Author: grasshopper

The Three Ps of Making Something Awesome

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Plan, Practice, and Patience!

Plan 

Something amazing is buzzing through your head, and you are compelled to create it. This is the part where you jot your awesome idea down. Here are a few suggestions that have always worked for me in the past:

Art/Crafts – make a few quick sketches
Writing – make an outline of the basic premise
Graphic Design –  piece together a diagram.

Now is the time to figure out what your idea’s purpose is. This is the most important stage because everything that comes after it builds up to your project’s meaning. How will the story end? What feeling do you want your painting to evoke? What message is your graphic design ad/cover/logo getting across? Asking those basic questions opens your mind to a huge flow of new ideas.

Let them come. They will improve upon your initial idea. Sure, there’ll be some doozies that fall flat, but they will only help you sharpen and forge your idea.

Practice 

This stage is straightforward and doesn’t need much explanation. Remember that annoying phrase, “Practice makes perfect?” Draw multiple sketches to hone your design in. Incorporate some of those fresh ideas from the planning stage and see what works best.

Write a few quick scenes to get a feel for your characters (they don’t have to be a part of the final story, just write them to get the creative juices flowing). Revise that outline. Play with different colors, fonts, shapes, and themes for your graphic design piece.

Keep doing this until your sketches and scenes begin to look and/or feel refined.

Patience

Now that you’ve figured out your end game and have a few sketches, scenes, or [insert your brand of genius here] under your belt, you’re ready to sit down and build your creation. Don’t rush it. Create another draft if you have to. You want this thing to pop.

Once you finish it, resist the urge to declare that it is done. Resist the urge to post, publish, or send it in. Patience is a virtue that is hard to tame. Set it away for a day, two days, or even a week. When you come back to it, you’ll feel as though you have a fresh set of eyes. I’ll go into more detail about this in my next post, So Edits, Many Drafts, Such Work.

Plan Your Genius

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Stop and look both ways before crossing the street!

You’ve got this great idea. It might be the most awesome thing since instant coffee, and you want to rush your fabulous thing so that the world can see it! We’re talking ASAP. You scramble faster than a NASCAR driver at the Daytona 500 and zoom through that final lap. You post it on the Internet.

…Aaaaannnnnd you wait for the likes. The Internet is dead silent. You ask yourself, “Why?” Your thing has all the fabulousness of Thranduil, King of Mirkwood riding his beautiful elk into battle, right?

This is a pitfall everyone has fallen into at one point or another, myself included. You’re giddy, and you feel young again! You have all the excitement of a 10 year old kid who just finished stringing a macaroni necklace. The teacher loved it. You show it off to your parents. DAD LOOK WHAT I MADE! LOOK HOW AWESOME! You got that instant thumbs up back then. It was a sure deal.

Posting your stuff on the internet is much the same. You just finished something amazing, and you crave those digital thumbs ups, recognition for your hard work. You want to be patted on the back—it is only human to desire validation and praise, so don’t feel bad for craving it.

Look at this sketch for example. I was excited after finishing it, I mean John Smith as a Romulan Commander!? Heck Yeah! It’s an okay first attempt; I’ll give it that, but I know it can be so much more than what it is. Was I tempted to blast it on every channel of the Internetz as soon as I finished it? You bet I was!

Back to your awesome thing you just posted. Where did you go wrong?

Every good product comes with planning, practice, and patience. That thing you posted was awesome, but what if it was only the first draft of something even more amazing?

Look at John Smith now. I listened to that tiny, inner voice of mine and decided to draw another sketch and to perfect his face. Sure, I could have colored in the first attempt, but I don’t think it would even compare to this one. I took the first sketch and decided to do another one, this time using many reference pictures of the actor instead of just one.

The bottom line is this: don’t rush. Take that awesome thing and wrap it in bacon, and by bacon, I mean your genius because your genius is one of the few things more awesome than bacon.

I will discuss ways and provide tips on how you can mold your first attempts into amazing works of art, prose, or [ insert your hobby here] in my next post, The Three Ps of Making Something Awesome.

Creativity, Meet my Nemesis, Reality

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I’ve been thinking about the creative process a lot lately, so I decided to do a seven part series on it–helpful ways you can tap into your inner creative genius to produce something awesome. Whether you’re an artist, a writer, a graphic designer, or into arts and crafts, I hope you’ll find this series useful.

Why am I doing this all of a sudden?

Let’s just say that I recently had a run in with reality. I jumped headfirst into a tub of ice and got a painful reminder of how rough blindly leaping into unknown waters can be. Yes, I should have known better. I should have done my homework, and I shouldn’t have laid a first draft bare like that. My feelings = ouch.

Lesson learned.

Image originally found on Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain

But it wasn’t for nothing. It jolted me awake as if I had just guzzled down a giant can of Monster before pulling an all nighter. I am the typical, excitable American. We have a grave weakness for letting that hot rush of excitement cloud our judgment. It makes us quick to blurt out and broadcast our accomplishments only to regret it ten minutes later because we forgot something or we didn’t think our amazing plan through.

And so, I’ll be sharing my own pitfalls–all in the name of helping my fellow creative geniuses!

1. Plan Your Genius
2. The Three Ps of Making Something Awesome
3. So Edits, Many Drafts, Such Work
4. Are You Ready for Feedback?
5. You Can Haz Nerf Bat
6. What to do Next
7. Post, Publish, and Share the Hell Out of it

Hoodies in May

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I’ve been wearing hoodies all month and cursing the morning chill. What month are we in again? February? March?  MAY.

Anyone who lives in the Northeast is sharing my plight. Winter, you’ve had your run. It’s time to kindly GTFO because I’m sick of the jackets, tired of the hoodies, and fed up with wanting to hibernate as soon as I get home because I’m cold. I’ve built up a tolerance to chilly temperatures and snow, but it is MAY. May is supposed to be flip flop, barbecue, and everything outdoors month, not wrap yourself in a blanket and continue your winter hibernation month.

All the stores have their flags, paper plates, and all-things-grill stuff out for sell now. It’d be nice to pretend that I actually want to buy some of that stuff, but no thanks. It would be a recipe for a drenched disaster. Did I mention the rain? Two weeks straight. Yes. Two weeks. Two solid weeks of 40 degree weather and rain.

I realize there is absolutely nothing I can do to change the weather and that I’m ranting in the wind, but I need to vent somewhere. I’m not one of those “Oh, but you can put on as many layers as you want” people because you never actually get warm. I mean, you have to move at some point. The second you reach for your glass of water, bam, your fingers are suddenly freezing. Like I said, I tolerate winter now, but when it decides to steal May, I go crazy.

Give me sunshine. Give me warmth. Give me flip flops, and give me eighty degrees (at this point, I’ll settle for 65).  “But you can only take off so many layers…” I’d rather be hot, to be honest. I will never be a cold weather person. There is nothing on the planet that will ever change that about me.

Here’s to my fellow warm weather people!

You can find the original image on Wikimedia Commons

Vote Grizzly Slick Paw 2016!

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What’s in a blog post? Not politics. Okay, maybe there will be a dash of politics this one time only. Everywhere I turn I either see crazy, unintelligible rants in all caps or Internet warriors sitting on their high horses explaining how their opinion makes them a better person than [ insert candidate here ]’s voters.

You can find the original image of the bear on Wikimedia Commons

It happens every presidential election. I normally just grind my teeth and refrain from pulling someone off of their golden throne in the comment section. Agree or disagree with them, I want to steal their keyboards and toss them out. Nothing irritates me more than Internet warriors on high horses. As for the army of angry (and idiotic) DE’RE TAKN R STUFFZ! mumble jumble, I just cringe and scroll past it. It all just feels like a bunch of bears thumping their chests in the night as they scream at nothing.

You can find the original image of the bear on Wikimedia Commons

This election is proving to be different. I don’t need to explain. I mean, it’s all over the news, Internet, and is the talk of the town. There are aspects of it that terrify me. I’m not going to thump my chest and tell you to vote for Captain Grizzly Slick Paw or anything. Just remember your history books, folks. Tread carefully.

I will do my part. I registered (as unaffiliated) and will be voting this November.

That’s enough of that!
In other news, I finally updated my art portfolio. I can’t believe I haven’t added anything to it since 2014! There are a few pictures in there I painted using my easel.

I’m working on a new story. The one I finished is something special, so you probably won’t see it for a long time (I hope within a few months, but I don’t want to give a date yet). The one I’m working on right now will be posted much sooner than that. I hope you like alternate universes, villains from history, cryogenic sleep chambers, enraged weirdos, and adventure!