Last night I hung at the ranch, where ghettopeach and I went to go see the Simpsons Movie, since I'd heard it was much lawl. And it was! We had many hearty laughs thoughout the whole thing. Although I guess the whole thing felt like one very long, extended episode? (Which, heh, kind of makes Homer's joke at the start of the movie all the more true.) Because of that, while the gags were set up great, it felt like there was no real character development, particularly on Homer's part. In a series, this works fine, because what makes the characters consistently funny in a sitcom is that they don't learn from their mistakes. But in a movie? You're expecting a story arc with definite beginning and ending, and when the character bounces into development only to bounce back again, it's not nearly as gratifying. :/

Still, I got many good laughs out of it. Worth getting on DVD, if you don't see it in the theater!

Also, ghettopeach and I were sharing school woes with each other (of different kinds, natch!) and she brought up a point that I think really helps explain my artistic issues lately:


I keep telling others and myself that I'm going to work more on original art; keep posting on dA to expect less fanart because I "really need to build up my portfolio" and "fanart won't land me studio jobs." (Heh, even if it did help land me a place at Gnomon...) But still, I keep consistently churning out fanart more than I do anything original, Lunargyros excluded. And I keep getting frustrated because I can't seem to make myself get excited about art that isn't fanart, or Lunargyros. Even for school stuff, I feel like I have to base my projects off of fanart-things to get excited about them: I'm doing the Strahl for surface modeling class, and while other people are doing anime-related things too (one person's doing Akira's motorbike, another might be doing Howl's Moving Castle) I still feel guilty about it.

But the thing is, I think I keep churning out the fanart because I already have an audience for it, and more importantly, a community that I'm heavily involved in and that I enjoy creating art for. I have good friends that I can bounce ideas off of and get excited about. However, with original art, there really isn't that same sense of community that I have in the KH fandom: hardly anyone comments on the original art or seems to care much about it. Probably the main reason why I enjoy doing Lunargyros is because I know it does have an audience that I must try to please. (That, and I work well when set schedules are given to me.) So if I've got two ideas, one for a fanart and one for an original art? It becomes not an issue of choosing between two good ideas, but choosing between "a great idea that my friends helped me think up and encourage me to pursue and that gets great feedback from several people and creates a positive response in a community I'm a huge participant in" and "a neat idea if it were developed more, that I can show to people I don't know and frankly intimidate me in hopes I can get a job with it some day." In that kind of situation, fanart almost always wins. It's not that I enjoy drawing fanart more than regular art, it's that I enjoy the community of creating fanart (and fanfic) more than I enjoy the community for creating original art. So the fanart gets churned out faster and more frequently than the original stuff does.

The problem is...I don't know what to do about this now. D: How do I break myself out of this mindset of "original art is for later, fanart is for now"? How do I get myself as excited about these half-formed unfinished stories as I am about that next cute KH comic? How do I concentrate on the original stuff without feeling I have to "leave," fandom, since I enjoy my fandom and its friends and I enjoy creating stuff for it, (even when fandom pisses me the hell off, it gets me into a fierce competitive drive and I start being overproductive in it just to counteract fandom's crap!) And most importantly, how do I not just do more original stuff in spite of my fandom drive, but consistently force myself out of my box so that I'm constantly absorbing new styles into what I do?

Rrrgh! I don't know how to do it! X( It doesn't help when I still have to keep up with schoolwork and it eats up so much of my time! *flops into a puddle of artistic angst* I need heeeeeeeelp. ;_;


And speaking of school, I am trying to install Maya on my mac so that I can actually do homework at home (le gasp!) but I'm already running into roadblocks for that, UGH. Need to ask for more help...at least ZBrush works fine. I need to learn that program ASAP. :P

Drawing: ADJASKDJA. Did more concept art work today; worked on my poly model for class, and now I either need to work on animation homework or other stuff.

Writing: Not too much.