fuyu | But... but...

A few weeks back, Kairi nailed me with a doujinbunny. This one, unlike most of the many many bunnies I get pelted with ON A DAILY BASIS, actually stuck and I've been working on it ever since.

9 pages in, the process is forcing me to think about and confront a few things about myself and my motivations.

I'm a really visual thinker. A lot of my frustration when I write comes from the fact that I SEE the characters as I plan, and the nuances of facial expression and body language make up as much as half of what they're communicating in a scene - and that just doesn't translate well to text. It's hard for me to describe the exact ways in which characters move, which drives me crazy because I love putting the words together, but in my head half the scene is visual.

Lately, I've been getting the itch to do sequential art more and more often. Catch You was the first actual comic I DID, but I've been thinking out possible comics in my head for years. Almost never with the thought of "oh, I'm going to do this", but it's always there. Then I actually did Catch You and it didn't kill me. Then I drew a half-size comic page of one of my original characters, for no reason other than I wanted to do some god damn sequential art right now.

Now I'm working on this. And as I do, my brain's also throwing roughly A BAJILLION OTHER comic ideas at me (mostly Kingdom Hearts-related, but I know that when my fandoms shift, this is going to follow). And I'm thinking back and remembering just how often I draw little cartoons and comics, how much I think in terms of panels and voice bubbles, and that webcomic Whitney I were going to do, and, and...

... I think comicking may well be my main artistic calling.

I've been resisting that REALLY HARD, because that means drawing a metric fuckton and backgrounds and dealing with page size and print and layouts and and and aaaaugh! I just wanna be an illustrator! I want to make pretty pictures one at a time, and maybe do comics just as a hobby!

Except, apparently, I don't.

... Guess I'd better start plotting out my other webcomic idea, then. XD

(Yeah, okay, go ahead and laugh. XD But it actually did take me a while to realize this. It's kind of disorienting to realize that the art that makes your heart sing and gets you up in the morning may not be the art you thought it was. XD)

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:D *feeds comic-y muse*

This is really fascinating to me, as I am by nature a words person rather than an image person. Stories for me tend to start with a turn of phrase, a particular set of words that fit together just right. The hardest part of many scenes is being able to visualize them in enough detail to describe them, which is why action is so difficult -- I spend a lot of time going 'wait, where was the keyblade? was Riku behind her or in front of her?' and squinting off into the middle distance. So I'm really intrigued to hear how the process works from someone who approaches it (it sounds) rather differently.

(I have a package slip from the post office that I suspect is "Catch You," but I haven't got there in time to pick it up yet. Am so excited. *squee*)

Muse: *purrs*

That's actually a problem I have with reading, too! A lot of the time, a story won't settle properly in my brain until I can reconcile all the description into a visual image and see where everyone is and who's doing what. (Usually I'm more concerned about what the people are doing than what the setting looks like, which I realize is not necessarily good. ... Come to that, I wonder if that isn't why I like porn so much, since it's all about what's going where...) I never seem to have the problem you do with writing action. :o

I mean, I do like the words, and working with them, and one of my great joys is stringing together a set of them that sounds great. But once we hit storytelling, I need to be able to see it or it doesn't mean as much in my head. It's like having a conversation in a language I'm only half-fluent in; I get the gist, but I have to work at it and a lot of it flies right overhead.

(ooo! It should be there by now, so it probably is. :D I hope you'll like it~)

I think mostly in images when I'm trying to create something. This can be very frustrating because I work in static media, and the images in my head move. I would love to go into animation and do things like the "Fantasia" pieces; I hear images, and music is artistic expression using time, so it's difficult for me to illustrate what I hear in a piece. And since I've played primarily in orchestras, I always want to communicate something about the physical aspects of music, even pieces I've never played, or even heard live, because the technical stuff is something I have to think about, or can at least identify with if it's not a string instrument and I don't know exactly what the performer is going through.

...this is turning into something that I should expand upon and post in

gogglesonmyhead later, so I'll shut up about myself now. XD

...I must say, even though I've never really played Kingdom Hearts (I ran around a level for a while at the Innoventions attraction in Disneyland and had no idea what I was doing), I've been enjoying "How She Lost Her Fear." The language and faceless figures really work. I know more than I should about games I've never played and movies I've never seen; I think I've absorbed things via osmosis from the Lounge.

I would love to start a comic, but first I need to figure out how any of my imagined worlds work, first, and then pull an actual story together. I don't think I could do a good story justice without a lot of help.

*nod* That's a large part of my dilemma, too. I see movies in my head, and yet I'm not terribly interested in animation. (Well, that's a lie - but I really wouldn't want to do that all the time. Comics are a nice happy medium for me.)

That's really interesting, about the music... I've played in a couple of small school bands, so I know a bit about performing and what it's like to be a flautist, but I still know jack-all about music. I just can't get my head around how it works. I'll be interested to read the post you expand on this in. XD

Oh, thank you. ♥ I wondered how long or how well I could sustain the lack of eyes, but it seems to be working well (and forcing me to stretch myself in artistic directions I would normally have copped out on). ... Hahaha, you do that too? XD

I hear you there. I've got a world that's been bubbling in my head, with a great set of characters, but no overarching plot to pull it together. :(

Well, with me, I don't really think in color inside my head, which makes art projects difficult because I'm not overly interested in obsessing over shading stuff. What I have to do is make myself go, "And she has blue eyes and brown hair" and let the colors drop in once I'm focusing on it. As far as movement goes, the animation is kinda...stop motion, which is incredibly weird. Like, the characters will do something and then my brain has to stop and explain what just happened to itself.

I always wanted to be an animator, but I'm so lazy and bad at taking other's directions, so I work more like an illustrator myself. It's a bit disappointing.

Huh, that's really interesting. o.o I never really see the colors properly until they're on the page, myself, but I never have any trouble putting them there... And I've never heard of anyone thinking in "stop-motion" like that. Intriguing. :o

Mmm. I can see how it would be. :/

I'm not laughing and I think it's really cool that you came to this conclusion.

Aw, thanks.

Well, that was part of my dilemma, too XD;; except I've always known I liked comicking, I just... didn't have the self-confidence to start like, now.

Then I just went "to hell with it" and started Sinful. And now I started another one. Aff...

Btw, Drunkduck.com is a pretty good webcomic-hosting site. :D

Ahaha, that reminds me I need to be reading Sinful. I went and checked out your archives once and loved it, and then wandered off for some reason. Bad me.

Drunkduck.com, eh? I'll have to keep it in mind. :D

Aw, really? *__*♥ Updates have been a little slower lately, but it's still going! I hope you like the new one, too ^____^

Yeah, it's almost like devart - you can comment on pages and rate them, keep track of your favorite comics, etc etc, and there are featured comics every once in a while. I try not to read them, though - don't want other stories to influence mine much. It's bad enough that Violinist of Hameln and FF7 team up to constantly bunny me XD;;

Indeed! It was very entertaining. :D I must add it to my trawl.

Ooh. ^^

Whenever I write I tend to think in vivid pictures that I really wish I could draw, but I have visual no artistic talent whatsoever. From what I've seen of your comics, both the samples of Catch You and How She Lost Her Fear, I think you could have quite a future doing it, Gemi. You've got awesome style and you already have pretty much all the skills.

It's funny how sometimes your true calling, or perhaps a temporary calling, can reach out and smack you in the face, no? XD

Hehe. ♥ I've been getting that from my dad too, actually. I've always responded with "yeah, but I'm not interested in a future doing this", but now... Well. I mean, I've got a long way to go, I could stand to improve my process a lot, and I still have trouble drawing a straight line (human beings? no problem! architecture? KILL), but I guess there's no better way to improve than by doing...

It really is. XD

But... but...

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