solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 15:39
All I'm hearing is no, no, no that's not allowed. That's not helpful it just makes people think they're stupid and can't figure out what to DO.
I'm not being obtuse. I am trying to be useful. If you don't like my examples then share some of yours.
I'm specifically not saying to do a study. I'm saying I like things like ducktails, amphibia, or blank anime so when playing I would have the most fun making those characters do new things instead of trying to wrack my brain to make up a set of character from scratch that I have no attachment to.
solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 15:23
I just rewatched the video and no it doesn't disagree with what I've been saying. I'm merely giving examples of possible ways you can play with art.
All I've been doing is breaking down what the word play looks like as an activity. Just because you have intention behind doing something doesn't make it not play.
Play as a concept is a huge blank page in and of itself; looking at it from an evolutionary poiumt of view it's a way to learn by simulating real life activities. So the range of things that make up play can be as large as life itself. One that as you yourself mentioned is hard and intimidating. So I'm trying to give specific examples of what play time might look like when your just starting out. They are not a prescription or something to do each time, that should be dictated by whim, they are merely examples.
Let's flips this then. To you, what are examples of how you play with your art?
solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 14:49
What I'm describing IS a form of play when you break down what playing means as a set of actions.
Play can take the form of improvisation or pretense, interactive, performance, mimicry, games, ...
Play is often interpreted as frivolous; yet the player can be intently focused on their objective, particularly when play is structured and goal-oriented, as in a game. Accordingly, play can range from relaxed, free-spirited and spontaneous through frivolous to planned or even compulsive.[2] Play is not just a pastime activity; it has the potential to serve as an important tool in numerous aspects of daily life for adolescents, adults, and cognitively advanced non-human species (such as primates).
The only thing that makes something play VS not play is intention. Are you doing it for fun/self-interest or because you need to be productive/accomplish something.
Its not about reproducing others' stuff. Its about taking small risks/changes to things you are familiar with, then getting larger and larger as you get more comfortable with it. Like playing with an action figure.
A drawing-specific progression might look like this.
Start with an image you already know and like, then change what theyre holding, a piece of clothing, hairstyle, etc.
Next, change the arms or legs significantly or combine them with another image you like to alter both so they fit together better.
Eventually, draw the character yourself in a different pose. Keep doing this until you can do any pose you can think of.
Next, do this with another character or an object. Then start putting them together in different ways.
Now at this point, you can attack a blank page and draw a couple of characters doing a variety of things together.
The Blank page problem is half solved at this point. The rest is just operating the previous steps for style changes, Adding backgrounds, medium changes, etc. Eventually, you're creating original creations starting from a blank page.
You can see this kind of progression with many webcomics. Questionable content is a great example that has had an obvious progression in the art over the years.
solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 07:17
It's not that simple. No one learns creativity from nothing. It's not some magical thing that's just inside you. It's grown and cultivated.
Think about it this way. How do kids who become writers start off? They start of by doing things like taking their favorite stories and changing all the verbs to farted. Then once they read it and laugh they try again. After 50-100 of those attempts they end up with something not quite the original and not quite new, but it's interesting (to themselves or others) and that makes them feel good and keep going. That's the heart of my comment. That's a concrete example of what play looks like for a total novice.
You learn those things by copying most of what you see then changing something small. That's what I was trying to get across. Then once you're comfortable making small changes to things you like you start making bigger changes and more significant changes. eventually youll be be doing what you want.
And more specifically this is the process for exploring and understanding if the thing you think you want is actually what you enjoy and are good at.
solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 02:21
For me, I want to draw people/cartoons which I'm a long way from. So I use the 50% rule as a split between working on technical skills (this is the core of everything draw-a-box teaches) and working on creative skills (i.e. doing things without worrying about them being technically correct or well made, etc).
So I spend some of that 2nd 50% doing things like gesture drawing (Highly recommend the Proko figure drawing course for this) which is about as non-technical as you can get but still helps me move toward my goal.
I'd also put things like copying/tracing other people's art, following YouTube drawing tutorials on how to draw X, Kawaii Doodles, etc. all into that bucket too.
Thinking about it a bit more I'm reminded of things my guitar teacher used to tell me. I think I'd actually break it into three chunks. Execution (just doing the thing as a whole, no matter how bad the result is), technical skills (being able to draw an object in perspective, or with shading, etc), and creativity (how many different ways can I do this same thing).
To me the "for fun" part is usually referring to some combination of creativity/execution.
solarmist in the post "Concerning the 50% Rule"
2022-02-07 15:55
Sure, I can see that, but that's not what I'm trying to get across.
As a novice giving lists of things to NOT do is helpful, but still leaves a huge question mark on what should I do then? If you don't give positive examples it makes it MORE daunting not less daunting.
And so what I was trying to do is show how you can take things you've done as exercises and the like and turn those things into forms of play.
One of the easier ways to do that is by turning the useful into the absurd.
Like okay I've been doing the drawing organic shapes tutorials. Now what if I drew Scrooge McDuck with sea cucumber arms!
And there are various ways to accomplish that. One would be to draw it all yourself, another would be to print a picture of him with his arms cut off and just do that bit yourself.