Perseverance
Or, That Time I Immersed Myself In The Dark Art Of Poster Making...
Problem
The summer of 2018 faced me with a particularly tricky problem: I had an abundance of time, and a need to exert myself. I hadn't the foggiest on what.
See, all my previous projects required a finite period of exertion. The project presents an issue that needs solving, and so I get to solving it.
One concerted effort later, and I've come to the logical conclusion of this process and move on to the next thing. I'd never taken on something that required me to push through those days where I struggled with inspiration. Previously, I'd been able to take my productive days and leverage them to satisfactory effect. This didn't sit right with me. Aren't I supposed to be able to push through and produce regardless? Shouldn't I be manufacturing my own muse, or eschewing that concept entirely in favor of work ethic and bootstraps? Surely to goodness these are things I should be capable of, no? Well, I honestly didn't know, so I set myself to finding out. Spoiler: I got the job done.
One concerted effort later, and I've come to the logical conclusion of this process and move on to the next thing. I'd never taken on something that required me to push through those days where I struggled with inspiration. Previously, I'd been able to take my productive days and leverage them to satisfactory effect. This didn't sit right with me. Aren't I supposed to be able to push through and produce regardless? Shouldn't I be manufacturing my own muse, or eschewing that concept entirely in favor of work ethic and bootstraps? Surely to goodness these are things I should be capable of, no? Well, I honestly didn't know, so I set myself to finding out. Spoiler: I got the job done.
Solution
Like every other burgeoning artist with an internet connection, I took on a creative daily challenge: One poster a day, every day. No repeats, no excuses.
Each day, I'd wake up, sit down with my coffee and a web browser, and I found something to inspire me. A couple hours of frenzied Photoshopping (and eventually illustrating, modeling, and rendering) later, and I'd made myself a poster. The trick of it wasn't any one piece, it was keeping myself going from piece to piece. I found that what I needed, more than anything else, was to impose some structure and direction to the work I was about. Making in sets, giving myself restrictions like 'Only grey scale for the next set' or 'everything in render, no post-processing' proved potent medicine.
Each day, I'd wake up, sit down with my coffee and a web browser, and I found something to inspire me. A couple hours of frenzied Photoshopping (and eventually illustrating, modeling, and rendering) later, and I'd made myself a poster. The trick of it wasn't any one piece, it was keeping myself going from piece to piece. I found that what I needed, more than anything else, was to impose some structure and direction to the work I was about. Making in sets, giving myself restrictions like 'Only grey scale for the next set' or 'everything in render, no post-processing' proved potent medicine.
Take-away
Creative freedom only goes so far with me. Restriction is the mother of my particular invention. This project taught me how to impose these kinds of restrictions on myself, and not to rely on a brief to do it for me.