Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

[Helm]

Honestly it's not my place to judge whereas there is love in your art.

Yes it does have to do with life experience for me but not just 'growing up'. The process of trying to feel empathy for other people. Not 'understand' them or 'put yourself in their place'. Just... to commit a small part of your metaphorical garden to them and see it grow and prosper and give strange and sometimes challenging fruit. Our consumerist culture urges us to be afraid and mistrusting of strangers, we go through life without caring about feeling other people. You can see it on the internet: a place with such potential for communication is routinely torn down by its very own users - the younger the worse at this, sadly. We can use this thing to feel things we would never 100 years before.. or we can use it to go edit the wikipedia page on epilepsy to put brightly flashing colors gifs 'for the lulz'.

[JJ Naas]

But I have no Idea how I feels to be that young boy. Is that something which can be learned through studying gestures and facial expressions? Or will that automaticly occur if there's enough life experience which you can depend on?

It's not necessarily all about how much you gather experience, it's about how well you're able to learn and understand from even the smallest of things. I know some people who've seen and experienced very little but are still very able to determine someone else's character very quickly, and I've known people who have met a lot of people, been around the world and experienced a lot, but still remain as ignorant and closed minded as they've always been, judging everything by the same unchanged standards they had ten, fifteen years ago.. trying to fit their experiences into the mold of their unchanging world view rather than letting their experiences change the way they see the world. Experience helps, but if you can't interpret what you experience, it's no use. I really don't have an answer how to approach this though... maybe you have to first define how YOU would react to such a thing, then expand it, imagine how someone you know well would react to it and so on.

[Rosse]

JJ Naas>
I hope I don't make the impression of being ignorant and close-minded . I see what you mean. Your idea about imitating others and then interpreting their reaction is really the way life works. I read an article a week or so ago (can't find it again, so no source, sorry) where they proofed, that imitation is a real important factor to get accepted and successful in the society. One test in england was, that they had waiters and one group tried to imitate the guest (repeating everything they said, imitating their gesture...) whereas the others didn't try to match the guest. The result was, that the imitating waiters got about 60% more tip than the others. Other experiments with apes showed, that they are able to imitate other fellows. That's important to learn and get accepted in their community. It looks like this natural behavior is one factor of a functional society. Loosing this ability may result in a "you're ignorant" impression.

I don't try to imitate my surroundings, at least not intentional. I try to being aware, don't judging my surroundings but accepting. Not good or bad, nor right or false, just being. So when somebody asks me, if I like something, sometimes I don't answer or I ask the a counter-question. Other times I say I don't know or I don't mind. Thus my fellows call me sometimes "ignorant". But being liberated from (or currently: trying to) such thoughts or behavior can that be called ignorant? I mean, I don't mind. But wouldn't be their behavior (from their point of view) called ignorant?

Helm>
I know that you don't have (or like) to judge if I put love into my work or not. But I believe when you see something artificial (meaning created by humans) there perhaps you can see something sub-concious. A force or tension which surpasses logic. That's what I meant lacks my comic and I thought this can be read out of your critique. I'm sorry if I interpreted your critique wrong. But of course I know what you said (literally) and I try to adress what you critiqued next time!

About the feeling-stuff. I think I see what you mean. But maybe I'm unclear to myself what I mean with feelings. Above I wrote something about not judging or trying to be just aware of your surroundings. Of course, when the time comes, I have to make decisions. Now, how do I "judge" how to act? My whole life I tried to surpass feelings through using logic (being pragmatic). Over the years I really put the judging-tool "feelings" into a drawer and just used logic to determine what to do. Now, years later, I can't easily tell if I like something or not. I use logics to determine if it makes sense (and therefore I "like" it) or not.
Now, more time passed and more thoughts be thought. I found out, that logic which I used was something artificial. It's human made and therefore limited. Limited by the system we created our self, limited by language and limited by passed on experiences. I wanted to get rid of it, being liberated from it and being free... to create true art (not that lifeless stuff). At the same time I found out about eastern believes like buddhism and taoism. I saw parallels in thoughts and the "way".

Now trying to adapt this new approach to my old way it's not easy. I'm easily distracted, often don't know what to do. All I know is that I want to create art which other people inspires to create art and those inspire other people again to do so and so on. That's where I'm aiming at.
I'm not sure if I'm at the right track. I don't know if I can accomplish that. I'm not even sure if that's a good thing or not. But a further step is done by going through my mind and posting this. If you (all of you) d'like to answer something I really appreciate it. But if you think I'm just confused just ignore me. If it's too off-topic please move or delete it.

walk on...

[Helm]

I think that journey through hard positivism with these dreams of 'logic' is essential, and it's essential to reach the point where you want to get rid of that programming. So it's very encouraging for you that you have passed through both these states. What comes next depends on so much, but at least you're not standing still.

[EyeCraft]

Hello everyone. I haven't been here in a while, for shame. Looking through this thread, there's some amazing stuff you guys have been putting up. Here's something I did recently for a competition; it ended up being really rushed so there's some things I missed cleaning up. Not to mention the rendering is all screwy



Any C&C you guys might have would be appreciated!

[JJ Naas]

JJ Naas>
I hope I don't make the impression of being ignorant and close-minded . I see what you mean.

No, I didn't mean it and clearly you're not. That was just one randomly chosen example.

Other times I say I don't know or I don't mind.

If you ask me, it's very courageous to admit it when you don't know something rather than come up with some lame argument just for the sake of it.

Anyway, I have drawn a few comics as well, at least a thousand pages worth in one medium or another, so I'm quite familiar with such musings. I've met interesting people that I've used in my comics as well. I'm not claiming I've been able to really know their minds, but after having spent enough time with them I've been able to predict how they'd react to certain situations and I've used that gut feeling. Sometimes I combine many real personalities into a one comic character or  modify them a lot if the story demands so, meaning it would stall if I started obediently figuring out what they'd really do at certain situations. So there's a fine balance there.. since real life and real people are quite unpredictable, you have to occasionally do sacrificies in art and characterization and whatever else is involved if you actually intend to tell a story or get it to a finish. Unless you're telling a Jack Kerouacish story about drifters with no concern about where the story goes.

About how to keep the story together and make it strong without sacrificing too much characterization and art (it's all interralated anyway) you could start... from the very basics. Very very basics. Read Aristoteles' Poetics. It was quite a revelation to me in figuring out what rules even modern western style story telling (Hollywood movies included) is based upon. Western story telling is still so Aristotelean that it feels those rules and gimmicks have often been exhausted to death, whcih may partly explain why manga stories, with a strong emphasis on totally different things like inner feelings and atmosphere felt so refreshing upon first encounter years ago.

[Helm]

JJ Naas, keep in mind that I have strong urges to hug you from time to time. I'd give you more cookies but I don't know if you'd think that too forward.

Can you post some of your comic art here?

[JJ Naas]

JJ Naas, keep in mind that I have strong urges to hug you from time to time. I'd give you more cookies but I don't know if you'd think that too forward.

Uh.. I'd like to point out that us emotionally crippled Nordic people tend to prefer a larger personal space than you Mediterraneans, but much appreciated anyway.

Can you post some of your comic art here?

I have one new 10 page story that's out in print here soon, so I'll post that as soon as I've translated it in English and put it available on the Net, as I've been meaning to.

[Helm]

Cold-blooded creatures of the north!

Alright, looking forward to the comics.

[Ryumaru]

Finally finished my first design. This is my first attempt at any of the processes used in t-shirt design.



This is the drawing it is based on: