Hi! Your Art Is Amazing! If You Don't Mind Me Asking, Where Are You Getting Your Prints Done?

Prof. shaggyAndre LeClare, physicist. Scruff. Cowboy boots. Cajun accent. Tweaked to be a Designated Love Interest, obviously. He invented a supersciency energy conversion device that was stolen to be used for evil and Monica intercepted it and was vaporized (she got better though) BUT as you know superscience accidents totally cause superpowers.

Not honestly satisfied with this, but I go... months without drawing sometimes :c Skill plateau is depressing sometimes UM anyway. Long art backlog is long. I am happy to be able to color again, and even happier to be able to do so in the laziest way possible geez I've gotten comfortable enough drawin on this thing I haven't felt the need to plug in my tablet or nothin. So NO I didn't get off the damn couch all damn weekend.

What is the hardest part about worldbuilding for you?

Logistics, PLOT... lol. Having an idea of what you want to happen with the world and characters but then trying to make it all fit and work properly... augh. Plot holes drive me so crazy in other works that I am really really obssessive about... not having them in my own work. If a question goes unanswered it needs to be deliberate. If there's a Deus Ex Machina plot twist it needs to GO (or at least have a precedent earlier in the course of events), it needs to be coherent and follow some kind of internal story logic.

Can't abide lazy storytelling *fistshake*

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.

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

This time I WILL apologize for not posting cos I am SUPER proud of this and worked SUPER hard on it, its just that as soon as I finish a thing (which is rare in itself, UGH), I immediately move on to the 5,462,000 other Things. It sounds so terrible to complain about having too many ideas but I can’t keep up and I at least try to get them all into my sketchbook but then have a hell of a time picking a thing to work on, tho if I HAD to make an excuse its because I’m teaching myself lots of new things these days and a lot of it is experimental and failures LOL

Learn by doing ;p

Anywaaaay, I am obsessed with gigantic posters and that combined with fangirling was all the motivation I needed, apparently. (obviously I won’t be selling prints of this, sorry, its fanart) I have a hard time explaining all the stuff I do to add Rainbow to my art so uh, its a lot of strategic outline coloring and layer fx and filters?? Photoshop frickin *~magic~*

I kinda miss livestreaming cos I love to chat about ART but I don’t have the patience to draw at my desktop when I can doodle on my tablet PC at a coffeeshop… And I have been spending a lot more time with my soldering iron rather than my tablet pen, sooo.

OLD PROJECT IS NEW AGAIN! A backplate and mounting plate to use for lots of different costume things. It's based on the usual idea of attaching wings to a corset, with hard Sintra mounting plate idea from a project by @paintyourdragon (of twitter, adafruit)! BACKPLATE__ Used an elastic exercise belt that I reinforced with window screen and washers for tear resistance. The belt bolts to my overdesigned pvc board back plate xD its padded with backpack spacer mesh, with pvc pipes as mounting sockets which hopefullyyyy the placement will be useful for multiple things (wings of course, gigantic Beedle backpack, Sashimono samurai flag). The plate is covered in foam, worbla,and cheap lining fabric to smooth it out, and I predrilled a BUNCH of holes marked with small washers in case i want to sew something to it or whatever. Futureproofing I GUESS. MOUNTING PLATE__ I made two of these simultaneously and used my cute and sweet and skilled bestie @maddycatcosplay as build tester, for her Pharah costume, cos I never finish things and she does xD This specific plate design was for bolting Pharah wings to (I spent 2wks building a jig to bend special aluminum brackets, so the wings would be at the proper angle, argh), as well as an easy way to attach gigantic Blizzard shoulder armor :P Another sintra plate was bolted to some bent pvc pipes and just slots in and out, I'm pretty proud of it! End Goal was simply something to wear heavy things on the back without too much strain, though obviously its still great to try and make stuff as light as possible... Hopefully some of these ideas help other people with their projects! It doesn't actually have to be this much work and detail for it to function, I just spend a lot of time and energy trying to make things as durable and comfortable as possible. A Very Important costuming soapbox issue for me, DO NOT risk injury for a costume, thanks for readingggg https://www.instagram.com/p/B-u5yQLjW09/?igshid=zw0kb3t6oi0v

I love Steam Powered Giraffe SO MUCH omg. I heard of em a little over a year ago, and it totally freaked me out since I have a story about musical steampunk robots and here is a band doing that as a THING. WHAT. I avoided them forever cos I was worried I wouldn't like their music... I've had my heart broken too many times by theme bands that look interesting but have crappy music and if that were the case with these guys I would have taken that PERSONALLY. Because STEAMPUNK ROBOTS. Thank goodness it ain't the case here. Mind you most of their older stuff is too damn folksy for my tastes but it grew on me and I love it too now. I just prefer music I can groove or rock out to. MKIII tho? AAAGH. They promised something for everyone and totally delivered, I don't mind listening to it all the way through at all. They're pretty shamelessly nostalgic and I love it, Rollerskate King totally triggered that with me. When I was little my favorite radio station would play disco on saturday nights and my mom and I would dance around the house (she'd teach me all the moves she knew from her disco partying days) driving dad crazy cos he hates disco. :D If I HAD to nitpick it would be with the use of synth horns because I used to play saxophone and trumpet, and synth horns hurt my feelings. Not a fan of synth strings either tho those can sometimes sound good... enough. Next time I hope they find a friend who can play or bribe a music student with pizza to record the real thing or SOMETHING cos weh! Otherwise perfect album is seriously perfect. All of my favorite songs turned out to be Hatchworth's, ohmygod I can't even listen to Go Spine Go without losing my shit it's so ridiculous XD I'll love Sam forever for getting David to sing in a torchy jazz style even if it was just a little bit cos rooowwwwrrrrr. Hatchworth's pretty much the reason I'm such a stan now when I wasn't a year ago. I live a Sam Luke appreciation life :p Bleak Horizon just makes me ache for a Steam Powered Giraffe: The Musical *flail* UGH I want to see them live uuuugh ugh feels etc

I didn't realize you were doing worldbuilding Wednesday every week! xD So last week I was the one talking about having a crapload of races in one world. I know there are way too many races for me to focus on anything- there are at least 20. I just love making new ones! So I tried splitting them up but I'm finding it extremely difficult because in my mind they're all connected somehow and it's impossible for me to sever the links. Do you have any advice?

gosh I don't really know other than what I mentioned. You have a few options imo:

1- relocate them to other worlds (not working for you though)

2- combine similar races into one race for each ecological/cultural niche

3- rank/prioritize, even if they all share a world some races will be more dominant than others, figure out which are more populous, which control more land, which are isolated (more likely to have smaller numbers), which are more warlike and industrious etc etc. Then use that info to figure out how that will influence your stories. Giants are a bit of an isolated minority race in my world (they are basically yeti and can only live where it's cold) but they founded the dominant religion and have a broad cultural influence and mystique about them.

4- embrace them! you have too many races, you are simply doomed to write lots and lots and lots of stories :) You'll still have to pick some favorites to start with though, stop telling your children you love them all equally they know it is untrue

do you by any chance draw inspiration from (amongst other things) jak and daxter and nickelodeon's avatar? i was just having a look at your deviantart and i really got a strong vibe that your work has been influenced by both these things...

Totally love them both so much omg. I rewatched all of Avatar on Netflix recently and all the nitpicks I had back when it was airing didn't even matter because as a complete story/world package its just SO quality and I'm still grateful for its existence and for helping to bring attention to fantasy based on non-european cultures. Love Legend of Korra too though I have been a bit frustrated with it. Industrialization of magic-based societies is MY MOST FAVORITE OF THINGS and my own fantasy story has been trying to address the political ramnifications of technology making magic use obsolete, since nonmagic users are traditionally an underclass blablabla man that finale tho. I dont even know.I have some old Jak & Daxter fanart on DA XD and I got the remastered collection for PS3, replaying it all, and I'm just in love again with everything uuuugh. The aesthetic is still just so unique and pushes all my happy buttons, its got everything I ever want in my games, and, well, makes me a little sad too because they just dont make em like this anymore. (Ratchet and Clank franchise is over now too, sob) Dont get me wrong I love Uncharted but Ill take Jak & his annoying talking animal sidekick over Nathan Drake, mass-murdering treasure hunter any day.

I saw this markers caddy at the craft store (Michaels) and immediately wondered if I could use it for not-markers... yes! Its a lil pricey but I got it on sale, and because I do crafts all over the place it was getting annoying to shuffle all my most used tools around in various bins and cans... Tombow makes this organizer too but it's 3 sections instead of 4, but it miiiight be more accessible if you can't shop at a Michaels. The inserts are removeable so I took one out to fit scissors, rotary cutter, brand new 20-32awg wire crimper (received in mail today YAY). I also have some squishy silicone brush holding trays (you can find em by searching for makeup brush holders on ebay or aliexpress) and THOSE inserts fit in there too! Perfect for smaller tools like tweezers and lead holder for my chalk pencil. I LOVE TOOLS. Swipe to the end to see the state of my desk and why I took photos of this on my bed :p https://www.instagram.com/p/B3XaDz3jGbk/?igshid=4nldle1icrsg