I am thinking, with AI constantly being pushed into every aspect of our lives, that taking your time and doing it right is severely under appreciated if now downright frowned upon. But all this AI stuff takes all this random information, without understanding it, and spits something out. It doesn't care if it's good, or if it makes sense, or if it's even worth making, all it cares about is getting it done. As long as it doesn't care, which it can't be programmed to care, it's gonna make garbage. It doesn't want to improve.
Now while I could certainly make my process more efficient (and I'm always looking for ways to do that), I think there's a real benefit to understanding and working stuff out, mixing processes together so they feed into each other. Finding the essence of the thing rather than surface, but that does take time and thought and there's really no way around that.
Oh, I agree. What put it in my mind was the whole Adobe debacle and how AI is being forced on the whole world despite no one really wanting it or there being any good use for it. But I feel the push for it, and how people react to it, is pushing that wrong direction in terms of how to create (AI can create faster, because speed is best).
I feel like I"m letting people down but that's a big challenge.
Certainly not letting anyone down. In most cases, what we see in the WIP thread are personal projects that may take years to finish. (OK maybe I'm mostly talking about myself...) You are among those here who are quite prolific in output. Your stuff is inspiring, and has at least with me produced some really great ideas. Your stuff is awesome and lives in the constraints of real life and all the time and energy that it pulls out of you. Continue at the pace you can sustain.
Trying to get some space in my clipboard so going through and finishing half-done drawings. Thinking about how the Blake's Seven Liberator was just a microphone, I thought I would sketch and play with other microphones to turn them into bits and bobs, maybe for the Dominator but also for.... whatever else they might be useful for.
Also, have to point out that I DID see the trailer for Space Cadet, and while it's not what I wanted to do at all, my eye is still twitching because I was excited about using that title myself.
Went to the library today and picked up The Art And Soul of Dune (they had some Star Wars ones as well, might go back for those) and I couldn't help notice how de-emphasized the analog art is. I think even the lineart is computer generated, I understand why, no judgement, but I feel like a bunch of these art books are insistent on showing us the closest-to-final versions of things. That's a trend that's been around for ages, and I'm not nuts about it because I think the failures and the coulda-but-didna art is equally valuable, especially to the next generation of artists who learn from these books. Something I liked about the analog art of the old days, the Syd Mead and the Doug Chiang and Probert drawings was that you could see their thinking on the page, you get the idea that someone made this, and it made the next steps of making it real make sense, you know? A person made this art, so another person can use this art to make X. I feel very disconnected from that nowadays.
Went to the library today and picked up The Art And Soul of Dune (they had some Star Wars ones as well, might go back for those) and I couldn't help notice how de-emphasized the analog art is. I think even the lineart is computer generated, I understand why, no judgement, but I feel like a bunch of these art books are insistent on showing us the closest-to-final versions of things. That's a trend that's been around for ages, and I'm not nuts about it because I think the failures and the coulda-but-didna art is equally valuable, especially to the next generation of artists who learn from these books. Something I liked about the analog art of the old days, the Syd Mead and the Doug Chiang and Probert drawings was that you could see their thinking on the page, you get the idea that someone made this, and it made the next steps of making it real make sense, you know? A person made this art, so another person can use this art to make X. I feel very disconnected from that nowadays.
That's a real shame. One thing I always like about those art books is seeing the ideas behind the things. What steps did they take to get there? What ideas didn't get used? Like you said, seeing the process behind the final work can really be helpful for up and coming artists. If nothing else, it can teach them to sketch out any idea because you never know what someone will like when you're doing paid work.
I mean, if I want final artwork, I'll watch the movie.
First, a simple sketch I might do some more twists on, sketching the launching platforms from the OG Cylon BaseStars. I like the idea of a big runway and control tower in there, which also has me imagining a while airport full of Cylons inside.
I'm not sure what I"m going to do with it next, I like the bridge even though it's impractical and probably dangerous. Maybe I'll expand to making train stations or something. When i get a good close-up of the old Base Stars, I think they look like foating cities and it would be fun to play into that aesthetic, that they have factories and offices and internal transport and things.
And now for something a little different. I'd been seeing a bunch of videos of people upgrading the hell out of their Mac Pro 5,1 cheese graters, and combined with revisiting the late Mark Coleran's portfolio, I wound up having ideas for interfaces
I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for this one, I love my iPod but what i love about it is how basic and uncomplicated it is. Yet, here I am listing out all these various new abilities I'd give it. Form the basic wishlist of being able to load without a computer, or copy songs from another player or connect to a NAS, to bigger things like a TV tuner w/ recorder (remember pre-digital TV when you could just easily pick up signals?) or being able to broadcast your music like a tiny radio transmitter to other local players, record from a microphone or other live sources (with a quarantine drive where the new stuff goes, so it can be vetted and then re-arranged afterwards). or expand the hardware with more controls like an equalizer or shortcut keys. I'm not nuts about the name OutlawOS for it, though, I feel like I could come up with something that feels more appropriate and playful . I do like that you can see my thought process as I go through the page, particularly how I switch from saying "Pod" to "Player" and simplifying the icon.
So what I"m thinking is that connectivity isn't required, what's great about the pod is that it's basic and all in-box. Everything else is a bonus feature. Thinking of the old Nintendo handhelds, perfect on their own, but they also had link functions and scribble chat and things like that. Same basic idea. It's not a full internet device because it shouldn't have to be, but more like wireless USB for file transfers, hubs and so on. It's for sharing media from libraries, not surfing the web.
The real trick would be designing the main menu so it's still as easy and striaghtforward but allows for all those extra options.
Not on the page, but I sketched out ideas for icons for media types (CD, vinyl, cassette, etc) so you know the OG source of all the music on there. Just a fun little thing that can be next to the album art.
And here's a much more simple one:
A dual-boot screen concept for the DS (I imagine something like this already exists, I've not used a modded one). I love the Jekyl and Hyde faces for the icons. Much more simple and friendly, I think.
(Oh, I didn't even THINK that the faces could do something after selected. StockDS could smile, OutlawDS could laugh like a villain.
Maybe the two OSes have a different colour scheme, day and night or something like that.
I've not done much for a desktop system (despite sketching a few computers recently) probably because I can't really think of any apps at the moment.
Thank you! Storytelling via sketching, only way my hands can keep up with my brain!
I've also tried to organize my ideas so when I get into a groove like this, I can run through and see all the opportunities to ride that wave. So in this case, I was thinking "okay, what other ideas do I have that could use custom UIs or HUDs or tech?"
Something I was pondering while going through Mark Coleran's portfolio is how great he was at combining the best of multiple sources, particularly his "domestic" UIs. The normie UIs have a little of Mac, a little of Windows, a little of NeXT but they're totally believable. So I was trying to think of where I would put that influence, and it occurred to me it'd be great for federated apps. So imagine all your social media accounts (Twitter, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Instagram etc) going into one app kind of like Gaim/Pidgin (call it "So-Shulz"), that "best of everything" mentality would be perfect for that.
Likewise, imagine a video streaming app that combined all your accounts into one home screen, with a custom VPN so you can see any video from anywhere in the world from any service you subscribe to. Xfinity kinda does this but it's a crappy interface, but imagine an open source one where there's all these cool little plugins so you can make custom playlists (and share them!) and folders and install adblockers, an activity monitor so you can see how much of each service you're using in a month, etc...
I wouldn't even call it evil, it's just naughty. It's the OS that would have the emulators and roms and fshop built in (maybe with a romripper, TV tuner and all other fun stuff). The other would just be the standard OS just so you can use it as originally intended.
I know, but it would still be fun to see an evil one. Maybe it's got an evil AI living in it (a real one, not that buzzword "AI" fake crap that we're seeing now) that does evil things. Or maybe it has "naughty" programs that people use to do things that they shouldn't. (not emulators) What naughty things? You decide.
There's an interesting contradiction with these, which kind of carries over to a lot of my mentality, where I want comprehensive but I don't want cluttered, if that makes sense. Like, how do you add as much utility and inspiration as possible but still keep is streamlined and usable? Don't want that cluttered airplane cockpit workflow like Adam Savage likes, but you also don't want menus within menus within menus when you can avoid it.
Sketches of crab, insect and shrimp legs, turning them into mechanical designs to stick 'em onto robots and spaceships. Maybe the Single Rider can have legs? I kinda want to put some writing/logos on them, like the companies that made them, but I don't really have any that fit yet.
These are out of my full-size sketchbooks, which I like (I have a few dedicated to a specific subject) and I like those, but doing these made me think I should do more half-sized (I usually only take those on vacation) so I can have two distinct halves on one page when I put them in my binders (and four when they're side by side), that way I could have more cross-pollination. For example, if I had these on half-pages, the bottom halves could be industrial logos or mechanical parts or something out of left field that could be fused to these legs. But I also don't want to make more sketchbooks right now.
I don't know if I mentioned it, but I saw a little documentary about the making of the music for Wipeout, and the other day I saw a video about the software that Aphex Twin used to make his music (I do love techno music, can you tell?). But what stuck out to me was how much of this "futuristic" stuff was made with old, obsolete tools and just wild ideas. This is something I'd noticed elsewhere as well, a lot of the Y2K aesthetic like typography actually started in the early 90s and would have to have been created on tools older than that. All it took was a lot of imagination.
And I don't make this post to pat myself on the back, more like a reminder that "cool new edgy" stuff often has humble beginnings.
No new sketches for this week... well, nothing really suited for here. Revisited Babylon Five and actually watched most of season 5 for the first time... and amazingly didn't draw any of it. Apparently I can do a decent Bruce Boxleitner impression though.
Something about it put me back in mind of Iron Star, which I haven't messed with in ages. I did mention some of it to some writer friends and they dug it, which gives me a nice little boost of confidence. But I've not had any solid ideas for it.
This drawing has to be over a year old ,maybe two? in my first crack at a rewilding sketchbook, which obviously didn't go too well. Originally this was just going to be a normal robot, but the line of lights down its chest made me want to continue that down as far as possible, which made me think of a fish tail, which means... MERMAID DRONES! Once I realized that, I realized the head could be different and nonhuman, i think I like the bubble one the most, I think it looks like a searchlight. When I drew the profile, I realized he could emote like a dog, which would give him a lot of personality.
Gotta figure out the arms, now that I know it's a mermaid I'll probably add fins or something that works in the water.
(this paper is thinner than the stock I use now, I don't know if I could have done any more too it).
When I was trying to think of what possible use a mermaid drone could be, I thought "untangling something underwater? diffusing a bomb?" which immediately made me think "like that one level in the old Ninja Turtles game that everybody hated?" So of course I had to sketch that.
The last one, the quick three-sketch parody of the Turtles game, I dashed that off in a few moments. I don't know how many of those I post but I find myself doing them to get an idea down and I never really bother to keep.
The last one, the quick three-sketch parody of the Turtles game, I dashed that off in a few moments. I don't know how many of those I post but I find myself doing them to get an idea down and I never really bother to keep.
I mean, it looks good and it gets the point across. I figured it was just a quick sketch as it's less refined than a lot of your other work.
Thanks. It's just those extremely rudimentary ones I've never been a fan of, I don't know why. They usually wind up being things like fight scenes.. I also usually don't colour them, I was trying real hard to make it decent to look at. I'm not even sure if I'd posted one of those before, actually.
I'm actually pretty selective about what I post, y'all are seeing like the tip of the iceberg of stuff.
I'm sorry if the thread has ben veering negative in the last few weeks, certainly not my intention to have a pity party on here or anything, despite my recently low vibes.
Posts
Now while I could certainly make my process more efficient (and I'm always looking for ways to do that), I think there's a real benefit to understanding and working stuff out, mixing processes together so they feed into each other. Finding the essence of the thing rather than surface, but that does take time and thought and there's really no way around that.
Certainly not letting anyone down. In most cases, what we see in the WIP thread are personal projects that may take years to finish. (OK maybe I'm mostly talking about myself...) You are among those here who are quite prolific in output. Your stuff is inspiring, and has at least with me produced some really great ideas. Your stuff is awesome and lives in the constraints of real life and all the time and energy that it pulls out of you. Continue at the pace you can sustain.
Trying to get some space in my clipboard so going through and finishing half-done drawings. Thinking about how the Blake's Seven Liberator was just a microphone, I thought I would sketch and play with other microphones to turn them into bits and bobs, maybe for the Dominator but also for.... whatever else they might be useful for.
Also, have to point out that I DID see the trailer for Space Cadet, and while it's not what I wanted to do at all, my eye is still twitching because I was excited about using that title myself.
That's a real shame. One thing I always like about those art books is seeing the ideas behind the things. What steps did they take to get there? What ideas didn't get used? Like you said, seeing the process behind the final work can really be helpful for up and coming artists. If nothing else, it can teach them to sketch out any idea because you never know what someone will like when you're doing paid work.
I mean, if I want final artwork, I'll watch the movie.
I'm not sure what I"m going to do with it next, I like the bridge even though it's impractical and probably dangerous. Maybe I'll expand to making train stations or something. When i get a good close-up of the old Base Stars, I think they look like foating cities and it would be fun to play into that aesthetic, that they have factories and offices and internal transport and things.
And now for something a little different. I'd been seeing a bunch of videos of people upgrading the hell out of their Mac Pro 5,1 cheese graters, and combined with revisiting the late Mark Coleran's portfolio, I wound up having ideas for interfaces
I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for this one, I love my iPod but what i love about it is how basic and uncomplicated it is. Yet, here I am listing out all these various new abilities I'd give it. Form the basic wishlist of being able to load without a computer, or copy songs from another player or connect to a NAS, to bigger things like a TV tuner w/ recorder (remember pre-digital TV when you could just easily pick up signals?) or being able to broadcast your music like a tiny radio transmitter to other local players, record from a microphone or other live sources (with a quarantine drive where the new stuff goes, so it can be vetted and then re-arranged afterwards). or expand the hardware with more controls like an equalizer or shortcut keys. I'm not nuts about the name OutlawOS for it, though, I feel like I could come up with something that feels more appropriate and playful . I do like that you can see my thought process as I go through the page, particularly how I switch from saying "Pod" to "Player" and simplifying the icon.
So what I"m thinking is that connectivity isn't required, what's great about the pod is that it's basic and all in-box. Everything else is a bonus feature. Thinking of the old Nintendo handhelds, perfect on their own, but they also had link functions and scribble chat and things like that. Same basic idea. It's not a full internet device because it shouldn't have to be, but more like wireless USB for file transfers, hubs and so on. It's for sharing media from libraries, not surfing the web.
The real trick would be designing the main menu so it's still as easy and striaghtforward but allows for all those extra options.
Not on the page, but I sketched out ideas for icons for media types (CD, vinyl, cassette, etc) so you know the OG source of all the music on there. Just a fun little thing that can be next to the album art.
And here's a much more simple one:
A dual-boot screen concept for the DS (I imagine something like this already exists, I've not used a modded one). I love the Jekyl and Hyde faces for the icons. Much more simple and friendly, I think.
(Oh, I didn't even THINK that the faces could do something after selected. StockDS could smile, OutlawDS could laugh like a villain.
Maybe the two OSes have a different colour scheme, day and night or something like that.
I've not done much for a desktop system (despite sketching a few computers recently) probably because I can't really think of any apps at the moment.
I've also tried to organize my ideas so when I get into a groove like this, I can run through and see all the opportunities to ride that wave. So in this case, I was thinking "okay, what other ideas do I have that could use custom UIs or HUDs or tech?"
Something I was pondering while going through Mark Coleran's portfolio is how great he was at combining the best of multiple sources, particularly his "domestic" UIs. The normie UIs have a little of Mac, a little of Windows, a little of NeXT but they're totally believable. So I was trying to think of where I would put that influence, and it occurred to me it'd be great for federated apps. So imagine all your social media accounts (Twitter, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Instagram etc) going into one app kind of like Gaim/Pidgin (call it "So-Shulz"), that "best of everything" mentality would be perfect for that.
Likewise, imagine a video streaming app that combined all your accounts into one home screen, with a custom VPN so you can see any video from anywhere in the world from any service you subscribe to. Xfinity kinda does this but it's a crappy interface, but imagine an open source one where there's all these cool little plugins so you can make custom playlists (and share them!) and folders and install adblockers, an activity monitor so you can see how much of each service you're using in a month, etc...
Sketches of crab, insect and shrimp legs, turning them into mechanical designs to stick 'em onto robots and spaceships. Maybe the Single Rider can have legs? I kinda want to put some writing/logos on them, like the companies that made them, but I don't really have any that fit yet.
These are out of my full-size sketchbooks, which I like (I have a few dedicated to a specific subject) and I like those, but doing these made me think I should do more half-sized (I usually only take those on vacation) so I can have two distinct halves on one page when I put them in my binders (and four when they're side by side), that way I could have more cross-pollination. For example, if I had these on half-pages, the bottom halves could be industrial logos or mechanical parts or something out of left field that could be fused to these legs. But I also don't want to make more sketchbooks right now.
And I don't make this post to pat myself on the back, more like a reminder that "cool new edgy" stuff often has humble beginnings.
More fish-inspired sketches for greeblies, plates, textures and whatnot that I sketched at the bottom of an otherwise unremarkable sketchbook page.
Something about it put me back in mind of Iron Star, which I haven't messed with in ages. I did mention some of it to some writer friends and they dug it, which gives me a nice little boost of confidence. But I've not had any solid ideas for it.
This drawing has to be over a year old ,maybe two? in my first crack at a rewilding sketchbook, which obviously didn't go too well. Originally this was just going to be a normal robot, but the line of lights down its chest made me want to continue that down as far as possible, which made me think of a fish tail, which means... MERMAID DRONES! Once I realized that, I realized the head could be different and nonhuman, i think I like the bubble one the most, I think it looks like a searchlight. When I drew the profile, I realized he could emote like a dog, which would give him a lot of personality.
Gotta figure out the arms, now that I know it's a mermaid I'll probably add fins or something that works in the water.
(this paper is thinner than the stock I use now, I don't know if I could have done any more too it).
I mean, it looks good and it gets the point across. I figured it was just a quick sketch as it's less refined than a lot of your other work.
I'm actually pretty selective about what I post, y'all are seeing like the tip of the iceberg of stuff.
I'm sorry if the thread has ben veering negative in the last few weeks, certainly not my intention to have a pity party on here or anything, despite my recently low vibes.