Sketch-OOdles!

Hey kids!  If you’re a filmmaker, animator, or storyboard artist and you don’t know what screen direction is, you might want to read this.

For the record, there are always exceptions to the rule in filmmaking, which is why I pointed out 3 examples here.

I’ve also found that comic books tend to NOT take screen direction as seriously as film does, but I’m still on the fence if this is wise or not.  My favorite comics pay close attention to screen direction so as to not confuse the reader.

(hi!! apologies for the late reply. i hope this can still be of some help to you despite that!)

i think that’s a feeling every artist struggles with at some point. you love art, you love making art, and it’s immensely frustrating when that suddenly doesn’t work out despite all the effort you’ve been putting in. and then you start to lose motivation, question yourself and everything you’re doing, and it’s a vicious cycle that’s really hard to break out of. so what can we do?

well, here’s a thing. let’s call it the productivity branch.

i feel like my own creative cycles are very seasonal. not in the sense that my creativity depends on the season, but rather that my creativity itself goes through different seasons.

spring: new ideas, motivation, productivity still low 

summer: lots of ideas and very productive

autumn: still productive drawing leftover ideas, but new ideas are harder to come by. and then 

winter: nothing. art-block. lack of ideas, everything-sucks-syndrome, no motivation, the creative part of my brain is basically hibernating

that’s you up there. you’re in a creative winter right now. and without any inspiration or motivation it’ll be hard to find a way to cross that gap over to a new spring (pls bear with the cheesy analogies). and if your cut yourself off from inspirational influence you might start to think that, hey, this isn’t so bad. i mean, who needs spring right? just means you have to do things. be active. yikes. winter’s pretty chill. haha. 

but don’t do that. it’ll come around and bite you at some point, because that lack of motivation and activity might start to seep into other parts of your life, not just the creative one, and you don’t want that.

so! when you don’t have ideas and motivation to create, then don’t create. but instead make an effort to inspire yourself. inspiration entails motivation (and vice versa).

read books, short stories, poems, science articles, anything

go on walks, explore your surroundings, if affordable maybe even go somewhere farther away

let people tell you stories

listen to new music

try things you haven’t done before (deliberately break old habits)

go through other people’s inspiration blogs

collaborate with a friend

get really invested in something, talk to others about it

watch movies, animated shorts, documentaries 

or speedpaintings and art tutorials

try different techniques, or new brushes

look at art that’s so inspiring that you can’t believe you’re still just sitting there not drawing anything yourself

and most importantly, be receptive. take in the world around you, rearrange it in your head, and draw whatever you end up with. that’s the core of what creativity is

think about what you want to achieve. make your friends smile? draw something really cool you can print out and hang up in your room? touch people’s hearts? deliver a message? whatever it is, and however small or inconsequential it might seem, keep it in mind. it’s your light at the end of the tunnel.

if want to keep drawing for the sake of muscle memory while you’re still looking for your inspiration: 

illustrate your daily activities

draw a random shape or find one in a photo (clouds are ideal for this) and turn it into a character or object

pick different pictures and combine elements from each of them into one drawing

do plain ol’ studies 

basically don’t try to come up with things completely from scratch. find something to work with and go from there. that will save you the mentally draining task of coming up with a subject, so you can start actively drawing right away

if you still can’t make yourself pick up a pen, make a schedule. train your brain to turn its creative gears at a specific time of the day, make that a habit. do it for pavlov

approach drawing with the awareness that what you create might suck, especially when you’re out of practice, but this doesn’t mean that it will always suck, and it doesn’t mean you suck. if you learn to dissociate your current creative achievements from your worth as a person and your future potential you will get back to work a lot easier, improve faster, and be more resistant to setbacks. 

find something that makes it worth the effort of working through the frustration. 

Can we please stop stealing people’s art without their consent?

Especially Japanese artists?

Because believe or not, when you take a dojinka’s art and post it somewhere else without permission, not only will you make them very sad (not to mention angry) when they find out, but you could cause them some serious legal problems as well. 

I am not lying. Artists are in danger of losing everything they have if distribution of their parody work gets out of hand and the original publishing company gets wind of it (and decides to prosecute). Quite a few artists have already had their lives pretty much ruined because of the thoughtless actions of irresponsible western fans.

The reason why the dojinshi industry and sites like pixiv are even allowed to exist is because of the implicit understanding that artists who make parodies will control and limit the circulation of their digital artwork, and that printed dojinshi will only be made available to a limited audience. When you take an artist’s work and upload it somewhere else, you are taking away that control, and putting them at risk. 

Re-posting art without the artist’s explicit permission is not okay. Adding a source does not get you off the hook either. Neither does not adding a source at all, or saying you don’t know the artist. You took something that wasn’t yours without permission, and that means you stole it. Reblogging and liking such posts only gives re-posters the incentive to steal even more art - making the situation worse for the artist. For the love of god, have the decency to respect the rights of other human beings.

Still not convinced? Then let me take an example of an artist I’m sure you’re all familiar with: emi (of the 10-RANKAI circle).

Thousands of western fans have constantly been stealing her art for years. As a result, not only she has changed her website url multiple times, but has now renamed her circle in an effort to shake off the so-called fans who keep going against her wishes and stealing her work.

Unfortunately, her new url has already been found, and her gallery has been plundered of its copyrighted content. And it seems that re-posters can’t read, because they clearly don’t heed what she says on her site; in FOUR DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, including plain English:

DO NOT UPLOAD MY FANWORKS TO OTHER WEBSITES, COPY AND REPRODUCE THEM, PUBLISH THEM IN FANZINES WITHOUT PERMISSION.

There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to disrespect the wishes of artists like her in this manner. If this continues, she will no doubt block foreign servers from accessing her site, or perhaps even stop sharing her work with others altogether. I’ve seen this happen to so many other artists who couldn’t take this abuse before. 

But pixiv artists don’t say they don’t allow re-uploads on their profiles.

That’s because it’s already prohibited in the terms of use, and they don’t feel the need to repeat it. You can even find it on the help page:

This art theft has gotten so fucking bad, a flipping union has been formed to try and protect amateur artists’ rights. I shit you not (and by the way, emi happens to be a member).

But where will I get my fanart?

You’re free to browse artist’s galleries, save art to your hard drive, and enjoy them at your leisure. Just don’t upload the art. It’s not yours. You have no right. 

But I wanna share awesome pixiv art with my friends.

Then link them to it without re-uploading the damn image. It’s not hard.

But I wanna share art on my online communities.

There are many wonderful artists with tumblr accounts. Look for them, enjoy their work, reblog from them. Your support will inspire them to create more, and encourage other artists to come in (I can’t tell you how many times a tumblr artist has said they won’t make art for the SN/NS fandom because there are too many unscrupulous art thieves in it).

Quite a few Japanese artists are here too (a popular Korean narusasu artist, um-mmma, gets their art re-posted here all the time, yet they actually have a tumblr). You could always learn to draw as well. You might turn out to be good at it. It’s fulfilling to make your own fanwork (and it’ll also help you appreciate the feelings of other creators). If you can’t, you can always just ask artists if you can share their stuff. 

But I don’t know Japanese!

Most pixiv artists have a basic grasp of English. Keep your sentences simple and they can manage. You can always make use of Google translate, and you could also use these templates. It’s not hard, and artists really appreciate it. Why give them headaches when you can make their day?

I asked the artist and they refused/I got no reply.

If the artist hasn’t replied, then do not re-post. If they say no, do not re-post. Ever.

Can’t we be more creative as a fandom and not get by through stealing? Is that how we’re going to support our pairing? Through plagiarism? Are we gonna keep appreciating dreadful thief blogs like sasunaruyaoigirl? Are we that desperate to get notes? Are we gonna keep abusing these artist until pixiv blocks out all foreign access? Tbh, our pairing tags are a fucking eyesore, far worse than almost any other Naruto pairing I’ve ever seen. We’re better than this. It’s possible (not to mention easy) to run a fandom blog without snatching art from somebody else.

STILL NOT CONVINCED?

Educate yo’self with these materials (x) (x).

You sure have seen this post. It has spread like wildfire over the past few days so I doubt there is any artist out there who hasn’t seen it. But even if you didn’t, you should read on because I’m about to tell you a handy little thing that can help you to protect your art from such assholes as the anon who submitted this bullcrap, as well as art thieves in general.

The magic word is Metadata.

Metadata is like an invisible signature that is embeded into a file. It can contain all kinds of information, like Title, date, keywords for online seach engines, and copyright information. And the best thing is, since this information is “hidden” in the code of your picture, it’s hard to remove it.

There is a nice basic tutorial on how to add Metadata, or “additional file information” to your images in photoshop. It’s really, really easy so check it out!

“Adding Your Contact And Copyright Info To Your Photos With Photoshop” on PhotoshopEssentials.com

I’m not sure if you can do the same with any other art program. If you know how to do this in other programs / can confirm that it works the same way there, please tell me so I can add the information to this post.

Huevember is back ! Get ready !

I used last year suggestions of Cherrehc for the chart

Some exemples of huevembers here :

Ani, the city of a thousand and one churches