But... but...

[fuyu]

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)

Comments

[bassclefsolo.livejournal.com]

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.

[fuyu]

*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. :(