Understand what "Awesome" is
I've done a lecture on "where do your get your ideas" a couple times at comicons, and some people have gotten a lot out of it, and others have refused to. The thing of it is, people are always willing to put forth effort towards their dreams...as long as it's effort they are comfortable with or imagined they'd need to put forth. But effort outside their comfort zone or how they thought the sausage was made, is often shunned or rationalized away.
I'll type in all out in a blog one day, but the highpoint is...go live a life. You can't live everyday through a computerscreen and expect to become a good writer. You have to go out and experience things, interact with people, experience highs and lows,trials and tribulations...and your brain, possibly as a defense mechanism, will start noticing things and juxtaposing things and giving you ideas. and those ideas will connect with people and feel real, because they are born from real life input, experience.
You want to write a song about heart break, you'd better have had your heart broken. I am not talking here about autobiographical work, I am talking about having actual experience as a foundation of what you are writing. Have you ever committed a crime, or spent timewith someone who has? You can have all the talent in the world butyour story about a murder is never going to be as good as one writtenby a murderer...that's an extreme example, and you should not go outand murder someone. But if you yourself are not dangerous, have never spent any time around someone dangerous, how TF are you going to write a villain? It'll be your interpretation of someone else's interpretation, that you read or watched on tv. A copy of a copy. You want real life experience and/or- seen with your own eyes, heard with your own ears, observation.
Everything else is fan fiction about what you think life is.
Another important aspect, which I did not bring up in the lecture because it was more of a tributary of the point, is that you need to understand what "awesome" is.
Training your brain to notice things and produce ideas is level one, After that you want better ideas,more complex ideas, ideas that are on another level of creative. and that means doing things (physical real life things) that challenge you. This example is going to seem self serving but it is A a goodexample and B partially to remind myself what awesome is...as I need a reminder as much as any of you need to hear this in the firstplace.
You're at a convention...you have a 3x6 banner behind you, with an image of some character you did for some company...just like everyone else in your row of booths. That is legit, it is practical...but it is not awesome.
A 8x10 banner of your own characters with cartoon blood dripping off the table is...somewhat awesome
BUT Actual Awesome is a 6ft tall inflatable cartoon fetus...
Tragically, I can't find any pictures of this bad boy up behind the booth at Comic-ConInternational. BUT that pic there from when I had painted it and was airing it out makes side point- Awesome takes effort, and help.
and sometimes it takes ingenuity and sometimes its a clusterf*ck. and sometimes the specific result you intended don't work out, but that does not hinder it from being awesome, and conveying awesome. There are scant few booths at any convention that appear to be as big a clusterf8ck, behind the scenes, as Arsenic Lullaby's. and also...few that are having as much fun, and thus not as much fun to be at or come to.
While that inflatable fetus was striking and gathered a crowd...it also conveys something. It conveys that there is something out of the ordinary and at a wholeother level going on at this booth. It conveys energy and ambition and new things being tried and effort being made. That energy is notonly attractive, it is inspiring to YOU. You trying something new, putting more effort into everything...that is a road you want to be going down. It is a road filled with benefits and beneficial unintended consequences.
Because you coming up with such an idea, working on that idea, is training your brain to always go tothe next level, and look for next level type ideas. You can let your brain get complacent and soft or train it to seek and strive.
Let me give you another example that may connect such endeavors as making an awesome booth display, with creative output. You COULD sit infront of a computer and CGI a monster. It is pragmatic it is legit,but it is not awesome...THIS is awesome...
and this is awesome
Connecting it to creativity...who is going to be coming up with wilder ideas, and thinking up angles and scenesthat are awesome and not originally planned, the guy rotting away at a keyboard or the guy crafting all this actual stuff and ( I guarantee you this happened) playing with it like a 5yr old. The answer is the guy making the actual stuff.
If you can not sense the gears turning in his mind as he makes this thing...you are dead inside.
When we're talking about"creativity" we're in the realm of intangible stuff, unquantifiable stuff...it's about where your heads at. How far are YOU YOURSELF into the world/story you are making. How REAL is it to YOU. How much do you feel like YOU are there. on a scale of one to ten of being immersed into one's own story...we can agree to disagree on sitting in front of a computer being a -5 or a 2, but if there is any hope for you at all your should agree that these are a 10
and that this is a 10
and this is a 10
and THIS would be a 15!
Can you imagine, making a life size model of some monster you can up with and being inside it, making it move around?! Think you might come up with a better idea or two? Or hell, just seeing in life size or just seeing it in physical form and able to hold it and move it around and act something out with it. And doesn't all of that look more fun?!We're talking about intangibles, remember. And the energy that having fun brings to something is one of the mothers of all intangibles.
Do you need to sculpt actual versions of your characters and create dioramas? No...but it's f*cking fun. and it has an effect.
(Actually in this case, I kinda did need to make that sculpt because that character is complicated as hell and him being in different positions and from different angles in the panels/pages was confusing the sh*t out of me)
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The more real a story is in your head, the more real it will be to everyone else. The more energy and effort you put into everything...merch, promo stuff, booth displays, whatever, the more energy it sends out to an audience. That's just true. I don't know why, but it is.
There are people who spend hours upon hours on a project, putting in skill and precision and in the end it makes no real connection with an audience, despite how much they respect and are in awe of it. And then there are people with far less skill who's work, however, makes a profound connection with people and the factor that separates one from the other is always the energy it puts out. and that , for reasons I do not understand but have observed to be true, is in direct relation to the energy put into it
It's about understanding what awesome is and striving for it.
I said early in this blog that I was half talking to myself here. That giant inflatable cartoon fetus, that was a long time ago. and I had thought I found a decent medium between a clusterf*ck of making a giant inflatable fetus and trying to get it to work mere hours before the largest Comic-Con in the world started, and safe but boring.
I'm beginning to feel there is no "medium between the two" there is all in and there is everything else. and I'm beginning to feel that the version of myself that made that thing would look at my booth, and for that matter my recent works, and say "meh, I can beat that".
Hmm, maybe kid, but I can beat you both.
Anyways...
Always, my homepage is here- https://arseniclullabies.com/
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