Crashing through the vault of heaven with my determination.

           During last semester there was an idea that had stricken me as I was driving back to Indy after a weekend up in Muncie, make a crossover of two of my favorite animated series, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The thought had struck me that many of the characters from Gurren Lagann had personality traits almost entirely in line with characters from My Little Pony, both canon and fanon. When I’d gotten back to my apartment I feverishly wrote down the characters that were most like each other from the respective series and realized that I could do an entire cast substitution with ponies in a giant mecha anime. Driving from that I spent many all-nighters screen-capping, drawing and coloring a scene from Gurren Lagann substituted with ponies and eventually this was created, signed, and finished.

            Originally I had thought I lacked the artistic ability to make such a thing a reality, merely postulating with friends how cool the crossover would be and hoping someone else in the vast world of the internet would do it. It wasn’t until that drive home I’d decided I’d take the idea upon myself to do. Despite family emergencies and crappy pencils, I doodled it out on paper over a sleepless weekend and posted my results on the internet, and got a decent review, and thought myself done. Later on I had gotten the urge to dust off my tablet and go add some color and fix all the minor line errors that require finer erasers than I have on hand.

            When I was working on the emblem during break time in a class, a rather eccentric gentleman of 35 looked at my progress so far and commented that my design looked “Damn sexy.” I later learned that this man had done a brief stint drawing for Marvel Comics, so regardless of how little he was to them, that meant a lot to me. When I was finished fully I was getting comments from everyone who’d seen me feverishly coloring over those previous weeks and even thought they may have liked only one or even none of the shows I put together, they did complement me on the effort I poured into it. In the end, I suppose, it was an exercise in getting back into drawing as a whole and learning the various ins and outs of being an artsy type like know full well most people won’t notice those tiny details that you mess up and getting the same amount of congrats overall.

            Seeing as I had not imagined making that project two moths earlier when it was proposed, I have no idea how it may have turned out in the hands of more capable artists. The first limitation was the fact I don’t like making things from scratch on computers, I like having pencil and paper to work on and the freedom of workspace that it allows for, since I’m a fidgety individual I don’t like sitting in a chair for several hours while my ideas come to life. Ever tried spinning a laptop around for a better view on what you’re drawing? Though so. As you look at that image I linked you to, keep in mind I’ve never drawn a mecha that well, if ever, in my life. I like straight lines, but I can’t draw them to save my life, and I never had a sense for where all the little doodlebopers would go on the robot. Over that weekend that I had physically drawn it, my brother had had his first (and hopefully last) seizure, leaving that night to be somewhat unproductive due to the trauma of the whole thing. Next limitation came from the fact I had never really gotten used to Photoshop and my tablet, yet I felt I could do so much more with what I had made, I later manned up and did it anyway once I found a scanner.  And lastly, I did the unthinkable, I posted it on the internet hoping it would do well. Granted the My Little Pony board on Reddit is self-advertised as the friendliest place next to it’s stoner board, it’s very nerve wracking when you don’t know if you posted at the ideal time to get it noticed, nor if you’re going to get anything more constructive than “I leik dis art.”

     In the very least, I hope me and the electronics can get over out various issues, because I feel that if we can set out differences aside we can create much good art. I've expressed this to my computer while simultaneously testing out my new tablet.

Group One and its various doings.

Group One was mostly myself and another member talking back and forth with each other, she'd propose an idea and I'd suggest a spin on the idea and see what the reaction was. From what I gathered from Group Two, many similar ideas were tossed around such as "Other group does the proposed activity first" or "Simply do nothing for 15 minutes" On our side of things we had come to these conclusions, but wanted to try to make the other group DO something because we felt those options were a bit of a cop-out.

What we settled on, and personally I'd have preferred the idea of making karaoke videos, was having everyone listing their favorite movie quote and making it into a relevant script. What we ended up settling on was dramatically reading those quotes that we wrote down.

I feel now that the goggles are going to be a new look for me, even taking Jacques' likelihood to exaggerate  that SOMEONE was curious as to why I wore goggles today. It started out as a mix of my birthday being this week, and the fact they can make a bad hair day actually work, but now I think I'm going to wear the goggles to Seeing Sideways just to serve as way of being unique. It's not often you're in a group of people that know nothing about you, so I'm taking advantage of that to be me as I am currently rather than having to stick to a two-to-three year rut of expectations the group I normally hang out with has subject me to.

Reflections of the Class 1/23

Well, today was certainly interesting in regards to fishbowls. That is to say, rather,  that someone(Jacques, I think, nobody's really been on a first name basis so far) was attempting to force a meme, but all in all not a terrible one.

What I really took away from the class was a reaffirming of what I had already discovered as far as excess of choices leading to an increase in self-depreciative behavior, thought I probably would not have worded my conclusion as eloquently. Especially on the bead assignment, I had come up with what I thought was a nifty little idea, only to have someone show off their assignment in Intro to Sound that was a well-produced video. I would have been distraught over the difference in perceived quality of our two projects had it been only six months ago, but recently I've developed the confidence to say that my projects aren't the best, but that's no reason to not be happy with the end result as well as having faith that Beth meant what she said of anything goes.

Ponies Play Beadball

     So here I was, day before the assignment was due, thinking that I would cop out with a silly comic telling of the bead's loneliness staying in a pocket of my backpack for the past week. When I got about halfway through the rough draft, I looked up at my toy adorned entertainment system and realized that the bead was about the size of smaller volleyball for my pony figurines. So in true MacGyver fashion I took some paperclips and tape and set up a volleyball net for my ponies to play with.

Rarity's about to return a serve.

    This was certainly an interesting feat to color balance in Photoshop while one of my eyes was out of commission due to allergies.

Initial Hopes and Expectations

           Today (yesterday) we went over the syllabus for the class, pretty standard. What wasn’t standard was how informal and laid back the class was. I’ve had Beth for a class before, and despite her insisting it was strict it seemed very lenient and allowed for creativity, so I have high hopes for a more fun and enjoyable class in Seeing Sideways because of it’s sole purpose being dedicated to fostering that creativity.

            I’d found the drive to get in touch with my artistic side over the summer, found almost entirely in the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Laugh if you will, but given the fact that I had not wanted to pick up a pencil or pen for two years until then, I took the opportunity and ran with it. What kept me going up to this point was the community based around that show, getting praise and constructive criticism on your work, even anonymously, really helped me believe in my ability as an artist and has created a loop of wanting to give back to these people via art to keep me going for these past eight months.

            Even so, I’ve found myself either bogged down with too many ideas or burning myself out on a project I dumped 40 hours into. All the same, I also realize the pony kick will most likely die out, which would leave me dormant again unless I'm able to adapt to a wider variety of material to art. That being said, I'd like to develop my own style of doing things so my creativity can be self sustaining. I’d also like to learn how to manage that creative impulse and keep my work flowing in a more steady instead of having it come out in spurts, that’s my hopes of things to take away from this class.