The whole day working trying to control the cameras, as you can see, to no effect.
But some things which happen with lines and fills creates absolutely weird shapes and then some negative spaces which are really interesting, creating a very organic collage feel which moves.
Oh HELL yeah, about time we're seeing some Empress goodness on SuperRare!
Vanilla
SuperRare Genesis through Joy of NFTs Space. 🖤🖤🖤
Digital Mixed Media Animation utilizing Procreate, Photoshop, Photomosh and After Effects.
Vanilla started with the word prompt Chaos and a 10 minute abstract sketch on Joy of NFTs with NFTGirl. As I continued to work on the piece after the show, the memory of a friend gifting me stationary and a pen when I was 18-19 with a highly sexual, winking melting sundae and it said "Hot Mess" kept coming back to me, so I had to draw it.
I realized through the process of drawing it, all the feelings from around that time started to surface which I decided to lean into. As a teenager, instead of expressing my sexuality, I was forced to suppress it to placate those around me - hence the vanilla ice cream tipping towards the term vanilla used in the BDSM world for people not in it. Where I grew up, being anything but straight was life threatening at worst, socially threatening at best, so even though I'm a queer woman, expressing any desire towards the feminine form was something I learned to self censor at a young age out of self preservation.
This repression caused a multitude of uncomfortable, chaotic and conflicting feelings which is evident in the bright colors against the grey static. Chaos layers on chaos boxed in explodes over the top melting drops in the volcanic overflow that inevitably happens. As I've gotten older and living in places more accepting of different lifestyles and sexualities, I've stopped mostly self-censoring. Instead the conflict now is against external censorship of my story, my art and who I am.
Vanilla is all of these frustrations layered in the silliness of an ice cream cone with tits to bring forth a saccharine expression of hiding myself for so long and for some others not willing to accept me for who I am: a lewd, hot mess.
And I'm so excited that we have a full blog for it now (handled by the amazing Bruteforce)!!!
For the last month, maybe two, @cryptopom and me ( @bruteforceworks ) have been working on a visual novel. At the moment we are hoping to have a playable demo at the beginning of November. You can see some accelerated bits in the video above, just to get a feel of the aesthetics.
Though I trained in game design, and I’m very familiar with Unreal, Unity and Flash, I had never set a foot in the Ren’Py realm mainly put off by the tutorial that looked like nothing serious could be done with it.
Yet Pom wanted a manageable project with a VERY small team (the two of us) and something that wouldn’t have me crazy with code. She insisted that she had seen a lot of great stuff done in Ren’Py, so I decided to have a go.
So, a month ago I downloaded, Ren’Py, followed the first tutorials, and I have to say: the documentation is great and there are tons of tutorials, so it has been a very pleasant ride. In the coming posts I’ll explain how I did more or less everything, and from then one we can travel together solving the technical issues that are bound to appear.
This blog is intended as a tech journal for myself (I tend to forget some very important discoveries, and next time I’m in the same place I have to start from zero) and also for those of you who would like to make a visual novel but think it’s too difficult. It’s not. Provided you can make the art and the writing, the putting it together is the easiest thing to do.
I would also like to record additional resources (there are tons of scripts to do all kinds of things) for a matter of gratitude.
Some people talk about wanting to be the main characters in the movie of their life, but I'd rather be a badass dark horse supporting character who randomly becomes a fan favourite just for, like, having cool hair or something.
I'm really proud of my latest piece, and I FINALLY have the space where I can really go into depth about it, so let's hit it.
So, I'm half Chilean, and half Scottish, and to be honest, both of these cultures have a fairly extensive history of civil unrest (in different ways). While in Chile, we had Pinochet's military dictatorship, in Scotland, we are currently seeking independence from under England's heel (obviously depending on who you ask, of course, but I'm fairly sure that after next year's IndyRef, the world will see Scotland's discontent).
Now, I happen to suffer from both panic disorder and agoraphobia (the two are inexorably linked, ofc, and stem from the same roots). As such, active protesting (out in the streets like a badass) isn't the easiest for me.
But you know what comes easily to me?
ART.
And for fuck's sake:
Art can be protest.
Art can be revolutionary.
Art can spark movements.
Art can inspire and art can condemn.
But gah, trying to sound poetic always makes me laugh, because WHO TALKS LIKE THAT, hahahaha. You get me, though. Hopefully.
In any case, this piece is digitally illustrated, but I actually experimented with some AI-generated (Midjourney) background elements to create the chaotic, riotous feeling. In Chile, you can often smell tear gas on the streets when times are rough, and I wanted to evoke that mood, of a young woman caught up in a righteous protest.
So, what is she protesting?
Take your goddamn pick.
It would be easier to ask what my imaginary character ISN'T protesting, given the current global circumstances.
Thanks for reading. God, it's fun to be able to discuss my work in long-form like this!
"Protest" can be found over at SuperRare (clicky clicky for link), for a reserve price of 2.6 $ETH.
One thing I tell artists a lot is it’s important to sustain and have any sort of success without completely loosing our mind is to separate out ART BUSINESS vs ART CREATION.
Our sense of self worth needs to be gained through the fact we create otherwise our moods and will to create will ebb and flow with sales which a lot of times is something out of our control. Again a common trait I see in most successful artists is to be able to separate these two.
What I think I see happening here and forming here in a social scale or at least ideally would like to see is:
Twitter = Art Business
Tumblr = Art Creation
This isn’t to say there isn’t overlaps, or not to use this robust features of here to link your work but I think this is a clear boundary to try to hold. Does it feed us as artists? If not, don’t give it attention so it can’t grow.
In traditional art market, when I’m in my studio creating or co-creating with friends, I don’t have random reply guys, shills, engagement farms, tell me your favorite xyz artist, show me your work and all that other stuff going on.
When co creating with others, we just making our work, sharing ideas how we want, vibing and letting it flow. I hope we keep building and keeping this distinction in this blessed atelier of a dead mall. 🖤
I'm basically already getting more engagement on here than I am on Twitter, and that's with only around 20-30 followers (compared to my 40k+ on Twitter).
I love this piece which is part of a new collection about the life in big cities. The collection is based (loosely!) on Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Projects’ via Michel Houellebecq ‘Unreconclied’, but of course as soon as one is developing an animation, the good intentions are left behind and things follow their own commands and end anywhere.
What I Need, I Eat
Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve our problems just like that? The same way ancestral tribes thought that by eating certain parts of their enemies’ bodies they would get specific perks?
This artwork wants to convey a desperate attempt to fix something that’s lacking and supposedly can’t be fixed. It’s a direct reference to the author’s situation.
It took Cintia 1 full year to finish this work that would have only taken her a couple of days to complete before she got disabled and mostly bedridden 2 years ago.
She’s been suffering from ME/CFS for 20 years and has recently been diagnosed with CCI (Cranio Cervical Instability), which gives her the chance to get her life back through specific spinal surgery, the only option in existence at the moment that can hi-jack ME/CFS.
https://knownorigin.io/gallery/15690000-what-i-need-i-eat
My inaugural post features the two pieces I made for the polys.art project - #34 toco and #95 vesper
Both were made using Figma and are composed entirely of regular polygons - triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons. The upper limit of polygons was 70 for all the polys.art pieces.
polys.art is a CC0 project so all of its art is publicly available and free to use. A gift to you. You can get the original .svg files from the website and use them however you wish.
polys.art was developed by Abranti.