Firstly I wanted to change up the colour palette. A decision that was reinforced after presenting some of my work to Huni. The backgrounds as they stand seem disparate due to a lack of continuity in the colour scheme. What I want to do is change the colours to a bronzed, art deco futurist look. To go a long with this new direction I wanted to also clean up the images themselves.
To achieve the look I was after I went and had a crash course in Illustrator, from a pro Illustrator teacher. I was confidant that with my newly acquired rudimentary skills, and a stronger vision I was on my way to being able to finally gain some traction on my project. But after attempting to re-draw some of the introductory images I realised the fatal flaw in my plan: me.
The images were not suddenly going to appear on screen, matching my vision just because I was now drawing with a virtual pen as opposed to a physical one. Nor were the colours going to spontaneously meld to the scheme I had in my head. The problem, you see, had not been my lack of skill with a pen, but a lack of discipline and patience.
Patience when creating has always been a downfall for me, particularly with images (writing I seem to have marginally more self discipline and self control). I want what I want, and I want it NOW. Obviously that is not how it works. This lack of patience is confounded by my inability to align the skills needed with any I foresee using long term. That is, I KNOW I will not get a job as an animator, nor do I really want one. I certainly won't be threatening any prospective concept artists jobs either. This in itself is fine, I know where I want to go (ish) but it leaves a mental set against creating the work, normally reserved for 3D and Maya related subjects.
I am sick of whinging about the project, no doubt everyone is sick of hearing about it. And whilst I'm not committing to quit, I am going to focus on getting out of the project what I need to. That is continuing to develop story telling skills, and learning more from the 3D guys about their process (I am still naively assuming I'll take on Producer roles in the near future). I'm also wanting to make sure the marketing and promotion sides of the course are taken full advantage of. This should make little impact on my project, but for me, it will. What it means for me is that I am going to relieve the pressure of the look of the piece. I am not going to be able to get the piece to look like I want it to (i.e. awesome) so I'm not going to wast energy a) in a futile attempt to make it so and b) chastising myself for not making myself work harder on my weaknesses to make it better.
This is a capitulation, I won't deny it. But I am doing what I can to salvage from the project experience in skills that I have and want, as opposed to using it as a vehicle of shame, highlighting the many skills I don't.
