#I'll probably be posting these logs at least weekly to keep myself accountable

[darkstarofchaos]

So last year I made a decision: this year I’m going to make an animatic. Or at least give it a shot. That doesn’t sound like such a big undertaking, because I’ve been doing art for years. Not consistently, but I’m not a beginner. I have a basic understanding of shadows and light, and how things work in three-dimensional space. I need to learn composition and posing, but I’m not starting from nothing. There’s just one thing. One tiny little issue with my approach that makes this lofty endeavor rather more difficult. I don’t sketch. Ever. No focus on perspective or anatomy. I just draw some circles with directional guidelines, and then I slap the line art directly on top of that. And that doesn’t exactly work if you’re going to make an animatic. I could try it, absolutely: my intent is Transformers animatics, not humans. I can just mess with boxes until they look vaguely okay. But I’m not going to do that. Because it would take forever and it wouldn’t look very good.

Which means I get to do the other thing that takes forever. I get to learn how to sketch. And that means taking away control-z and picking up a pencil.

Here are the results of my first attempt:

Did I forget to mention that I don’t draw humans? Ever? The only time I’ve ever studied human anatomy was when I was trying to figure out how cables would work with robot joints. And hair, I guess, but I was drawing that on ponies.

Suffice to say, I don’t know what I’m doing. I had to set my sketch time to two minutes because less than that had me locking up with indecision. But that page was from a week ago, so here are yesterday’s sketches for comparison:

I am happy to say that I have gotten faster: most of my figures have heads now. And I definitely do better when I have lines of action (except when I curve them the wrong way. Or don’t curve them at all, which is what happened to that poor blob in the top right). I’m also getting used to the “light and loose” lines thing, though I’m pretty sure I commit too soon. Regardless, I’ve gotten more comfortable with the concept of sketching. Which means I can move on to the next step: fixing my cryptid-level anatomy.

[rosebury-archives]

CalmWriMo 2023 Wrap Up!

It is done! It has been done for like four days! IT IS DONE!

I have taken part in @winterandwords' CalmWriMo, here's my goals and how I did!

At the start of November, I sat on 81450 Words for my project To Put On An Act. My current word count is 111793 Words!!!!! WHAAAAT!!!!!! It's safe to say that I reached my writing goal! But what else did I do?

Get to Chapter 16 OR write 30k words - safe to say that I reached both of these goals! I'm currently working on Chapter 18, and I've written 30343 words. Yippie!

Plan later chapters post breakup - eh. I collected some ideas and have a rough plan but there's still some proper outlining missing. I do have a little bit of a better picture now though!

Post progess more frequently - This worked semi well? I would've loved to post more logs to be honest but. Oh well. I did post a couple logs though, and I want to try to make this a habit, maybe to at least yell on here once a week (if I do happen to write that week of course).

Make some Moodboards - I did that! I've not posted them here yet but I did make some little moodboards for a bunch of the characters :)

Make an intro post for this account - did that as well! Yippiee!

Plan for another mysterious project - heheheheheheeheheheh >;)

Now the other, just as important part of CalmWriMo, the Calm. I was not as calm as I should've been. Let's see. What's the goals.

Get more sleep - ahahah. uuh. ahhahehheah. hm. well. let's move on.

Be less anxious/worried about What The World Thinks Of Me - hm. Well. Well? I mean I guess. I think it's fine. I still think every single person in the world is better than me but it's okayyyy I'm alive what more do I want.

KILLING THE CRINGE - happy to report that the cringe dies again every day

Read More - OOOOHHHH LOOK SOMETHING I DID!!! Listened to my audiobook in the beginning of November, however, I did not finish it. Oh well! Instead I did some reading of fellow writers on Wattpad. Some of these really are the most written stories of all time, but there are some real gems hidden in there that I can learn from. Also great for networking [wink]

Less Stress about posting - no stress at all I Am So Calm. I actually caught up to my posting schedule! I took it slow and posted every two weeks to give myself some time, and now I can go back to my regular weekly schedule! I think it's fine. i think I'm fine. I can post when I want and do what I want.

ALL IN ALL! THIS WAS GREAT!!! THIS WAS GENUINELY SO GREAT!!!! I'm really proud of myself and what I did this past month, I got a lot done, I feel motivated, I feel excited! I can't believe I've already hit over 100k words, and at this point I have no idea when this will end, but I'm just really excited to see what the future will hold for TPOAA.

Having a goal for the month really did help me to get a gentle kick in the ass and to sit down and write. I was writing an average of 2k words a day and I hope to kind of keep that even if I don't have a goal set for the month.

If it wasn't for my incredibly draining job, I probably would've been able to hit an even higher word goal, but I genuinely think this was the best I could do and I'm so genuinely proud of myself. Maybe next year I'll aim even higher? Who knows!

Great job to everyone else who took part in CalmWriMo/NaNoWriMo, no matter if you hit your goal, you did great and I'm so proud of you and I kiss you btw. Also thank you winter tumblr dot com for coming up with this idea and making my first steps into the world of November writing challenges a little easier!

remember that Alex and Youngbin love u all <3

[cealesti]

LOG #0, 01/04/23

A BRIEF SUMMARY, RE: "with eyes like these (who sees anybody else)"

So, remember this post? Yeah. I'm going through with it.

The current plan is to have the second draft of the fic written and ready (bar any last minute grammar/vocabulary checks). After that, I'll start posting again, probably on a regular schedule (maybe weekly, maybe bi-weekly)

I also took a break from the story since the aforementioned post, both due to irl stuff and because I wanted to have a fresher perspective when the moment came to get back to it.

That moment is now.

"with eyes like these" is officially entering production (again)

I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, which is happening this month, in order to kick myself into shape and getting into a regular writing habit. My Camp NaNoWriMo word goal is 30k, which is very ambitious for my current schedule. I'm probably going to spend a lot of time this month on TROR's sprinting channel lmao

The other thing that I'm hoping will help with this word goal are the writing updates!

WRITING UPDATE

So, I also mentioned the idea of making weekly posts with some writing updates, to keep myself motivated and to keep anyone who cares about the fic informed of any progress. So here we are!

Today, I sat down and made a summary of the fic so far, as well as of what's happening from the perspective of several characters (namely, Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Abraxas, Orion, and two others I don't want to reveal quite yet). This allowed me to re-connect with the story as a whole and to review the placement of these characters in the narrative, especially Hermione and Ron

Tomorrow, I want to write a list of scenes and plot points I want to include in the story, and start puzzling them together again, taking more into account the ensemble cast and not just Tom and Harry, which I think is a trap that I was falling headfirst into.

The short-term objective here is to handle all of the important plotting bits this week and devote the rest of April to actual writing. I want to write at least one sentence of the fic every day.

So, my friends - let's do this, one more time.