Discussion
RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aeva/117380576380304359
i realized at one point that the reason art was not "coming naturally" to me is the same reason programming and mathematics feels like it doesn't come naturally to people which is that most people aren't willing to spend five days on a single piece of work and in that moment i learned to respect artists a whole lot more
@hipsterelectron @aeva it's not just the time commitment, art isn't shy to let you know you suck, every stroke, every click you have instant feedback on how odd it looks,
like imagine being stuck on the spelling of a variable for the past 5 hours changing one letter and staring at it for 10m each time
@pupxel @hipsterelectron I saved a copy at the end of every session on this one so i could back track if I decided I made a huge mistake, but it's also nice for inspecting how the image evolved. I don't have any that show every step of sketching and refinish prior to nailing down the initial rough line work, but you can see some of the phases in these two. I added remarks in the alt text.
Also I kinda took the "idea fungus" approach to planning the composition, so there's no layout sketches.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron these days people like to use the phrase "trust the process" to remind themselves to stay calm and accept that art looks unpolished for the majority of it's creation.
I don't really see it that way, though, since a drawing evolves as a series of technical scaffolds that an image eventually emerges from, not a bad drawing that turns into a good drawing, and I'm in control of the process the entire way through.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron I think it's also worth noting that every step of the process is deeply pleasant to me. As I'm hammering out the gesture drawings and rough draft line forms, there's an image in my head that I'm playing with simultaneously. The early sketches are technical notes for constructing the drawing, but they also are the image coming into this world a little bit at a time, and they also let me revisit it my head more consistently in subsequent sittings.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron and it feels like magic to be able to quickly pull a tiny part of an image I can see clearly in my head and see it dance around on paper (or "paper", in this case). The picture is very much alive to me at every step of the process.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron The whole scene was much bigger, it started out on the street as all of the light in the world went out at once and monsters emerged from the shadows to devour people, then that was seen through the window from a room where a girl like myself was oblivious to the event and her own impending demise because her laptop battery hadn't died yet or because our ability to build things for one another is a light nobody can take away.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron but the scene I saw in my head was seen in its entirety simultaneously, which is impossible to draw in my normal style without breaking it out into comic panels (which is to say, seeing inside a room, the city streets outside, a person's expression, and the object they're looking at all at once), so I focused it down to the most interesting part which was the oblivious girl on laptop beset with monsters.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron the scene got a lot less sinister feeling as I worked on the drawing, because my mood improved significantly as a consequence of the process, so now they all kinda look like they're just watching anime together. But that's the light the power of creativity gives us! So, strictly speaking, the original concept is still intact in the final image.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron the interiority of drawing is different from person to person and I'm under the impression most adults don't draw this way. It's also very different for me when I'm drawing observationally because my focus is generally on understanding what my eyes are telling me and breaking it down into constructive forms.
@pupxel @hipsterelectron Observational drawing is what I learned in school, it doesn't require or significantly benefit from hyperphantasia (allegedly most adult artists don't have it), and it always produces stronger technical works. It's also fun, but it's more a relaxing and meditative process and less letting your head explode with pictures like a kid.
@hipsterelectron @pupxel i think your observation about the willingness to pound an image for a week is the more significant though. i got here through a lot of practice that goes way back
@hipsterelectron @pupxel oh yeah. I think play is really important for developing and maintaining mastery of skills (at any phase of life). Our culture says we should look down on play as some frivolous thing for children, to be grown out of (enforced by punishment if necessary), but science demonstrates otherwise.
@hipsterelectron @pupxel I would not be surprised if most people's hard subjects are ones where they had bad teachers for in school and weren't able to find the fun in it on their own, and that this happens more often in some subjects because of how those subjects are typically taught.
@hipsterelectron @pupxel like, i'm sure it's not the only reason people flame out on subjects, but i've yet to hear someone say "Mr. Misery's unusually strict first hour high school math classes where we learned entirely through rote memorization and 40,000 hours of grinding every night are what inspired me to be the career mathematician i am today"
@hipsterelectron @pupxel that said, somehow people make it through med school, so idk
@aeva @hipsterelectron @pupxel The grind for learning a new thing can be a fun sort of tedious, in a way I find similar to how grinding in an RPG for a rare drop can be fun. Not sure about med school, but, I've done the hours-and-hours of grammar-translation language study, for example. I can absolutely see why most people bounce off of it learning nearly nothing, but if it's a language I already care about learning, it's not that bad - but, motivation has to come first, or the grind is hell.
@miss_rodent @aeva @pupxel this is how i've been grinding cryptography
@hipsterelectron the ability to put a project down, go to bed, eat dinner, deal with life, etc and then pick it up again tomorrow and the next day is a massively underrated skill.
aeva of course does all three of these things because she is a genuine polymath
like you have to be a little freak about it if you want to develop mastery. there's simply no two ways around it
@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run i know this and yet get discouraged by sucking
@amy can i offer u a 
in this trying time
@hipsterelectron ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
@hipsterelectron Yeah, something that has stuck with me was an interview with Stephen King saying, when asked by George RR Martin how he writes so many books so fast, that when he's writing he tries to do like 6 pages a day - which means even a relatively short novel is over a month of working days, just for the initial writing.
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@hipsterelectron
Me looking a the shared post: “Only five days, what are you talking about?... Oh”
I guess it’s no longer weird to me to hear the words “pic” and “months” in one sentence. I wonder if Frisk will ever finish any of aers? It’s only been years for one of them, right?