IF: Fierce

fierce (adjective) : slang; hot, sharp, amazing, or of a super quality; having a fashion sense or style that is stunning or fabulous

I knew I was looking good that night when a stranger from across the street shouted to me, "Those shoes are fierce, girl!"



For those who've seen it, this is a touch-up of the previous Roxy image.

The birth of Roxy

I'm starting to create the visual prototypes of the non-player characters in a game I'm working on. I find that the one thing more difficult than precisely capturing the image I have in my head is drawing the same character the same way twice. Here I was trying to get down face shape, features, and body type. Roxy is really much less serious and dresses less conservatively. (Yes, it's true.) I can tell he's going to be my favorite character to work with, which is why I attempted him first. He's from the NY art scene in the early 80's, and he's all about androgyny, camp, and eccentricity. Fun!



Here's a close-up, because it looks better at this size but doesn't fit on the screen.



It's obviously not a finished work of art, but I'm happy to have finally gotten him to look how I imagined. Next step is to give him some character.

Fear

I have thus far kept my personal work and my professional work completely separate. I have done this because I read horror stories about companies looking up prospective employees on the web and finding things that were not to their liking. I've also experienced this first-hand when I helped out with the hiring at my former job. One applicant had a nice portfolio, good resume, etc., but when my bosses looked at his web site, they found work that he did for his D&D guild. They looked at each other knowingly, rolled their eyes, and said, "Well, that one's out of the running." Little did they know that their star employee (me) was into that sort of thing as well. I kept my mouth shut and put it down as a lesson learned.

But then I read this:

Selling out is harder than it looks.

Diluting your product to make it more "commercial" will just make people like it less.

Many years ago, barely out of college, I started schlepping around the ad agencies, looking for my first job.

One fine day a Creative Director kindly agreed for me to come show him my portfolio. Hooray!

So I came to his office and showed him my work. My work was bloody awful. All of it.

Imagine the worst, cheesiest "I used to wash with Sudso but now I wash with Lemon-Fresh Rinso Extreme" vapid housewife crap. Only far worse than that.

The CD was a nice guy. You could tell he didn't think much of my work, though he was far too polite to blurt it out. Finally he quietly confessed that it wasn't doing much for him.

"Well, the target market are middle class houswives," I rambled. "They're quite conservative, so I thought I'd better tone it down..."

"You can tone it down once you've gotten the job and once the client comes after your ass with a red hot poker and tells you to tone it down," he laughed. "Till then, show me the toned-up version."

This story doesn't just happen in advertising. It happens everywhere.

And that is exactly what I do.

My art, my life, and my happiness are suffering because I always "tone it down."



I am sometimes terrified to pursue an idea that I have, because I worry about what others would think of me if I did. I worry about offending people. Or scaring them. And if I do pursue it, it's like a guilty pleasure, and I never show it to anyone. It's like I have this exterior image that I have to keep clean and shiny, and all these ideas that I have inside me... well, sometimes they just don't fit that image. If I revealed them, people might see that I'm not perfect, I'm not intellectual, I'm not refined, I'm not mature, I'm not completely sane. They might even see that I'm human. Heavens!

I know it's stupid. I know that I shouldn't care. I don't want to care. But that fear of what people will think of me, it's so hard to fight it. The problem is that the fear makes me fucking boring. I mean, really... who is more interesting? The crazy old lady who collects anything colored neon pink? Or the office drone who never does anything outside his programmed schedule? I know which one's more interesting to me. I'm not saying I want to be a crazy old lady, but I certainly don't want to be the drone. So why am I? Why am I afraid not to be?

Nina Paley sort of addresses that in her 'Enemies of the Muse' post:

Fear
Because there’s something terrifying about creating. The ego loosens its grip, and however briefly there’s a loss of control. You have to give yourself over to an idea, and what’s an idea? Where did it come from? If your ego didn’t make it, who or what did? Later, you can tell yourself you were in control the whole time, the idea is “yours,” but then how come you can’t conjure another at will? If you’re so in control, why did you have writer’s block that time? Why can’t you turn the flow on and off at will, like a bathroom faucet?

And some of those ideas…they’re disturbing. What do they say about you? That idea just now - that was a stupid idea. An unoriginal idea. Kill it now, before someone else discovers how stupid and unoriginal you are.

I'm making it my goal now to pursue whatever creative urge grips me. If it offends someone, then it offends them. I'm doing it for me. I'm not doing it for them. And if revealing the inner workings of my mind scares people, then I guess they never really liked me to begin with. Because they obviously didn't know me. And what good is it for someone to like you for something that you're not? Are people going to not hire me because they are shocked by something I created? Then why the hell would I want to work for them anyway? Someone else will be intrigued by the very same thing. My goal is to stop trying to please others and to be true to myself.

I'm no good at pleasing others anyway. I try, and I only ever get it wrong.

IF: Punchline

I've been teaching myself how to use Illustrator with a free demo. Only 4 days left. :(



(It's a non-joke. You're not supposed to get it. Or rather, you're supposed to pretend that you get it so you won't look stupid. It's an experiment in peer pressure!)

IF: 100%

This is 100% different from what I normally do. It doesn't impress me much.

Tribute to Gaudi

Alexander

It's been too long. I finally finished something. :)

Columbus Day

Today was Columbus Day and Hispanic Day, the national holiday of Spain. We happened to catch part of a parade with traditional dancers from Bolivia and Ecuador.

Dublin

I like Spain. However, not being sociable where I can understand people and not being able to communicate with even cashiers or wait staff are two entirely different things. So this weekend was my break, my chance to understand people for a while before spending another month here. Wouldn't you know it, everywhere I went in Dublin, I was next to people speaking Spanish.

That aside, I am in love with Dublin. It's like Pittsburgh, except the people have less annoying accents. And the money is worth more. And the European beer is cheaper. And there are bike lanes everywhere. And there are tons of non-Starbucks coffee shops. How can I move there? Seriously.



An architectural fact that I didn't know: houses built in the Georgian style have large windows on the first floor and progressively smaller ones on each floor above in order to give the illusion of height.

This is St. Patrick's cathedral. This is one of the many stained glass windows. And here are some helmets and swords. :)

We got a free tour of the Guinness Storehouse, which included a free Guinness at the Gravity Bar, which is a big glass room with an amazing view of the city. Here are two more views. I'd never had a Guinness before, as I never liked beer before I met Belgian beer, but it's actually not bad. A lot of buildings are topped with green.

I saw Molly Malone, the tart with the cart. The angels around the statue of Daniel O'Connell on O'Connell Street were not covering their eyes.

We also took a tour of Kilmainham Gaol, which was where several leaders of rebellions were held and executed.