April 11th Update

This one took a bit longer than the others, but its something a little different this week:

GraveWall.png

This is a more general concept for an area, the Garden of remembrance, its an entire district onto itself, almost like a part, but all the walls are lined with Gravestones like this, each one will have a name and date on it, but I just ran out of time this week.

20190412_161353

There is a wall next to the Jervis center in Dublin that was a big inspiration for this, the area used to be part of a church and the graveyard attached to it, but as the city grew the church was turned into a restaurant and the graves were cleared. But instead of disposing of the stones, they were propped against a wall as a kind of memorial, which looks very cool.

Anyway that’s it for this week, the progress list is as follows:

  • Character Concepts
    • Background extras:42/42
    • Main Characters: 13/13
    • Main character re-designs: 5/5
    • Secondary Character: 14/14
    • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
  • Weapon Concepts
    • Main Characters: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:4/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

July 16th Update

Last Human Residential building this week, honestly I’m glad to be done with these buildings and moving onto some new ones:

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I thought it might be a good idea to vary the skyline of this section of the city by adding not just single family residences but Apartment buildings as well, it is a city after all, plus while unintentional I like how this took on a bunker like look while still matching the previous two buildings.
The building itself is inspired by these two buildings I found on Google:

The key thing I noticed was the balconies on both, so that was the main focus of this building.

The next thing I want to talk about is a bit more abstract, but its been on my mind lately and I feel its important to talk about, I’ve been feeling my motivation for the project waning lately, this doesn’t mean I’m quitting, far from it. I regularly get these blocks of creativity, and I consider myself quite good at getting over them but this one has been particularly bad, which prompted me writing this as a means of both helping anyone that stumbles across it, and a means of visualising the problem.
Now one of the first things I’ll say to anyone suffering from it is that Motivation is a lot like the tide, it comes and goes, so a lot of what I do is wait it out, this leads to a lot of procrastination on my part, which many people believe is laziness, but I see as an essential part of my creative process, which I have found out recently that science is backing me up on that, but its important to identify the differences between productive procrastination and good old fashioned laziness.

I spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, reading looking up references, watching shows similar to Fade, namely Anime and action cartoons, checking out youtube video tutorials and so on, always with Photoshop or a google document open for when I get ideas.

This recent Block has gone through stages, the first one is mental fatigue, I feel tired even though I might be fully rested, I’ll still be drawing or writing, but its tougher than usual, and I usual don’t realise I’m blocked because I’m still creating, the next stage is full on blockage, I don’t want to work and nothing creative is happening in my head, usually for me this lasts a day or two, but this time its lasted about a week. The Third stage I call the incubation stage, I’m motivated but nothing is really clicking, this is easily the most frustrating stage (which is more or less where I’ve been the last few days).
The Fourth and final stage is opening the floodgates where the good ideas have finally come, unfortunately this is the most difficult stage for me to predict, because unlike the others, this stage can interrupt any of the previous stages, or drag out the last stage, which the key is setting myself up to be ready for that floodgate moment.

If anyone reading is suffering from a creative block in anything, be patient, it will pass and some of your best work will come from it. While its far from comprehensive, I hope this helps.

Anyway, the progress list is as follows:

  • Character Concepts
    • Background extras:42/42
    • Main Characters: 13/13
    • Main character re-designs: 5/5
    • Secondary Character: 14/14
    • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
  • Weapon Concepts
    • Main Characters: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:12/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~