#i have been so burnt out and unable to do digital art for weeks | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dancerin-thedarkness · 2 years

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Studio Update Wk 10: Buckle Up, This is a Long One, Folks!

Lots of Stuff happening to my practice lately, and in the mean time, I'm chronically fatigued and autistic-ly burnt-out. Some thoughts:

1.) Had my second big crit of the semester, and my peers have finally seen my ceramics! The response from them and the professors who saw them was overall positive, much more than I expected. As some peers know, the response from other individuals to my ceramic practice and knowledge has been...less than ideal, and discouraging-- so hearing some positives was a boost. A lot of the things that I think about in relation to my practice came up naturally, and that excited me tremendously.

2.) Put together two different proposals this week, for Hauntology (obligatory hi, Neil comment here) and for Tools and Research. Want to talk about both. First, Tools and Research: my plan is to do some laser-cutting words onto paintings, which will likely be on wood (? not sure yet.) I'm really interested in incorporating words and text into my work (see photos attached for how I've been spitballing painted text). As a previous English-major and always-writer, words matter to me and I use them lots, and I like the idea of pulling them into my practice. I think the laser cutting idea has potential. As much as some might want me to be, I am never going to be a digital artist, so my T/R project had to allow me to work within my wheelhouse as a traditional materials, hands-on kinda gal. I think using a starkly-digital thing for the words will work well, since both words and the laser-cut nature will stand out a lot against the paintings. Meeting on this topic to transpire this week, which I'm sure will uh. Go well? Sure.

3.) Hauntology project is to be self portraits; as per Neil's guidelines, between 4-6 paintings. Self-portraits are so loaded to me; as an artist and as a writer, the self is always my main topic. I write poetry and creative nonfic, and if I'm being honest, there is a sense in which all of my art is self-portrait, in a less-than-literal sense. That being said, I've been running from self portraits since I got here, for a variety of reasons, and I like the idea of "returning home" to them. I don't want to focus only on using pictures of my current-self as reference. Photographs of me are always loaded; my long weird struggle with various traumas, body dysmorphia and dysphoria, etc. mean that there are entire chunks wherein looking at photos of myself is strange and sometimes anxiety-inducing or upsetting. I have a specific photograph of myself from the 8th grade that I definitely want to use as reference for one. That was a bad year, the source of my fear of men, etc., and for a long time, I have been unable to look at pictures of myself from that year. Even in photographs where the Source of My Fear is not present, he feels present. Even in photographs where I am happy, I struggle to see myself as such, and instead I just get nauseous. However, I don't want to lose a year of my life and the complexity of the person I was at that time. In this picture, taken on a shitty day, I look so happy. Even though that day wasn't a good one, and that year wasn't a good one, I know that I was happy in that moment. I want to dedicate a portrait to replicating this photo (in my own style, of course) and the joy that I felt, as a kind of exercise in giving grace and love to this younger version of myself, so often neglected by me and my memory of events. It's this idea for a painting that drove my decision to do self portraits, and I think as such it's likely that at least one or two other portraits I do will be based on older photos as well.

Alright, sorry for the long and trauma-dumpy post, but of course it is tumblr and that is what the class is for! Below are photos:

#HauntologyStudio

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penninstitute · 4 years

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CASE #0140719

Statement of Emma Livingston, regarding her colorblindness and her artist neighbor. Original statement given July 19th, 2014.

Everything I see is a shade of grey. Trees are grey, the sky is grey, et cetera, et cetera. I was born like this, unable to experience color from the moment I was born, but it never hindered my ability to function as a human being.

I can tell colors apart by the different shades, but it truly is quite hard to when some are so similar. I know yellow is lighter than red, but in my eyes, red and blue look almost completely the same. Well, looked.

I’ve come to learn what colors look like. I know red is warm and blue is cold. But I came through to this knowledge in quite a… strange and rather scary encounter. I mean, I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t think it was that bad. But I saw color. And not with those fancy glasses that they make nowadays. But with my own eyes.

I recently moved to New York for a job. I’m just a simple temp, but I wanted out from my parent’s home in Alabama and to move in with my girlfriend, who my parents despised. I think they despise me too, especially now that they know I have an interest in women.

My girlfriend and I lived in a surprisingly decent building for the price of the rent. It was homey but a little tired looking, but nothing a little bit of redecorating couldn’t fix. We had a neighbor to our left, a little old woman named Belinda, who was probably more of a mom than mine ever was. She made Ari and I cupcakes every other week. Ari is my girlfriend, by the way. Belinda was a sweet woman. She isn’t dead or anything, but Ari and I don’t live there anymore. I’ll get to that soon.

The apartment to our right was empty for about six months after we moved in. Apparently a single mom lived there, but moved out to live with her family in Florida after the death of her nine year old son. Tragic accident, I heard. But this isn’t about that woman, but the man that moved in.

He was weird. I don’t like to be rude, but he really was. Ari told me his pale skin had an almost green, sickly tone. She said his hair was a strawberry blond, whatever that means, and had blue eyes that were puffy and red as if he was always crying. He looked like a disaster to her, and also to me. I felt pity for him.

Oh, I should mention his name too, shouldn’t I? I think it was Frank. Frank Cyrus. Or Sylvester. But I’m pretty sure it was Cyrus. From my limited interaction with him, I learned he was an artist. He worked as a curator at the Met, he said, and was often so inspired by all the works there that he incorporated a lot of things in his own work.

I appreciate art as much as I can. I can look at a painting and appreciate the handiwork or realism gone into a piece of work. But I can’t exactly appreciate the use of color in something like the Mona Lisa or whatever.

Frank would show Ari and I whatever knew creation he’d make whenever we’d see him. It wasn’t very often, but we’re good neighbors, and we try to communicate as much as we can with our neighbors to let them know that we’re good people.

But something about Frank made me want to not be nice to him. I know, I know, it’s really mean of me to just dislike someone because of their vibes or whatever, but God was he unsettling. One time, I was coming home from work, tired and in pain from my new heels I got for my birthday.

The hall was quiet, the fluorescent light illuminated the decades old carpet and the paint that began to peel from the walls. A light that was just above Frank’s door was burnt out which unsettled me even more.

As I pulled out my keys, movement in the darkness caught my eye. I blinked and shook my head. It was nothing, probably something in my head. I fumbled with placing the key in the lock, now that my hands began to shake with unease.

The voice from the darkness is what made me drop them. It sounded like Frank. But… different. Something was off.

“We should call Edward to fix this light, shouldn’t we, Emma?” Frank asked.

“Y-yeah, we should,” I said, in an attempt to not sound alarmed. But I was pretty alarmed. I bent over to pick up my keys, only to see them not there. There was a familiar jingle to my right.

I turned to see Frank holding my keys in his hand. It looked wrong. It.. It looked like how in movies, hands look when smashed by a hammer or something. It was so strange. It made me feel nauseous.

“You dropped these.” He smiled widely and stretched out his arm. I heard a sickening pop in his elbow. His wrist made a soft click as its fingers bent unnaturally to dangle the keys between his thumb and index finger. I gingerly accepted them from him.

“Thank you, Frank.” I gave him a quick smile, shoved the key in the lock, and bid him a good night. My heart beat thunderously in my chest as I closed the door behind me. I’d never had such a peculiar encounter before in my life. When I told Ari about it, she almost got up to go have a very strongly worded conversation with Frank, but I stopped her. Maybe I should have let her.

A couple weeks passed and I hadn’t seen him. I was thankful, but there was something in the back of my mind that made me feel bad for Frank. I don’t know why.

It was about two weeks ago when it happened. I had a day off that day, one that I was going to spend lounging around the house as I awaited Ari to come back so we could have a date night. There was a soft knock at the door around five. It was odd, as Ari didn’t get off until five-thirty. I guessed she might’ve gotten off early, and I eagerly hopped up and headed to answer the door. But when my hand closed around the doorknob, turned, and pulled the door open, no one was outside. I blinked and furrowed my brow.

I leaned my head out of the doorway and looked around. Nothing looked amiss. Then there was a creak of a door slowly opening. Frank’s door. I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but with a sudden urge I stepped out of my apartment and walked to the entrance of my neighbor’s apartment. It was pitch black in there, and I know that this next thing sounds so stupid. Something an idiotic horror movie protagonist would do. It’s a decision I don’t even remember making.

I walked into the apartment. As my foot touched against the wooden floor the dim lights flickered on. I didn’t touch a switch at all, it just… happened. I looked around the living room of Frank’s apartment, which seemed so strangely bare. Only a television and a couch, nothing more. I remember I called out for Frank, but I didn’t get a response. Every feeling flowing through my body was telling me to get out of there but I just… couldn’t. My body was almost moving on its own. I slowly drifted towards the bedroom, my heart pounding heavily in my chest. When I pushed open the door, my eyes almost popped out of my skull.

Color. It was full of color. I don’t know how else to explain it. There were canvasses everywhere, on the floor, on the walls, even on the ceiling. Colors. I felt nauseous, it was so… overwhelming. But it was beautiful. There’s no other way I could describe it, I’d never seen anything like this before. Can you imagine going through life without seeing such beauty?

My eyes flashed across the room, taking in each grotesque, surrealist painting. The imagery itself was unappealing to me, hideous bodies bent in unfathomable ways, patterns covering all of them or behind them in the background. But the use of color astounded me and left me sobbing in the doorway. I don’t know how long I spent standing there, crying, trying to name all the colors I saw. But my attention was interrupted as I saw him.

Frank. On the floor. I don’t know how long he’d been there, I didn’t notice him. He was naked, every inch of him covered in that colorful paint, his body bent in unhuman angles. His spine was twisted, his legs tied into a knot. His face was long, distorted, the jaw crooked, almost resembling Picasso’s “the Scream”. He was still breathing.

I screamed. I ran out of there as fast as I could, my fight or flight, finally kicking in. I sped to the phone and dialled 911.

Ari came home soon and helped me through the police’s questions.

They did find Frank’s body in a similar state as I did, but dead. They said there were no paintings, though. The only paint was the stuff on Frank’s body, painted in patterns. They still don’t know how it all happened, I’ve called the station a few times but never got a word. Nothing on those paintings, either.

I feel like I’m crazy, but I’m not. Ari and I moved to a new building later that week. We’re fine now, I’m fine now. Got a therapist and everything. Ari bought me those colorblind glasses after I’ve rambled about the colors for hours on end. I haven’t touched them. I don’t think I want to see any other colors but those impossible ones again.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

- Quite obviously, a colorblind individual cannot just suddenly start seeing color like this, which makes me doubt the statement to an extent.

- Ms. Livingston refused our request for a follow-up interview.

- Frank Cyrus did exist, although records on him are minimal (save for an extensive criminal record). He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.

ARCHIVIST’S NOTE: This statement was rather difficult to digitalize. The scanner refused to work properly, and had to be transcribed the old-fashioned way from paper to computer. When the scanner was used, flashes of headache-inducing, swirling colors would appear on the screen of the computer. Blair and I had to unplug the scanner and the computer to get it to stop.

#statement #0140719 #tma #the magnus archives

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xxairo-dev · 4 years

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Next Log

So I started making a 2D pixel art game. Welcome to my new Dev blog!

No official name, but the unofficial name is Bowfish.

(TLDR and Dev log with pretty gifs at bottom)

Hello internet, friends, and 2020 -- those of you that have been following me all this time know that I’ve been doing art for a loooong time. Even before I got into digital art in 2010, I’ve been drawing with paper and pencil for as long as I can remember and probably started playing video games right at the same time. For reference, my earliest memories of video games consist of Lemmings 3D on PS1, followed shortly by Rayman and Spyro the Dragon.

I’m still a big Spyro fan, also pretty sure this is how I became obsessed with dragons in general.

Science based dragon MMO girl, wherever you are -- I feel you, I am you.

Basically, I’ve been playing video games all my life (to the detriment of my parents) and I owe it to gaming for igniting my early artistic ambitions. In fact, I remember learning how to draw by copying the character art of Neopets and Sonic Advance before one day stumbling upon one of my dad’s Game Informer magazines and being blown away by the art that I saw in there (particularly the WoW art). I’m pretty sure that was when I was first introduced to Big Boy™ game art and instantly thought, “Whoa, I want to be able to draw like that”.

Later, when I got my first drawing tablet and started making digital art, it became “I want to draw for a video game”.

Even later, when I learned that being a video game artist was not a very realistic career path and opted to pursue a bachelors degree in biology instead of art, it became “I want to draw for a video game... on the side”.

Even later-er, when I got my degree in 2017 and started working full-time and realized that work saps you of all energy and motivation to work on projects at home, it became “I want to draw for a video game... some day”.

Well, today here we are in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, I got furloughed from my biology job due to the quarantine. I spent four months passing time, thinking that I’d go back to work soon. But by the end of July, I was at wit’s end of what to do with myself after getting burnt out on a number of hobbies, games, shows, books, etc. without spiraling into some very expensive hobbies (hello aquariums) with the money I wasn’t making. I badly needed to find something productive to do that I thought would also benefit me in the long run i.e. post-quarantine, and unfortunately I couldn’t work on wet lab techniques at home.

“Learn to code” is what my parents have said to me about a thousand times for the past 5 years. “Learn to code” is what I did try for about two weeks with Code Academy a few years ago before realizing that none of what I was learning was going to stick because I wasn’t programming in any part of my daily life. As a biologist, in evolution we like to call this “if you don’t use it, you lose it”.

I know all too well about how coding is one of the best skills you can learn. However, I also know myself all too well to know that learning code for the sake of learning code wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to wait to learn when the right situation presented itself, ideally when I would have an opportunity to use it almost every day at like a job or something.

Well, one of my good fellow artist (and biology) friends had recently taken the plunge into creating his first video game Meganura earlier in the year. I was (and still am) seriously -- and I cannot emphasize this enough -- impressed by his progress, dedication, and ability to learn coding for this game. Or more frankly, I was seriously impressed by his dedication and progress in to learning how to code for this game.

Meganura in all it’s crispy pixel-y goodness. Man, my friends are talented.

I dwelled on this for a while.

I always considered making a game to be out-of-reach because I absolutely could not muster up the motivation to learn a single drop of code without being paid to do so after 1) being beaten over the head by “learn how to code” for so long and 2) having already tried and given up in the past.

But as it got harder to sleep well, eat well, and feel happy during the quarantine, I feel like I hit a rock bottom where I felt like if I didn’t make a big effort to find a new purpose, then I was probably going to become depressed. To preface this, I have experienced depression before, and ever since I got out it has been my goal in life to never experience it again.

The only way I was going to survive this quarantine was to give myself a new “job”.

I already had a creative mind and the skills to create art and animations for a game. I already had a lifetime of game playing experience that had formed a detailed list of specific mechanics and visual details that I knew I wanted or didn’t want in a game. I already had an analytical and detail-oriented mind (thanks biology... or thanks videogames?) that liked to plan and build things.

All it would take is just a little bit of code...

If you’ve read this far, thanks for listening and I hope some of you hear yourselves in my story.

TLDR;

I am just a daytime biologist and hobby digital artist with zero coding experience.

I’m extremely proud to say that since 07/29/20, I have been successfully developing and coding my own 2D pixel art video game in Unity and am in full swing!

This is the start of my dev blog, where I’ll be logging my progress and thoughts throughout this journey for like-minded and aspiring individuals.

My Goals:

- To create everything from scratch -- art, scripts, etc.

- To create a game about bow hunting with intuitive drag/release controls

- To create a game that has cooking and campfires

- To create a game with pretty water graphics

- To create a game that has sushi and cats

- To have a playable demo by mid 2021 (my guess for the end of quarantine)

How I’ve been learning C#:

I have been following along with YouTube tutorials to create a base script and then looking up things in Unity’s scripting documentation to expand and modify my code to achieve exactly what I want. I’ve been learning C# and how to read documentation through almost entirely pattern recognition (e.g. mimicking and experimenting with code I’ve copied from tutorials and recognizing keywords in documentation) and turning to Google or my Tech Career Peers™ for help when I get stuck or to clarify things.

The key thing is that even after copying some code, I read the documentation and figure out how every line of code in my script works before moving on.

This is because after spending a few days of looking up YouTube tutorials, I realized there were no tutorials for the exact bow controls that I wanted. Instead, I ended up watching multiple tutorials and learned how all of their scripts worked before combining and modifying pieces together. Then, I started relying entirely on documentation to write lines of code.

I don’t know how many original lines of code I’ve written so far, but there are so many now and I am so proud of all of them.

So anyway, here’s what’s happened over the past 2-3 weeks.

Dev Log:

7/29/20

- Came up with an idea for a game

7/30/20

- Installed Unity and started watching Unity tutorial videos

7/31/20

- Created water shader via shader graph (no coding required!)

- Created a basic background, player sprite, bow sprite, and arrow sprite in Photoshop