Grabendolch Said: Hey There, What’s That Second Tool Panel Just Next To Your Taskbar? It Looks Like

I started using the internets to teach myself hobby electronics a little less than two years ago and struggling with whatever random 101 sites, blogs, tutorials, and instructables I could find. Slowly piecing together info that is never presented in an incremental-increase-of-difficulty way because its not class... It's always a continuous struggle to find information that is at your level when it is pretty much always going to be something you've already sort of learned, and therefore less useful, or something way too advanced and HOW do you fill in the gap, its always there at every level as you learn more things

I think it's useful to point out that I'm not really a self-taught artist. So while there is a TON of stuff I taught myself (particularly digital art/photoshop/coloring), I had the benefit of classes in the fundamentals (lifedrawing, construction drawing, figure drawing, etc) and that makes it SO much easier to expand from a solid knowledge base. So I'm sayin it is not the case here, while I learn to make gadgets and it is taking FOR EVER and driving me up all of the walls. But I want it so badly.

Then Adafruit put up their revised learning system site and I s2g every time I have a neat idea for a project but not sure how I'd make it, they put up a relevant tutorial basically the next freakin day. This has been happening without fail for SEVERAL MONTHS! I LOVE ADAFRUIT AND ADAFRUIT LOVES ME BACK

I always have a cosplay/props/gadgets wishlist that is miles long and an ever-expanding list of ways to make things blinky, beepy, and/or animatronic and going NUTS because I don't yet have the skills to accomplish what I want to do (which is everything), learning a skill is HARD, harder still if there are parts of it that are not interesting but sort of a necessary evil- which for me is programming, I hate it so much, its so painful, ughhg uugghhh it hurts, I have not studied this hard to learn something I dislike so much EVER but there is a blog I like called HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT and that has stuck with me all this time. It's how to get what I want and I'm not gonna let my hatred of programming actually stop me from typing up terrible buggy code and uploading it to a microcontroller to make leds blink and animate and change colors because I love lights and I love COLORS. Join me!

LETS PUT LEDS IN THINGS

Worldbuilding = the best topic in the history of mankind. I'm kind of obsessed with making races and cultures and such. My question for you is do you think there's a limit on how many different races/cultures you can have in one world without making it busy? Whenever I make a new race I tend to shove it into the same world with all the rest. Those two small-ish continents and random islands seem rather... packed. Do you think it's a better idea to have different small worlds with a handful of races each or a giant world with lots of land but also lots of different cultures and races running around all over the place?

I totally think its a matter of personal taste, but MY personal taste is to avoid having too many because then you'll never have time to show them all off! In which case the only solution would be to revisit your world in lots and lots of unrelated stories... which is a totally awesome thing to do too though.

So I have... seven races in my fantasy? And sometimes that feels like too many because my story is alll about elves. And then I feel almost as if I tossed the other races in there instead of bothering to add more culture and history to the world, or just an excuse to make crowds in the background have more interesting shapes and faces. It might be helpful to figure out what evolutionary niche your races fill, and if there are a bunch in direct competition with each other, to consider combining them into a new race that has all your favorite aspects, or moving some to a new headworld? That's just my thoughts though.

As for my other stories they just feature regular humans with the occassional demon, alien, or robot, so I don't think that really counts.

monica's wardrobe by quantumqstar

I wasted half my weekend with polyvore ugh internet timesucks y u so powerful. Monica's non-superhero clothes turned out a little bit more stylish than I intended I guess I just cant help myself. oops

hoss. (Taken with Instagram)

Where do you start when you begin to build a world? With the people, the landscape, the politics, the clothes? (heh) What seed of thought directs you?

Characters, nearly always! I'll have one or two and just build everything up around them. Though some of my favorite ideas have come from dreams which I am less comfortable taking credit for since they happen without my permission :p but it's still my brain I guess, right??

ww!

pooryorickdraw answered your question: I know AEM takes place in a sort-of magical Ottoman Empire, but does that mean other “real” countries exist in the setting?

Yeah... other than having my story take place in a tiny kingdom that splits off from the Ottomans, not much is different politically, mainly because it's outside the scope of the story. If I had it spanning more countries I'd definitely consider what might be different. I know WWI happened a lot sooner, and technology would advance faster with the ability to harness a really powerful versatile energy source (MAGIC). Steampunk is based on the idea that there was an energy revolution in technology and analog/mechanical tech, instead of what happened in our reality where there was a digital/information revolution. I figure there's still roughly a British Empire, Austro-Hungarian, Spanish, etc. But yeah other than having rough ideas of where different characters come from and whether or not its plot relevant, there's a bit of geography gap in that area. One that... kinda makes me want to work on it...

chepeng:

I decided to post some unfinished stuff that is floundering on my hard drive!

And to buck the trend of overambitious fanart that I lose interest in when 80% complete or so…. have one actually finished picture :D

the doctor is always worth it

hey sorry I know this is late since u made that post last year but I rEALLY need to know. How did u make your face all skull-like? did you make the skull mask yourself?

Sorry Im so bad about replying to messages! I got the mask from http://www.mostlydead.com/products/skull-makeup-effects-appliance-maskIt was actually kinda small for my face but its really meant to be worn with a hood. I definitely want to sculpt my own someday but this one is great! Theres lots of skull prosthetics out there but that ones my favorite, most of them try to make it look angry/"evil" and I have Opinions about that. ;p

Worldbuilding Wednesday

I really missed doing this! I hope y'all are still interested cos I'd love to talk story! Worldbuilding is my most favorite thing k. If you want questions answered, nonquestions, advice, whatevs. Discuss!

I've been struggling with what feels like, to me, a severe chronic art block for most of my adult life. I can and will go MONTHS without drawing, sometimes farting out occasional barebones idea doodles, but sometimes drawing absolutely nada. When I was younger up until my late teens I had this burning drive to create ALL DAY ERRYDAY with ridiculously large body of work strewn behind me (so much that I have lost more than I've ever had and its still a ton), peaking very early in terms of skill level through the sheer brute force of practice and study... but burning motivations led to burnout. I don't actually blame being TOO driven to create (no such thing dammit!) leading to the burnout, BUT I think some forms of motivation are more sustainable than others. I was driven by ambition, belligerence, more than a little fear. Not so healthy.

I've learned that it's not simple laziness because the "draw anyway" strategy of overcoming art block has NEVER worked for me. The more I push through a block with sheer willpower the more miserable I become, and the only reason I create at all is because it's a source of joy! I have arranged my life in ways to protect this, and is a major reason I have steered away from turning art into a career. There are a lot of IRL factors that I don't really want to elaborate on here (depression is a major one, however), but art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and an artist's life has to have SOME stability in order to have the surplus time and energy to actually draw/paint/compose/write/craft. My own psychic resources have simply been too scarce, I haven't been able to afford to spend those resources on creative projects. Its a Hierarchy of Needs thing. Once Food/Shelter/Safety has been taken care of, I'm spent. There is no surplus.

Annoyingly, fangirling sometimes injects some extra energy and if I then also have the time I just start scrawling fan art uncontrollably (if the fangirling is intense enough you can bet I will MAKE the time! There is NO stopping The Feels). But it's a sugar high and as soon as it's over the art stops too, independently of my desire to actually FINISH anything either (this is the worst part for me, guilt and frustration are the sugar coma, tho the pattern did help me identify the various sources of creative energy).

I dunno how to sum this up. To make art you gotta have an idea. Then the energy to translate the idea out of your soul, and the time/materials to make the actual piece. The spark, the fuel, and the engine. My flavor of art block is akin to running on fumes. Most discussions of art block seem to revolve around the missing spark/faulty ignition. I don't know if this comes off as self-pitying I SURE HOPE NOT but! I do believe I know what steps I need to take in my life to do something about this, so. I'm working on it. Talking about this stuff makes me very uncomfortable but I think it's important. Plus this is an art blog and well, I guess I feel a need to explain myself when I don't post any art??

In the meantime I work hard to not be too mad at myself for lack of productivity (especially when I used to be disgustingly prolific) cos that's an energy-spending exercise not a refueling one.

Artists!! How do you deal with art block, or periods of depression? (Do you deal at all?) Researching my dissertation, scary stuff.