2639: Hooked On A Feeling
Sorry no chat. Been drawing! ...and reading =p though, some drawing, and pieces of discussion:
Writling:
In the Kaleidoscope special, Douglas Adams said he stumbled over something remarkable in that "sci-fi comedy" was at that point unexplored territory, and what he had happened to write appealed to people across the board: sci-fi fans liked it because they thought it was sci-fi, and non-sci-fi fans liked it because they thought it was knocking sci-fi. The trouble with sci-fi comedy now is any and all of it gets compared to Douglas Adams, either successfully or failingly [and failingly BAD, if failingly].
Conversely, normal sci-fi is generally pretty serious overall, perhaps because science itself is pretty serious overall--much like a religion, I daresay--and the problem is that anything that takes itself too seriously is either going to be really good or really bad [provide examples to taste]. Come to think of it, I haven't come across too many serious movies/books/serials/etc. that are more middling than one of the extremes, but this seems to be the general rule in my experience. Anything unserious that's bad is usually a groaner more than an actual bad kind of bad [provide examples to taste, but stuff like anything that ends in "MOVIE" a la Date Movie or Scary Movie or, worst yet, Epic Movie *shudder* which actually disproves the rule, oops].
Yet bad sci-fi is worse than bad fantasy, for instance, because science is so fact-oriented that if basic facts are wrong/unbelievable, the whole thing quickly falls apart. Fantasy, we accept that things will be inaccurate, because fantasy is usually egregiously fictitious from the outset, and it's easier to suspend disbelief for the sake of escapism. Inconsistencies are more forgiveable/easier to overlook, stuff like that. Bullshit like [oh gad I can't remember the whole thing my mind's blocking it] "bitmapping by moving along the Z axis, thereby enlarging along the X and Y axis"* and the Blade Runner ESPER rip-off in the MacGyver episode "Collision Course" is horrific >_< What happened to actually consulting a broadcaster about dollying or just plain "zooming in"? [Frankly, I don't see any excuse for the camera being placed that far away in the first place that they couldn't get a closer shot...]
...Char's been watching the MacGyver box set he got, incidentally ^^
Anyway, I have theories about the success of certain types of writing, a lot of it based on critiques from Marc and [mostly] Mum, but I apparently need to read a few more books to get a solid grasp of it. I'm tempted to spend some time experimenting with a few types of narratives, but my vacation really should be coming to an end shortly, by one means or other T_T because, as much as it would please me to take a year off from "real" work and work on a book or three, I would need just about all of you to buy, at $5 mark-up, at least ten books each and hope each of you could get friends to buy some, and that would have me set for maybe a month or two... 9_9 so, I'm glad I'm keeping this to a hobby to save my ego.
Drawring:
I recognize a constant in my finished pieces, that I end up hating a final [especially if it's an active scene] because my mind is so action-/animation-geared that forming a perfect still of what's ultimately a sequence is difficult. A sketch normally changes drastically before I start cleaning it up because what I see in my head won't stay still enough even as a "character just standing there" shot. Then if I catch a mistake late, it's usually faster to just start over than to fix it, especially since [another constant] I tend to press down harder as I move down a character's body, where there's less detail to pick at, and darker lines--no matter how softly made--are always impossible to completely erase.
[I also suffer from "I have no model"-itis... no, photos aren't quite the same... and Char, if he's here, is usually, uncooperatively in one of two seated positions...]
This is the conundrum I have: I can make quick and easy edits to a drawing digitally, but the more I do on-screen, the harder it is to draw correctly. I hate nearly all of my from-scratch digital pieces leaps and bounds more than I hate any from-scratch final drawing, so it's beneficial for me to do as much as I can on paper. Yet the unconscious pencil-pressing and regular re-posing I do makes that alone difficult. I have countless sketches I've started but never finished because I want a final hardcopy for each and can't get myself focused and patient enough to do them all. Even with my insatiable Hungry City consumption the past odd days, churning out a showable piece is tough. [Of course, part of that is I want to read more vs. draw what's in my mind.]
So for all both of you following my art [Jenova and EG], here's a WIP of Tom and Hester again, this time with a few more adjectives from subsequent books to home in on their look [though if you really wanted, you could make both work well enough given the 2.5 yr time lapse, though I'd prolly alter it given an opportunity]:
It's WIP because there are [at least] two more characters to come to fill out the scene, besides it being a quick scan instead of a half-hour of anal-retentive clean-up [though I may fix that after some sleeps]. I really meant to finish the prior one, but reading on really sort of prods me to charge onwards rather than backpedal. It's all kind of practice, anyway, particularly the two[+?] to come, since "handsome" or "good-looking" or even just "pretty" characters are a dime a dozen in books but the rest are a little more sporadic.* I'm hoping this gets me in a good habit for my other stuff on the table, but we'll see. One and a half books still call =p [and demand much-deserved movie adaptations!]
*I have a theory about this, too: Even moderate attractiveness can be "gorgeous" depending on the viewer's eye [I can think of a few people who are either kind of homely or quite attractive depending on my mood, and that can be from the same image], but outright ugliness like Hester's or similar such undesirable qualities are a little more universal in their standardization. So the fact that everyone's macking on Tom for what reason is more for his non-hideousness plus his more-uniformly-qualifiable pleasant personality rather than he has a look that specifically catches the eye of everyone who sees him in a "come hither even if you aren't exactly gay for me" way.
Of course, I'm still not entirely satisfied with how he turned out, because he's supposed to still look rather boyish at "nearly eighteen" but I just couldn't get that. Part of that is, I guess, a personality trait, since most of the people I've ever met who were even sixteen+ looked just as adult a few years later--barring height and childish temperament [*cough*Minnie May Hopkins*cough*].
*shrug* It's all practice.
Riddle? Umn... maybe once I get up and have proper lazy time again, instead of a spurt of motivation -_-;
I just remembered a sign I saw when we went to Amphora on Friday: "HAPPY HIBERNATING" =D I'm so using that this December. [Of course, I should be hibernating NOW, much to Char scolding me later about it.]
Writling:
In the Kaleidoscope special, Douglas Adams said he stumbled over something remarkable in that "sci-fi comedy" was at that point unexplored territory, and what he had happened to write appealed to people across the board: sci-fi fans liked it because they thought it was sci-fi, and non-sci-fi fans liked it because they thought it was knocking sci-fi. The trouble with sci-fi comedy now is any and all of it gets compared to Douglas Adams, either successfully or failingly [and failingly BAD, if failingly].
Conversely, normal sci-fi is generally pretty serious overall, perhaps because science itself is pretty serious overall--much like a religion, I daresay--and the problem is that anything that takes itself too seriously is either going to be really good or really bad [provide examples to taste]. Come to think of it, I haven't come across too many serious movies/books/serials/etc. that are more middling than one of the extremes, but this seems to be the general rule in my experience. Anything unserious that's bad is usually a groaner more than an actual bad kind of bad [provide examples to taste, but stuff like anything that ends in "MOVIE" a la Date Movie or Scary Movie or, worst yet, Epic Movie *shudder* which actually disproves the rule, oops].
Yet bad sci-fi is worse than bad fantasy, for instance, because science is so fact-oriented that if basic facts are wrong/unbelievable, the whole thing quickly falls apart. Fantasy, we accept that things will be inaccurate, because fantasy is usually egregiously fictitious from the outset, and it's easier to suspend disbelief for the sake of escapism. Inconsistencies are more forgiveable/easier to overlook, stuff like that. Bullshit like [oh gad I can't remember the whole thing my mind's blocking it] "bitmapping by moving along the Z axis, thereby enlarging along the X and Y axis"* and the Blade Runner ESPER rip-off in the MacGyver episode "Collision Course" is horrific >_< What happened to actually consulting a broadcaster about dollying or just plain "zooming in"? [Frankly, I don't see any excuse for the camera being placed that far away in the first place that they couldn't get a closer shot...]
...Char's been watching the MacGyver box set he got, incidentally ^^
Anyway, I have theories about the success of certain types of writing, a lot of it based on critiques from Marc and [mostly] Mum, but I apparently need to read a few more books to get a solid grasp of it. I'm tempted to spend some time experimenting with a few types of narratives, but my vacation really should be coming to an end shortly, by one means or other T_T because, as much as it would please me to take a year off from "real" work and work on a book or three, I would need just about all of you to buy, at $5 mark-up, at least ten books each and hope each of you could get friends to buy some, and that would have me set for maybe a month or two... 9_9 so, I'm glad I'm keeping this to a hobby to save my ego.
Drawring:
I recognize a constant in my finished pieces, that I end up hating a final [especially if it's an active scene] because my mind is so action-/animation-geared that forming a perfect still of what's ultimately a sequence is difficult. A sketch normally changes drastically before I start cleaning it up because what I see in my head won't stay still enough even as a "character just standing there" shot. Then if I catch a mistake late, it's usually faster to just start over than to fix it, especially since [another constant] I tend to press down harder as I move down a character's body, where there's less detail to pick at, and darker lines--no matter how softly made--are always impossible to completely erase.
[I also suffer from "I have no model"-itis... no, photos aren't quite the same... and Char, if he's here, is usually, uncooperatively in one of two seated positions...]
This is the conundrum I have: I can make quick and easy edits to a drawing digitally, but the more I do on-screen, the harder it is to draw correctly. I hate nearly all of my from-scratch digital pieces leaps and bounds more than I hate any from-scratch final drawing, so it's beneficial for me to do as much as I can on paper. Yet the unconscious pencil-pressing and regular re-posing I do makes that alone difficult. I have countless sketches I've started but never finished because I want a final hardcopy for each and can't get myself focused and patient enough to do them all. Even with my insatiable Hungry City consumption the past odd days, churning out a showable piece is tough. [Of course, part of that is I want to read more vs. draw what's in my mind.]
So for all both of you following my art [Jenova and EG], here's a WIP of Tom and Hester again, this time with a few more adjectives from subsequent books to home in on their look [though if you really wanted, you could make both work well enough given the 2.5 yr time lapse, though I'd prolly alter it given an opportunity]:
It's WIP because there are [at least] two more characters to come to fill out the scene, besides it being a quick scan instead of a half-hour of anal-retentive clean-up [though I may fix that after some sleeps]. I really meant to finish the prior one, but reading on really sort of prods me to charge onwards rather than backpedal. It's all kind of practice, anyway, particularly the two[+?] to come, since "handsome" or "good-looking" or even just "pretty" characters are a dime a dozen in books but the rest are a little more sporadic.* I'm hoping this gets me in a good habit for my other stuff on the table, but we'll see. One and a half books still call =p [and demand much-deserved movie adaptations!]
*I have a theory about this, too: Even moderate attractiveness can be "gorgeous" depending on the viewer's eye [I can think of a few people who are either kind of homely or quite attractive depending on my mood, and that can be from the same image], but outright ugliness like Hester's or similar such undesirable qualities are a little more universal in their standardization. So the fact that everyone's macking on Tom for what reason is more for his non-hideousness plus his more-uniformly-qualifiable pleasant personality rather than he has a look that specifically catches the eye of everyone who sees him in a "come hither even if you aren't exactly gay for me" way.
Of course, I'm still not entirely satisfied with how he turned out, because he's supposed to still look rather boyish at "nearly eighteen" but I just couldn't get that. Part of that is, I guess, a personality trait, since most of the people I've ever met who were even sixteen+ looked just as adult a few years later--barring height and childish temperament [*cough*Minnie May Hopkins*cough*].
*shrug* It's all practice.
Riddle? Umn... maybe once I get up and have proper lazy time again, instead of a spurt of motivation -_-;
I just remembered a sign I saw when we went to Amphora on Friday: "HAPPY HIBERNATING" =D I'm so using that this December. [Of course, I should be hibernating NOW, much to Char scolding me later about it.]