I really missed doing this! I hope y'all are still interested cos I'd love to talk story! Worldbuilding is my most favorite thing k. If you want questions answered, nonquestions, advice, whatevs. Discuss!

A crooked crook with a crooked grin >:D Hurr. I gave up on trying to be efficient with my work, it's just not me. Well, I GUESS I can make it me if I have to, but I don't have to like it! Pattern from squidfingers.

I've been struggling with what feels like, to me, a severe chronic art block for most of my adult life. I can and will go MONTHS without drawing, sometimes farting out occasional barebones idea doodles, but sometimes drawing absolutely nada. When I was younger up until my late teens I had this burning drive to create ALL DAY ERRYDAY with ridiculously large body of work strewn behind me (so much that I have lost more than I've ever had and its still a ton), peaking very early in terms of skill level through the sheer brute force of practice and study... but burning motivations led to burnout. I don't actually blame being TOO driven to create (no such thing dammit!) leading to the burnout, BUT I think some forms of motivation are more sustainable than others. I was driven by ambition, belligerence, more than a little fear. Not so healthy.

I've learned that it's not simple laziness because the "draw anyway" strategy of overcoming art block has NEVER worked for me. The more I push through a block with sheer willpower the more miserable I become, and the only reason I create at all is because it's a source of joy! I have arranged my life in ways to protect this, and is a major reason I have steered away from turning art into a career. There are a lot of IRL factors that I don't really want to elaborate on here (depression is a major one, however), but art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and an artist's life has to have SOME stability in order to have the surplus time and energy to actually draw/paint/compose/write/craft. My own psychic resources have simply been too scarce, I haven't been able to afford to spend those resources on creative projects. Its a Hierarchy of Needs thing. Once Food/Shelter/Safety has been taken care of, I'm spent. There is no surplus.

Annoyingly, fangirling sometimes injects some extra energy and if I then also have the time I just start scrawling fan art uncontrollably (if the fangirling is intense enough you can bet I will MAKE the time! There is NO stopping The Feels). But it's a sugar high and as soon as it's over the art stops too, independently of my desire to actually FINISH anything either (this is the worst part for me, guilt and frustration are the sugar coma, tho the pattern did help me identify the various sources of creative energy).

I dunno how to sum this up. To make art you gotta have an idea. Then the energy to translate the idea out of your soul, and the time/materials to make the actual piece. The spark, the fuel, and the engine. My flavor of art block is akin to running on fumes. Most discussions of art block seem to revolve around the missing spark/faulty ignition. I don't know if this comes off as self-pitying I SURE HOPE NOT but! I do believe I know what steps I need to take in my life to do something about this, so. I'm working on it. Talking about this stuff makes me very uncomfortable but I think it's important. Plus this is an art blog and well, I guess I feel a need to explain myself when I don't post any art??

In the meantime I work hard to not be too mad at myself for lack of productivity (especially when I used to be disgustingly prolific) cos that's an energy-spending exercise not a refueling one.

Artists!! How do you deal with art block, or periods of depression? (Do you deal at all?) Researching my dissertation, scary stuff.