A rough draft of a post was accidentally scheduled and went live yesterday. My mistake, obviously. The title and featured photo were both placeholders. Just FYI. If you already read it, you might want to skip to the half-way point of this post.

A lot of ideas occur to me while on the treadmill, which is somewhat problematic.

If I can, I try and find a treadmill facing a mirror. As I’m running, I just stare at my own sweating face, and in that way, I bear witness to the everlasting fucking torture that is exercise. Somehow, that enforces a far more rigid discipline within myself that is otherwise unattainable.

Watch yourself suffer, and you have an easier time avoiding temptation.

And there are so, so many temptations.

As I mentioned, I do have a lot of ideas while I’m on those awful machines, and by the time I’m done I find myself panting and hurriedly scribbling/typing everything that’s occurred to me.

The larger projects I’m working on, with GREEN KNIGHT being the first of a trilogy, all involve a lot of pre-production work. My projects start as rough stories, and over months (sometimes years) slowly spiral into concept art, level designs, and most notably: cutscenes.

The cutscenes, in particular, are a moving target, and what occur to me most while running. I listen to a lot of music, and I feel inspiration that seemingly comes from deep, deep inside. I wish I could explain it better, but for me, that’s basically how it happens.

Of course, it’s kind of hard to quickly do justice to a set of scenes without taking the time to sketch them out, which requires time, focus, and solitude.

Kind of like shitting.

I’m totally serious.

Written words alone aren’t enough to accurately depict most of what I imagine, and in a typical work day… it’s a struggle to find time to scribe it out super fast on the fly.

However, it’s worth it.

Wisdom comes from experience; and raw inspiration is worth far, far more than gold.

I did some more life drawing yesterday evening, but for once, the drawing that turned out best was actually just a close-up I’d done with a purple-hued watercolor pencil.

This is the second post I’ve made about life drawing. They’re difficult for me because, admittedly, I’m accustomed to an high level of polish and perfection. With life drawing, you work so quickly, and it’s rare to do a drawing that takes more than twenty five minutes or so. Afterward, you’re done, and that’s that.

With digital art, it’s so much different, in so many ways. For one thing, you can change anything you choose whenever you like. Nothing is “set in stone”. You also have layers (which simplifies things), you’re able to delete faint measurements… and you can adjust the contrast any brightness to your liking. Those are just a few advantages. There are many, many more.

Thus, posting life drawing work is… an effort. I have to accept imperfections, and hold something up to the audience that I would normally view as a rough draft.

So yeah, it’s different.

I’m still focusing on proportions and speed, for now. In due time, I’m looking forward to having that intrinsic recall of muscle groups and bone structures somewhat… re-encapsulated, and actually refining things with more comprehensive and refined shading.

I had some scrambled eggs at a hotel this morning. A nice hotel, actually. I’ve made scrambled eggs thousands of times by this point, and with some satisfaction, I thought to myself: “Man, I can make WAY better eggs than these.”

Practice.

That’s what it’s all about.