bouncing-ball-enthusiast

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

In true chaotic studyblr fashion, I forgot this blog fucking existed

But hey, I just passed my fourth semester with a completed project (a 2D short film, created from scratch along with another 3 teammates) and decent grades! This means I'm halfway through with my degree and despite all odds I haven't dropped dead yet, definitely a win in my book

#animation studyblr #art studyblr #adhd student #chaotic academia #studyblr #study motivation #art student

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

first semester goals: get a 4.0 gpa, do all readings and have comprehensive notes, attend all my lectures, start my papers three weeks in advance

second semester goals: don’t kill myself or become an alcoholic

#rn my goal is “finish my semester project and don't bomb the other subjects” #semester project is almost finished! #now i just gotta uhhhh *checks notes* #do every assignment that i postponed the entire semester in two weeks #doable for sure

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

Once you care a little about lettering and fonts there’s no coming back

(Top to bottom fonts are: anime ace, back issues, minceraft regular, white rabbit, vcr osd mono, and determination snas

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

how can something so small be so harmful (normas APA)

#me with ABNT #handed in an assignment 11 minutes too late because i took so long finishing the citations #and then i realized the button to send it was gone and almost freaked out #i sent it to the teacher's email and he thankfully still graded me but i swear i almost had a heart attack

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

how i sleep knowing i pay $0 for my whole college education, books and texts no matter how long i take to finish my degree

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

Pulling out my art student card here. For people saying "it's just basics for beginners", this is actually a terrible way to learn body shapes, guys. Understanding basic 3D shapes (form) and how to manipulate them is how you learn to draw body shapes. Copying someone else's shitty shorthand form isn't doing you any favours whatsoever, you're skipping the basics, not learning them

If you actually want to learn how to draw different kinds of bodies, you gotta learn how to break down the human body into basic forms, and then how to mess around and manipulate those forms in various ways to get the results you want. Using this strict "this form this way for men, this form this way for women" formula is not only, y'know, sexist and incorrect, it's also probably one of the worst ways to learn art

do you ever see an “art tutorial” that makes you violent

#animation studyblr #art student #art studyblr #adhd student #art academia #art study #chaotic academia #study motivation #studyblr #art discourse #learning art #art education

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

before you see something and recoil at the price, be it handmade items, services, art, whatever. when you see something and you think, "i wouldnt pay more than $15 for that," you seriously have to ask yourself: if i were offered that same $15, would i make this object? would i spend the time to teach myself this skill to get this done, for $15? would i do this service for that same $15? would that be worth my time and effort?

yeah, that handmade necklace is $140. you might only be willing to pay $40 for that same necklace, but would you make it for $40 if someone asked you to?

you want to pay the babysitter fifteen bucks for the three hours she's watching your child. but would you honestly do that for $15? would you go into a stranger's house and change their baby's diaper and care for its needs, for $15?

you think its ridiculous that this artist is charging $30 for an icon commission. would you spend years catching up to their skill level to make that same drawing, start using your skill to make some extra cash, and then spend three hours on a drawing just to get $15?

would you be willing to work for $5 an hour?

no?

then don't be angry when someone else won't.

you don't have buy the service, it's okay if some things aren't within your budget or comfort zone, and it's also okay if the product isn't worth that much money to you. but do not be angry. be glad, because you know of another person out there who isn't being exploited for their time.

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

oh god i’d heard about the “i won’t commission artists who undercharge for their art” post and now it’s making its rounds on my dash.

please understand that this concept does not actually help anyone. the sensible thing to do if an artist is undercharging is to tip them for what you think their work it worth, and be sure to let them know that. even if this doesn’t cause them to actually change their base prices, at least YOU’RE paying for what it’s worth, and THEY’RE getting business instead of nothing.

by essentially boycotting artists who are already unsure of the value of their own work (and are thus underpricing) you’re not sending any positive message. no one is going to up their commission prices when nobody is buying them. the only thing the artist gets out of it is that people don’t want to buy their art for some reason, and people who’s products aren’t selling aren’t going to say “oh i guess it was because i wasn’t charging enough, i’ll pump up the prices!”

if you want to support a commission artist, please do it by actually SUPPORTING THEM WITH COMMISSIONS rather than by choosing to take your business elsewhere because their prices were too low.

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

Hello Mr gaiman. How old were you when you started writing stories ? I'm 14 and I try and try but they are all awful. I always give up in the middle and I can never finish what I wanted to write.

I know. I found a pile of papers of mine from my teen years and into my early twenties recently, and there were so many stories begun, so many first pages of novels never written. I’d start them, and then I’d give up because they weren’t as brilliant as Ursula K Le Guin, or Roger Zelazny, or Samuel R Delany, and anyway I wasn’t actually sure what happened next.

I was around 22 when I started finishing things. They weren’t actually very good, and they all sounded like other people, but the finishing was the important bit. I kept going. A dozen stories and a book, and then I sold one (it wasn’t very good, and I had to cut it from 8,000 words to 4,000 to sell it, but I sold it). I probably wrote another half-dozen stories over the next year, and sold three. But now they were starting to sound like me. 

Think of it this way: if you wanted to become a juggler, or a painter, you wouldn’t start jugggling, drop something and give up because you couldn’t juggle broken bottles like Penn Jillette, or start a few paintings then give up because the thing in your head was better than what your hands were getting onto the paper. You carry on. You learn. You drop things. You learn about form and shape and shade and colour and how to draw hands without the fingers looking like noodles. You finish things, learn from what you got right and what you got wrong, and then you do the next thing.

And one day you realise you got good. It takes as long as it takes. So keep writing. And all you need to do right now is try to finish things.

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

please, keep writing. keep drawing. keep painting. please keep making your art no matter how many may try to push you down. the world does not have nearly enough artists. 

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

I was listening to an art podcast and I heard someone use “creative hibernation” as a term to describe a period of time when your creative energy and flow of ideas is slowing down.

Honestly, it sounds so much better than “art block”. To me, “creative hibernation” sounds less like a negative thing and more like an organic part of the creative process. 

“Art block” sounds very definite. They sound like something you MUST actively fight against to break them down in order to continue. “Hibernation” on the other hand sounds more like a thing that happens every now and then but that will go away on its own when it’s time. It’s a stage of gathering energy for the next creative pursuit. Art block on the other hand is an artificial, mental block that actually just seems to solidify the more you treat it like an obstacle to get around.

All creative people go through this type of slowing down all the time and it is completely alright. I thought I would share this because I think the right kind of mentality is actually one of the most important things of recovering your creative energy.

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

collection of art wisdom

sources: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

#actually so true #that's how i became an animation student #became way too obsessed with it to turn back so i guess this is my whole life now

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

#art student #art studyblr #adhd student #art academia #animation studyblr #art study #chaotic academia #artist hot takes

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

saw a post about redemption arcs and i realized that a lot of our discussions would be improved if we discussed villains for what they are (pieces of a narrative whole) instead of what they definitely are not (real people on trial)

[bouncing-ball-enthusiast]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

#I'm studying to work in animation because if I can do NOTHING but work in creating stories all day you bet your ass I'd sign up #but even if it could not be my profession #I'd never stop making art #you can pry it from my cold dead hands #every time someones like ''AI will replace u" im like. u will have to fucking KILL ME #<<<< prev tag