#creative approach

Hmm, yeah. I see! I mean, obviously the step that fails to connect for me is right at the start, where having a visual idea of how someone looks occurs separately from the rest of the idea of a person, yet the idea is still full of detail and interest. For me that would just be...a phantom.

It might put me on the trail of a real idea, be inspirational or something, but it’s very unlikely it would ever be enough of an anything to count as an idea, unless the visual impression immediately gathered around itself a whole conceptual network of person-who-is-like-this-came-from-this-wants-that-thing-broke-X-person’s-heart-rescued-a-goat, or whatever.

Even then, I’d probably have trouble distinguishing the ‘look’ part of the idea from the spatial sense of it, the moves-like-this.

(I...don’t have a very strong visual imagination. If you look at stuff I’ve drawn, the gap between ‘had a reference’ and ‘did not have a reference’ is even broader than normal. I’m also moderately face-blind. There’s...probably a link there.)

So I understand that this part is a Brains Differently thing; I can’t relate, but it isn’t confusing.

On the other hand, if I do start with an image of someone--if I’ve doodled a person absently in order to fit detail around a pose, or am fleshing out a random canon bystander for a fic, or someone handed me a photo and said ‘go,’ that’s a...shortcut, I guess. A boost. It makes everything else about the design process easier.

Because the opportunity to work from the outside in, with certain prerequisites outlined, means both that you’ve got a head start and that whatever decisions you make from this point on are bounded by facts you aren’t immediately responsible for, and can’t or at least probably won’t consider changing. It gives a foundation.

(This is why fic is so much easier for me than original work, both on a practical and--more importantly--emotional level.)

So I do understand that different things come easily to different people, but on some level I keep feeling like, if you start out with a detailed ‘look’ of the person, if your brain has already sorted out that much, shouldn’t they be easy to design from there? Since you already know so much about them, and can like...point at a jewelry or a scar or a color and say, ‘why?’ and boom, more facts now exist. Isn’t much of the work already complete and laying a blueprint for the rest?

And I mean, you can’t have designed an outfit without some preliminary determinations about the setting, because material and symbolic culture and very likely some interaction with gender norms, so there’s some assumed context available, too.

Like, yeah, obviously it’s different if you’re creating someone to fill a role versus creating them and figuring out as you go who they are and what their situation is. But I can’t break the decisions they made about their look apart from their personality, or the things they didn’t get to decide about their appearance from their backstory, and their backstory and choices are already at least halfway to a story about them.

(Not necessarily one with a plot worth writing on its own, admittedly, but a story nonetheless.)

So having these be framed as distinct creative stages which can each be completed before the next one’s begun is alien enough to me that I know we’re approaching this differently even though ‘somehow’ and ‘oh no quick’ don’t give me a lot of insight into the mysterious parts of your process. 😅

If one already has the character’s full visual design, so much information is already baked-in, and...I can see that being a problem if it’s too much information and you can’t make anything you like fit all the data...hm....

Memo Akten 

Memo Akten is an artist from Istanbul studying and working with complex systems, behaviour, algorithms and software. Combining critical and conceptual approaches with investigations into form, movement and sound, he creates data dramatisations of natural and anthropogenic processes, exploring the collisions between nature, science, technology, culture, ethics, ritual, tradition and religion. He collaborates across many disciplines spanning video, sound, light, dance, software, online works, installations and performances.

Nowadays the use of computation as a medium to create artistic projects is taking off worldwide, as digital designers we should consider technology with a creative approach and try to expand our knowledge beyond our field.

FORMS (2012)

Forms (excerpt)

The Artdog Quote of the Week:

We sure could use more leaders with  skills and the mindset to handle conflicts by peaceful means, right now. It’s our key to survival, I think–and I worry, as a result.

IMAGE: Many thanks to BrainyQuote, for this image and quote from Ronald Reagan.

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We’ve all lived or worked with someone like this. I just couldn’t leave this angle out, in a month of exploring the dimensions of horror.

IMAGE: Many thanks to cartoonist Jim Benton, via Neatorama and MoreThanHorror on Pinterest.

The Artdog Quote of the Week 

It all turns on what we bring to the reading or viewing experience. I firmly believe that (whatever art form we engage) the artwork is not complete until it has been experienced by a third party. Apparently Poe agreed.

IMAGE: Many thanks to Brainy Quote’s Horror Quotes page for this image.

The Artdog Quote of the Week 

Stephen King hands us another one this week, a little thought-provoker that I’d like to pair with a second thought from Clive Barker:

IMAGES: Many thanks to Brainy Quotes for the Stephen King image and quote, and to the “Bigger Jaws” Pinterest pinboard, for the Clive Barker image. 

Choosing one’s path

The Artdog Quote of the Week 

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IMAGE: This is another quote-image that’s been pinned several million times to Pinterest boards. I found this file on–yet again–on the pinboard of Stephanie Girolami-James, this time via the “Horror Quotes” pinboard of Amanda Rios.