moonsheen

"Coding is like taking a lump of clay and slowly working it into the thing you want it to become. It is this process, and your intimacy with the medium and the materials you’re shaping, that teaches you about what you’re making – its qualities, tolerances, and limits – even as you make it. You know the least about what you’re making the moment before you actually start making it. That’s when you think you know what you want to make. The process, which is an iterative one, is what leads you towards understanding what you actually want to make, whether you were aware of it or not at the beginning. Design is not merely about solving problems; it’s about discovering what the right problem to solve is and then solving it. Too often we fail not because we didn’t solve a problem well but because we solved the wrong problem.

When you skip the process of creation you trade the thing you could have learned to make for the simulacrum of the thing you thought you wanted to make. Being handed a baked and glazed artefact that approximates what you thought you wanted to make removes the very human element of discovery and learning that’s at the heart of any authentic practice of creation. Where you know everything about the thing you shaped into being from when it was just a lump of clay, you know nothing about the image of the thing you received for your penny from the vending machine."

- aral balkan (mastodon)
(bolding mine)

still mulling over on this line of thought for a while, and there are parts of this i won't share, but doing this zihark doujin At This Particular Time as an extension of me creating art for the Muse as an act of worship - strikes me as quietly... necessary? urgent? to be mindful of as a north star?

thoughtline influenced by: 

++ what i previously mentioned about Creating && avoiding "metrics existentialism" ages ago
+ rahaeli mentioning religion studies doing far more for T+S/moderation work than anyone thought. (likely: faith, rituals, how people craft those, instinctively or deliberately....)
+ this post about general insecurities of the new guard of selfshippers (i say 'new guard' because how all of that is worded is completely new to me even though i do recognize some of the adjacent feelings in my 20 years, even though they're not a concern to me anymore * )
+ general social media posts by art peers clearly hinting at existential angst about art not getting the views/clicks online that it used to even a few months ago (even on algorithim-less sites).
+ when a doujin circle member mentioned long ago that the people least likely to be affected by LLM existentialist fear are the ones with an internal calling for their 'outsider' art, however form that may take. (isolated selfshipping, furries and comickers creating elaborate worldbuilding for themselves offline, etc. )

mostly highlighting the 'act of worship' part since as absolutely corny as that sounds on its face, it's a protective veil in terms of ... process? that negates so much of the negative externalities of the above. - hell, maybe one of many reasons why religion/spirituality is so powerful, since it has a habit of getting in between social power structures of the day and individuals, when they choose to believe in something on a smaller scale.

( *it would have been a little mean to me to respond to that post about my personal advice of thinking of it as an active act. creating something, whether art, writing, a fanshrine, etc - as a pilgrimage of sorts. evidence for you and the fates. spirituality has a way of coming in the edges around that, when you give it a home. )

and just... it's funny.

i would be surprised at the coincidence of somehow ending up drawing this doujin precisely when existential anxiety around art was at its highest, but...  there's so many of these little "coincidences" around this Muse that have happened over the decades .... nudges, if you will. where it just fell into place that clearly I was meant to do X thing at Y time that's so blindingly obvious in retrospect.

i just don't question it, not anymore.

man, i am so relieved i'm working on this. for so, so many reasons. feels like coming home.

three shows i did the main logos for a few years ago are coming out on netflix \o/

don't actually care about netflix itself but getting to that level of visibility is a long way from where $org was. wild to be there to see it happen all the way.

also i had the most absurdly kind thing happen today where an unnamed euro sales agent (i work with sales a lot and get along with them fabulously) literally sent me a video recording of him saying how grateful he was that he never has to chase me down / that i treat his team well, via my boss. (an extra kind gesture, since now my boss knows too).

T_T  i always do try to go above and beyond for the international folks considering they get done dirty a lot but damn. kind of thing that genuinely warms my jaded heart...

January remains a (happily) busy art/hobby month!

* finished my 7-page Like Fine Wine comic strip ;) that anthology releases in March with potential physical copies, so won't be long ~

* finished kidlightnings 4.5-page selfship comic (nsfw) which is a treasure <3

* finished the tellius backgrounds project (partially as prep for the zihark doujin, as well as making several personal reference boards)

* will likely finish my 16-cell gunter animatic this weekend. (i laid out the storyboards for another 8-cell selfship animatic i want to do eventually, but not until the entirety of this named list is over) ~

* somewhere in there, the FE Tellius brainworms attacked me with a vengeance... I did not plan for this to happen at the same time PoR released on the switch's virtual console but it's been a delight to actually enjoy my main fandom (briefly) in the limelight again. :D

partially to celebrate, I have 3 tellius doujin shipping en-route to me; one PoR Tibarn/Reyson-centric, one RD Pelleas & Almedha-centric (got because it has a high chance of a background Zihark but also the art is exceptionally pretty as is). and one potentially-a-volke-one-by-my-favorite-tellius-JP artist, but it's got an odd blank cover so it's a mystery XD kinda went on the doujin buying spree because as much as i love doujins, i don't actually have ... any.... of them of this favorite fandom! (and it's great inspiration for the one i'm working on now.)

tellius-art-wise there's 2 "emulate senri kita's art style" illusts i'm like 80% finished with that will probably be poasted next.

* on top of 2-3 old zihark doodles i was using to play with the webtoon coloring style of A Stepmother's Marchen because i feel like that could be a really gorgeous way to punch up the delicate line style i doodle habitually in.

* there's also some much-overdue edits to the zihark fanshrine i'm working on; i'm adding various tellius resources on a new resource page since i never ended up using the guestbook page. (eg, the "home" for the backgrounds project, some UI and game CG's i found, etc.)

* i am also starting to properly thumbnail the zihark doujin [killing edge]; it'll have four strips. Fourth one is an existing comic I'm repurposing, third one is a wordless travelouge-type of comic that i'm now focusing on, the other two i'll handle in mid-year.

February-March, I want to start pairing down things to just the doujin, Gaze backgrounds, and studying blender ~ i am having so much fun drawing again, but i don't have *time* to do casual gaming/reading which keeps me grounded.

had an excellent meeting this past weekend with the second architect to discuss the haus office ~~ (dad's still working and he needs somebody to do the fiddly small details) 

feat: a real funny moment, though the context is needed since i'm this tiny shrimp of a chick that most architects tend to errrr underestimate on first look before actually talking with me. :p

me: [introductions, brief design pitch on me/my wants, hands him 3 pages of notes]
him: [he does a double take]
me: - now the important things in this office to remember is the le courbesier lc2 loveseat and then this eames soft pad chair that'll go -
[blah blah blah]
him: [ stays professional, but eyes getting wide ]
me: - and that should be it. With me so far, or any questions?
[beat]
me [angelically innocent]: I know that was a lot :)
[ him looking like holy shit you weren't kidding ]
him:  one question .... is that a bauhaus behind you on those shelves? ....and the keith haring book?
me: [internally grinning: I Got Him :3 ]