I can usually help this process along by having someone look at what I'm doing, so that even if I disagree with their opinion, it's at least an opinion that isn't blinded by my own prejudices. Look at the last animatic I posted, for instance. When I first recorded the audio, I spent maybe...no time writing it, and just started riffing into the mic, hoping for the best. I was pleased with myself, but after giving it a few listens I almost totally hated it. So, naturally, I re-recorded a lot of it. Great! It was objectively better. Still terrible. This process took me several weeks, whereas I'm sure someone other than me would be able to give it a single listen and proceed to give a lot of valid criticism.
Now, this isn't just crocodile tears in a vain attempt to fish for compliments. I don't need people to tell me that I'm getting better, I know that for a fact. Right now, it's a week shy of one year since I've started this blog, and looking back, christ on a crutch, the first drawings I put up were bad. Right around June was where things started to improve and I think it's been getting better since then. I have to admit I slacked off a lot in the December-February stretch, and I could sit here telling you why, but it all amounts to one stinking pile of irrelevance. What is sort of relevant is my discovery of my own process; try way too hard for a while, and then relax and do better.
The first thing that happens when I try to hard is a complete stripping of what I was actually trying to do. I try to make something I think people will like instead of what I wanted to make. This ends up being completely unfunny since I don't usually understand other people in the first place (not in the "listening to Joy Division nobody understands me YOU JUST DON'T GET IT" kind of way, I just get more confused in general as I age). The most recent series of drawings I made are an excellent example of this whole idea, LET'S HAVE A LOOK.
So, what was I thinking here? I can explain, sort of. Sometimes I entertain this fantasy that I could draw comics. One of the comic ideas I had involves a certain amount of MOOONNNNSTEEERRRRS! I don't have any experience drawing things that aren't people; I thought it would be a fun challenge to branch out a little and see what happens. So, I had this vision in my head of a sort of cave-troll kind of thing. Well, about 20 minutes into that endeavor I noticed I was drawing a gorilla, pretty much one step removed from drawing a human. Rather than scrap the whole thing as an aborted gorilla drawing, I tried to salvage it by maybe making a monster head? Then, of course, my lack of skill/experience in this area jumped in and snatched the tablet from my lap, saying "ha HA! Good luck, asshole!". It was at this point that the caption came to me in a moment of clarity/hilarity.
With the first drawing out of the way, I got the trying too hard out of my system. When that happens, everything changes, even the methods I use to put down the foundation. This drawing probably took me half the time I put into the first one, and I'm much more satisfied with it. I even did a little better than I usually do with foreshortening; that one elephanty foot doesn't look nearly as bad as my drawings in the past have. Still a little fucked up, but not laughably bad.
And finally, the one thing I'm always excellent at, making fun of assholes. This was a mad scribble and took even less time than the first one. Look at that fuckin hand, I'm getting way better at this. I don't know if this is the kind of lesson people should be learning, but it really seems that less caring = better results. So please, stop giving a shit, for your own benefit and ours.
