Creative Thinking
Origin of Cappy
Lately I will admit to being a bit lost in my own little gaming world. In that time I played a game I hadn’t even heard about called Hollow Knight. This game is absolutely bloody amazing! It is both simple in its execution and layered with difficulty that is brilliantly balanced. It got me to thinking of a comic to sort of commemorate coming to the Switch and this idea came to my head. Enjoy, and do let me know what you think.
So there are times when you simply have to be creative, especially when your lively hood is based on it. For me this means making fun little projects that make me take absurd concepts and turn them into a piece of work. This doesn't have to be visual, like it is above, but can cover any creative field. For me this helps because my cause of stifled creativity is often attributed to how seriously I'm invested in the process.
For me being serious isn't a bad thing but being too serious definitely is. That is the point where I start to over think the tiny details and won't take any risks. When I'm too serious I look at every detail instead of the whole project and I forget to consider the process of the work as a whole. So when I can see that this is happening I can then go and make a blog and draw some random characters based on comics and I've unhinged my brain a bit.
I'm not saying go wacky and out of control unless your at home and have tolerant family/roommates. Functioning out in the real world requires a small percentage of seriousness, but for me creativity comes from out of box thinking. It doesn't mean it has to be one or the other, but a mixture of both. Anyhow this was simply a flow of thought that I felt would go with today's image. I had a lot of fun with this one and I might be making more.
Often times artist, those creative types, can get hung up trying to get ideas flowing. That has to stop, for me at least. One thing I'm going to stop doing is letting things sit on my theoretical easel when it comes to some creative ideas. I'm a busy guy and I shouldn't feel that ideas that are unfinished need to be locked up.
I'm doing this process mainly when it comes to visual media, but I intend to carry this over to written material when I finally have put some energy into writing some short stories. Basically this is for short works, breather projects. What gets to me is how my ideas of perfection tend to keep me from showing my work, flawed as it is.
It is frustrating to dabble in ideas but never produce anything worth showing. I do a ton of work that makes it to fruition yet for some reasons all these little side projects start to grate at me and the side effect causes me to do less. So to get myself moving I'm going to show unfinished ideas, flawed ones and hopefully I will also show the good, the nice updated stuff that is finished.
Maybe this can help me look at the ideas I throw out and see what could be useful, maybe even get feedback at some point. I just am tired of having this box of ideas locked away and never doing anything with them. Good, bad, and mediocre should all get some time to see the light.
With that in mind, the above piece was going to be my first blog post but when I realized I had a free domain with my account on Squarespace I decided to move my blog over. All of a sudden this idea that started out as an illustrated idea of dusting off an unused space became moot point. I was going to just put it on the side and let it collect dust since I could now use this site as I planned to use my blogspot, then it hit me. I was going to let a illustration about dusting off and getting back to work sit there.
I didn't have the time for it, and the will to continue on it was taking a lot of effort, fighting for the time I really didn't have to spend on it. Yet instead of letting a illustration about beginning collect and gather dust, I figured I would at least give it a half-life and in that process maybe let it fulfill its function. Let it show me an example of what I'm worried about and finally give an unfinished job a positive purpose.