mrcontro:

anthonyholden:

What are studios looking for? How can I get into a good animation school? What should I be studying?

I get a lot of these types of questions now and again, and I never know how to answer them. I can’t be sure of what studios are looking for, I don’t control admissions policies to schools, and I have little idea what makes for a current and relevant curriculum. There are a lot of variables in your bid for a career in animation, and it’s kind of impossible to control most of them. You must be crazy to want this job!

I find it helpful to focus on the things I can control. Among those things are your study habits and how you spend your personal time. It’s good to work hard and have goals—without them we would get nowhere. Study hard and make decisive strides towards achieving your art goals. But in the heat of that pursuit, don’t forget to go out and live your life!

If you spend any amount of time looking at artists online, you’ve probably figured out by now that there are about a million dudes and dudettes in internetville who draw better than you (I relive this realization daily). Once your have done your best to rise to their level, the only tool you have to compete with these crazy talents is your background, your personal character—is you!

Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders.

I know this advice is not particularly animation-specific, but maybe that’s for the best. At any rate, it is something I feel strongly about. Animation is great, and there are few things that I enjoy doing more than drawing and storytelling. But in order to have stories to tell, first you have to live them.

Be good, and see you soon!

PS, if you were looking for advice on draftsmanship you should probably be reading this.

Definitely worth a reblog.  

Source: anthonyholden

Back in Reston and Creating

I’ve got my apartment about…90% in order before leaving but I’m going to be back in Norfolk to settle some things there soon. I’ve wanted to get something more positive and welcoming up because i think my linking to this site every day in my youtube videos has affect the traffic here. Fantastic except I’m all mopey and self loathing in my last blog. ​

On youtube:​

Since some time before I attempted to make videos people tried this daily challenge called VEDA: Vlog Every Day in April or Video EDA. i’m going more the ‘video’ route but I think they’re mostly vlogs. ​My playlist of videos is here and I’ve made videos about moving, going to the recycling center, finding the electronics recycling center, driving, Norfolk, drawing a snowboarding surfer punk yeti and talking about a book. I think I have the opposite problem of some people doing this in they have un out of ideas, all I have are ideas and wanting to talk and share things. I want to do a video on why I’m a feminist, I want to do one on being pro-choice, I want to do an anti-PETA video, I want to try a Mike Falzone walk and talk, I want to talk art history I want to share Reston and I think i want to go to DC. I’ve had ideas for days for videos and i think I’m going to do another art video before the month was over. I can’t do them like my sidebar videos where you can see me work because this genius left her tripod in Norfolk because I was tired and blah blah blah. I think i might combine some of these ideas, I just need to figure out how and which ones…

Making videos has been fun and I think kickstarted my drawing again, or venting some frustrations and some of my self esteem issues to my friend did. i don’t know, but I’ve been feeling a bit better these past few days so that’s a thing. ​

What else… i picked up The Adventures of Superhero Girl by Faith Erin Hicks and just like when I read Friends With Boys, I’m inspired to draw and I want to try new things. It’s a superhero book that loves the genre and pokes fun at it, it’s like my love of art history. I love it so much that I have to laugh at it sometimes and make it humorous. Yes, it’s a painting of a chick chopping off a dude’s head but look at her, she ain’t gone time to play around. Artemisia Gentileschi shows women just handling their business. Opp, he needs a nail in his temple? I guess we’re doin’ this.  choppin’ heads and forgetting names and absconding with the proof. It’s beautiful. I mean, yes, I can analyze the biblical natures and imports of the stories depicted or I can talk about them in a bombastic fashion and just display my flights of fancy, and trust me, I do fancy my flights.

Oh, yeah, I just want to create more and I think recently videos have been that for me. The other night ObviouslyBenHughes questioned the status of current youtube and I recorded a video response but was too tired to edit it to post, I feel he was missing a camaraderie and community and I don’t think it’s lost in it’s entirety but it is more difficult to find people. I’ve found new people to follow and people who’ve been kind enough to follow me since I started doing VEDA. Maybe it’s because of VEDA that I’m cool with this, or maybe it’s because I’m not expecting anything from youtube. It’s my creating on the side from drawing. I think i’m just appreciating exploring other venues of creating. Writing is one thing but seeing me talk and make faces and the physicality of talking over writing conveys different emotions. A lack of body language is the biggest flaw is most social media because it’s primarily text based and video gives me the opportunity to share an idea with more than just words. I love words, but there is something for speaking them. 

On loving words, I’m going to send you out with a wordsmith of one of the highest comedic orders talking about profanity and why morality around our four lettered friends is bullshit.​ 7 Dirty Words and I do like the Class Clown recording a bit more than the live one, but the physicality of it does something beautiful to it.

drawnblog:

I have a lot of respect for Ze Frank, and I adored his year-long project, The Show. So many people have said things similar to this, but it’s always a good thing to hear again. In summary: if you want to make stuff, make stuff. It’s the only way you’ll get past the point of making things to the point of having made stuff. Then you get to make more stuff. So go make stuff!

Thoughts on the Creative Career (by zefrankenfriends)

Warren Ellis' Notebook: Okay. Someone asked me how I feel about writing fiction in a world...

warrenellis:

Okay.  Someone asked me how I feel about writing fiction in a world that still needs actual activism and hands-on work to make life better.  They said something similar to, “I get pulled away from writing fiction because I feel guilty for not making tangible benefit to the world.  Isn’t fiction just escapism?”

But I also got the following message, which I’m filing some of the serial numbers off of, as it were:

“I just wanted to tell you something. When I was 18 years old, my life was a fucking mess. I worked at a store that sold comic books and one day I stumbled upon Spider and the filthy assistants. Your comic kept me from killing myself. There is a character limit here so I can’t say everything I want to but thank you. From the very deepest part of my heart.”

I post this not to self-aggrandise.  It is not a unique message, for good or ill.  I get them surprisingly regularly.  Frankly, messages like that scare the hell out of me, because I’m not very smart and not a very clever writer and I fuck up all the time.

But fiction speaks to people.  Even fiction like mine acts to tell someone, somewhere, that they’re not alone.

You want tangible, social benefits to writing fiction?  There are people walking around today because other people wrote words that spoke to them.  That’ll do.

And thank you.

(via ckburch)

Source: warrenellis

stephenmccranie:

This essay is kind of the second part of an essay on taste that can be read here: 

http://doodlealley.com/2012/10/01/taste-is-your-teacher/

(via sannam)

Source: stephenmccranie

dinolich: adriofthedead: leppu: muura: cryptovolans: apparently I couldnt find anything more useful to do at 4 AM so I made this great visual representation of the journey of making a comic, from an idea to its realization (at least, what I’ve observed so far of the process) That’s perfect. Print this on your wall. Do it all. NEVER GIVE UP. ahh…yes……. I’ve been stuck on step two for like seven years well, sort of alternating between step one and two, if you take into account all the rewrites I’ve done Sooo by this chart, Three Cheers is at Step 2 with plot finagling. But Darkness and Dekay is at step 7. AFTER THIS NEXT RE-VAMP THO, I’m hoping to just move forward….and have…a comic.
Pop-upView Separately

dinolich:

adriofthedead:

leppu:

muura:

cryptovolans:

apparently I couldnt find anything more useful to do at 4 AM so I made this great visual representation of the journey of making a comic, from an idea to its realization (at least, what I’ve observed so far of the process)

That’s perfect. Print this on your wall. Do it all. NEVER GIVE UP.

ahh…yes…….

I’ve been stuck on step two for like seven years

well, sort of alternating between step one and two, if you take into account all the rewrites I’ve done

Sooo by this chart, Three Cheers is at Step 2 with plot finagling. But Darkness and Dekay is at step 7. AFTER THIS NEXT RE-VAMP THO, I’m hoping to just move forward….and have…a comic.

Source: cryptovolans

coelasquid:

elitepurple:

rosalarian:

coelasquid:

Let us take a moment to remember that having an idea for a story, or even an entire story plotted from start to finish in your head does not, in itself, make you a writer. It does not make you a writer any more than thinking about a nice image in your head makes you an artist. You are not a writer until you actually write those ideas down and come to understand that transferring words from your head to a piece of paper and keeping them intact and engaging can be exactly as challenging and frustrating as doing the same with images.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately and every :30 seconds I just want to hurl myself into the sun.



I’m taking the Nope Train away from this station. This came across as de-motivational. How about …

“Let us take a moment to remember that having an idea for a story, or even an entire story plotted from start to finish in your head does, in fact, make you a writer. It makes you as much of a writer just like how thinking about a nice image in your head makes you an artist.” 

If someone can think a whole story in their head and see such beautiful art, that makes them even more so than what people would label other’s as artist/writers. Why do people have to see everyone’s talent to acknowledge who they are? We are all special and unique in our own ways and some stories and pictures are just too beautiful to ever write down or draw no matter how talented we are.

Sometimes I think about outer space and tell people I’m an astronaut.

(via heysawbones)

Source: coelasquid

drawnblog: austinkleon: James Kochalka, “Craft is the Enemy,” from THE CUTE MANIFESTO Fun fact: the dummy book I made for Steal Like An Artist was Kochalka’s Cute Manifesto (they’re the same format/size) with a homemade book cover: This was originally the start of an epic letters-column exchange in the old Comics Journal print magazine. I still think of it as one of the most important lessons I ever learned about making comics. There are a lot of different ways you can take it, but for me it means: just make and make and make, don’t redraw the first 4 pages of your Future Greatest Work over and over again waiting for the drawings to be perfect. Get the ideas out of your head and onto paper—over time the drawings will become better and better, and the stories will become better and better, and eventually you’ll make a Great Work by accident, because you’ve been practicing for years. You’ll also have a body of work in your rearview mirror. 
Pop-upView Separately

drawnblog:

austinkleon:

James Kochalka, “Craft is the Enemy,” from THE CUTE MANIFESTO

Fun fact: the dummy book I made for Steal Like An Artist was Kochalka’s Cute Manifesto (they’re the same format/size) with a homemade book cover:

Fun fact: the original "dummy book" for Steal was James Kochalka's CUTE MANIFESTO with a book cover on it.

This was originally the start of an epic letters-column exchange in the old Comics Journal print magazine. I still think of it as one of the most important lessons I ever learned about making comics. There are a lot of different ways you can take it, but for me it means: just make and make and make, don’t redraw the first 4 pages of your Future Greatest Work over and over again waiting for the drawings to be perfect. Get the ideas out of your head and onto paper—over time the drawings will become better and better, and the stories will become better and better, and eventually you’ll make a Great Work by accident, because you’ve been practicing for years. You’ll also have a body of work in your rearview mirror. 

Source: austinkleon

25 Things I Want to Say to So-Called Aspiring Writers

Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, “I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor.” Either pick it up or don’t. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper’s full. Take it off or stop talking about it.

All of this applies to drawing too

Source: terribleminds.com