I was so sure I had some deep, meaningful, and insightful thing to say about this creative endevour, but en route from my last class to my dorm my brain apparently decided to shut down and I can no longer recall ANY of what that may have been ... blammit.
In any case, so far most of my creative activities have been drawing in some form or another, and the odd story here and there. This week's is no different ... except that it is different, actually. My assignment for Photography class was to capture 30-40 seconds of live-action film, but in a sort of stop-motion style using a handheld video recorder. Now I've only used video recorders to shoot family film, and I don't have one myself, nor am I familiar with how to use the editing sofware to fancify videos, or Macs for that matter. Thankfully, I didn't need to do and cutting or editing, since all the starting and stopping was done on the camera.
I had hoped I'd be able to get away with "traditional" stop motion, that is to say, using a regular camera and just stringing the photos together on Photoshop or a similar program. However, it was not to be, and on Thursday I found myself running around campus trying to rent a camera, get blank tapes for it, record something, return the camera, and convert and save the file into an .avi before my next class. I barely made it.
Barely.
The result is as follows: forty seconds of stop-motion live-action film (if such a thing can exist ...) of me drawing the face of my OC Jaris. This ties in loosely with my entry about the tutorials I made on DeviantArt, as it shows the process of how I draw, just in very bad lighting and with a grainy quality to the video, almost to the extent that you can't see what's going on. Surprisingly, and despite being forced out of my burrow (AKA: my dorm room) to find film for the thing, I enjoyed filming this project, and was even a little dismayed it had to be so short. Maybe in future I'll do something similar again, only showing the entire process of how I draw and not just a headshot in dim light.
The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVemjWiGEjo
--Sak
Monday, March 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Creative Entry #8: A Daeva's Duty - Response
My latest creative entry found here: http://canadian-rainwater.blogspot.com/2010/03/creative-entry-8-daevas-duty.html was a piece of "fanfiction" for the game 'Aion' that I so regularly rave about. Though my creative element is most definitey drawing and graphic comics and the like, I frequently find myself itching to write something creative, but usually no opportunities present themselves, and trying to sit myself down and force something onto the page gets me nowhere.
Well, short of very frustrated.
'A Daeva's Duty' was actually written about a week ago in response of a bit of roleplay that happened. My character, Jaris, was finally punished for something he had done a good few weeks before. Some friends of ours who had quit the game in January came back unexpectedly, one of them being Gheist, the Centurion of our Legion in the game. He harbors no favoritism for my character, and saw to it that Jaris did time ... accompanied by him, no less. Due to the fact that in-game there is no way to scale the volcano known as Mount Musphel (not to the very top, anyway) I decided to write this up instead, to fill the gap where we couldn't roleplay. Of course I got Gheist's permission to use his character, and also to upload it. In fact, Gheist's funny accent was written by his player himself, and he rewrote my original dialogue for his character to better suit how he's to be played.
Gheist is another example of a character inspired by someone already existing: he sounds very much like Arnold Swarchenegger, only .... much more terrifying.
Needless to say I was glad to finally get this story out of my system, and I wish I had more inspiration for such things, to be honest. Once again 'Aion' lends itself to my creative process, only this time I was able to use a different medium than drawing.
--Sak
Well, short of very frustrated.
'A Daeva's Duty' was actually written about a week ago in response of a bit of roleplay that happened. My character, Jaris, was finally punished for something he had done a good few weeks before. Some friends of ours who had quit the game in January came back unexpectedly, one of them being Gheist, the Centurion of our Legion in the game. He harbors no favoritism for my character, and saw to it that Jaris did time ... accompanied by him, no less. Due to the fact that in-game there is no way to scale the volcano known as Mount Musphel (not to the very top, anyway) I decided to write this up instead, to fill the gap where we couldn't roleplay. Of course I got Gheist's permission to use his character, and also to upload it. In fact, Gheist's funny accent was written by his player himself, and he rewrote my original dialogue for his character to better suit how he's to be played.
Gheist is another example of a character inspired by someone already existing: he sounds very much like Arnold Swarchenegger, only .... much more terrifying.
Needless to say I was glad to finally get this story out of my system, and I wish I had more inspiration for such things, to be honest. Once again 'Aion' lends itself to my creative process, only this time I was able to use a different medium than drawing.
--Sak
Creative Entry #8: A Daeva's Duty
I’m never flirting again.
Such were Jaris’s thoughts as he struggled for footing on the hot, steely scrag that piled itself along Mt. Musphel’s sheer slopes. He winced and cringed, not for the first time that afternoon, as he applied pressure to his blistered feet, feeling the scorching rocks scald his bare skin where his armor had given way. The flat paths and easy footholds of the mountain’s roots had long given way to the broken rocks that littered the volcano’s upper slopes, and more and more often the dishevelled Daeva found himself falling to his knees and dragging himself up the rocks by his claws. His Brigade General Bix had permitted the use of climbing tools to aid in his punishment, but Centurion Gheist had other ideas. All that was left of those ropes and grappling hooks were now chunks of cindered steel floating in a gluttonous river of lava.
Tyrinore attacks a fellow legionnaire of the forty-second and get’s two nights in the brig. I flirt with that same girl and have to scale a live volcano!
As if things weren’t bad enough already, his Centurion had also seen to it that he’d never be able to stand straight again. He struggled to carry his own weight in ingots on his back; three-hundred pounds of crushing weight sending him staggering until his knees were sore from the impact on the ground. He gasped for breathe, struggling to breathe in the thick, sulphurous acid that swilled sluggishly in his tired lungs. To make matters worse, his thick chain mail had not been crafted with hot, deserted regions in mind. The leather lining and daru-wool stuffing that prevented him from freezing when carrying out his duties in the chillier regions of Morheim and Beluslan had become a furnace, and he felt his armor clinging to his body with the sweat and grime of this arduous climb.
Flinging a strand of sleek, wet hair out of his eyes in irritation, Jaris cast a furtive glance at the Centurion trudging alongside him. Gheist was built like a wall, his gleaming plate armor doing little to hide the excessive muscles that bulged under his skin as he hoisted himself higher and higher up the mountainside. Four-hundred years in service to Asmodae had done wonders for his strength, but little for his temper, and Jaris quickly averted his gaze again, more peeved than ever. The Centurion may not be a ‘squishy’ noble like himself, unaccustomed to holding his own in battle, but he should at least be breaking out in a sweat...
Finally Jaris’s legs gave way and he collapsed onto the scree, loose chinks of brimstone and sharp rocks splintering under his knees and tumbling down the slopes. A quick glance the way they had come sent his head reeling with vertigo, and he quickly rolled onto his back to lean against his weighted pack, taking the load off his shoulders for a blissful moment. Beside him the Centurion paused mid-step, still staring—no, glaring—ahead of him, eyes tilted upwards towards the mouth of the volcano and their final destination. He didn’t even seem to see the gasping, sweaty, and very broken Vanahal Daeva lying in the dirt at his feet.
Jaris was just glad he was permitting this small break at all, though they had no food or water to parch his thirst by. His chest heaved with every struggling breath in the now almost suffocating heat, and each time he had to feel the leather slide against his skin slick with sweat Jaris cringed a little more. Bix was going to murder him for the amount of damage caused to his armor on this little venture. Even Elyos didn’t cause him this much grief, and they always seemed to mistake him for a weapons stand instead of a human being.
He felt as if he was going deaf from the constant roar of the volcano that grew louder the higher they ascended, until even the tremors in the earth seemed to have a rumble of their own. The sluggish gloop and dull wet sounds of the lava as bubbles formed and burst echoed eerily around them. They were so high up now that even the mutated keratons and slimes, whose veins seemed to pulse with the very lava and heat around them, were scarcely to be seen. He was completely alone, somewhere between hell and the top of a very violent volcano, with the most intimidating Daeva to ever grace Aion’s skies.
A few minutes passed and neither of them said a word, a heavy silence brooding between them that was broken only by Jaris’s haggard breathing and the thrum of the volcano’s heart. Wetting his cracked lips with his tongue in a futile effort to forget the thirst clawing at his throat, Jaris glanced up at the Centurion looming over him. He could swear he hadn’t moved a muscle since they stopped.
“Centurion Gheist...” Jaris’s voice sounded as dry as the rocks that scorched his mail, but at the very least he got the man to move a muscle; something in Gheist’s neck twitched.
“You know,” the Vanahal continued, his tone completely devoid of the sarcasm it usually harbored, “Despite all the trouble I’ve been put through since you got here, I’m sort of glad you’re back. I never wanted the position of Centurion; it’s difficult work and I didn’t know how to do it.”
Peering up at that red-eyed mass of sinew and concentrated anger through his messy curtain of bangs, Jaris was sure he would be met with that same grisly, stoic silence Gheist had held the entire day. Truth be told, he wasn’t expecting a reply at all, but he still felt it was something he had to say. One always had to be careful picking their words with the Centurion—one wrong slip of the tongue and you’d find yourself respawning at an Obelisk just to have your teeth back. But throughout the otherwise quiet trek it had been gnawing at his guts. It’s not as if his day could get any worse than it already was, anyway.
Suddenly the air was filled with a chilling sound. It started as a quiet rumble, barely audible, and at first the noble thought he was hearing things, maybe the echo of the volcano within its own canyon walls. But then the sound grew louder, a deep huffing sound, as if the one making it wasn’t entirely accustomed to doing such a thing, and Jaris realized with a twinge of horror that the Centurion was chuckling—no , laughing now.
If his mane wasn’t plastered flat to his back with sweat, grit, and grime, Jaris was sure every hackle would have been standing on edge.
Nevertheless, there his Centurion stood, casting his intimidating shadow over the legionnaire sprawled in the dirt and laughing. It didn’t sound false, either, and Jaris wondered whether he was in more or less trouble now. Some deep, primal urge to survive tingled inside him and suggested he run for what was left of his life, but Gheist’s grisly mirth eventually quieted and he turned to stare down at the man on the ground.
“Did I ... say something funny?”
"No, Legionnaire Jaris,” Gheist growled, though his voice still had a hint of humor that sent a chill down Jaris’s spine, “I thought yhou whould have ahdmitted zhat being a Centurihon iz difficult earliah in zhe climb as an attempt to eschape from zhe punishmehnt. It iz good to see zhat yhou have become strongehr."
With that a huge, clawed hand loomed out and grabbed the pack, dragging Jaris bodily to his feet by the straps. This time the noble couldn’t stop a groan of anguish as his wounded feet flared up again, and his legs shook under his own weight, almost buckling when Gheist released the pack and sent its weight crashing down onto his spine again. He was even sure he heard an audible crunch this time.
“Well I never expected it to be easy,” Jaris somehow managed to say between gasping for breath and biting his teeth to hold back the pain shooting through his body.
Though his back was turned towards him now, he was fairly sure the Centurion even smiled then, and procured something from his cube. Jaris’s heart sank when he realized they were additional weights, and was sure he was hallucinating when he saw Gheist fling it into the river of lava oozing its way through the crags to their right. Yet sure enough, there it was, an additional pack of ingots slowly sinking into the molten furnace.
“What was that—”
"Zhose were foar in case yhou ghot an idhea to complhain. I think yhou have progressed enough to be allohwed a reprieve," the Centurion growled.
Gheist continued the trek, Jaris holding back a moment. He watched with morbid fascination as the last of the pack got sucked below the lava with a squelch, then glanced back at the Centurion, and pointed at the three-hundred pounds he still carried.
“So what about...”
"Legionnaire Jaris, continue zhe climb with zhe pack, or else you will have to go and retrhieve zhe weights. Now mohve."
Monday, March 1, 2010
Creative Entry #7: Give A Man A Fish ...
A few weeks ago when my FA100 class held their pot luck in our lecture hall, we were prompted to show off our talent in front of all the other tutorials as some sort of entertainment while people ate. Naturally, there was song and dance, and someone even read out a story in front of the entire assembly. As a visual artist it's a little more difficult to translate my field of "expertise", if I may call it that, into something easily demonstrated on a stage, and as much as some people find it fascinating to watch me draw I'm sure there would have been someone in the audience who'd have gotten tired of the whole affair and would have left.
But where there's a will there's a way, and by means of the photo projector on the stage I was able to draw a picture from square one (baseline sketch to penned lineart) in my sketchbook. This proccess was projected onto the wall behind the performers on stage, so while others' sang and read their stories people in the audience were able to watch a drawing unfold, albeit one that had nothing to do with the contents of the songs.
I will admit it was the audience's response to watching the process of my art that spurred me to create what I did over the weekend: four tutorials for my watchers on DeviantArt documenting how I create one of my pictures from start to finish. As I've mentioned before (or believe I have) in past blog posts, DeviantArt greatly helped me to improve my drawing capabilities since I joined it almost four years ago, until I arrived at the style I have now. The journey doesn't end there, of course, and I'm always learning and trying to encorporate new styles and techniques into my art if they appeal to me. I've also got an eye for detail if I'm encountering something I have difficulty drawing; if I have difficult drawing someone's face at a certain angle I'll peer at them funny from across the cafeteria, likewise if I'm struggling with something like a bicycle or car I'll trace their contours with my eye and try to preserve the smaller details to my memory. I'm always looking at life through a glass in ways that will benefit the one thing that is most important to me: the ability to draw.
In the past few months, especially through my irregularly-updated webcomic 'OOC': http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/gallery/#OOC-A-Gaming-Webcomic, I've been getting quite a bit of attention about my art, and with it come the inquiries about how I draw. My DeviantWatchers had no means to come to FA100's pot luck so of course they missed seeing me draw in person, but it's flattering when people ask, as it makes me realize just how far I've come since I first had aspirations of becoming a well-known artist as a child. Now there is by no means one way to draw, and each person has their own approach, so I made this apparent in my tutorials. My tutorials weren't "how to draw" so much as "this is how I draw, and if you can learn something from it, then more power to you".
As a result of their massive file sizes, I'll have to ask you to follow these links to view my tutorials:
How I draw Part 1.1: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/How-I-Draw-Part-1-1-155349516
How I draw Part 1.2: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/How-I-Draw-Part-1-2-155349597
How I draw Part 2.1: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/How-I-Draw-Part-2-1-155540317
How I draw Part 2.2: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/How-I-Draw-Part-2-2-155540574
Creating these four tutorials was some of the most arduous work on Photoshop I have ever done. Usually when I draw or color a picture I slip into "the zone" (as per Ken Robinson's 'The Element'--the book I read for my book response) and usually work on it nonstop until I get bored of it, fall asleep, or it gets done. During this time usually the only distractions I'll warrant is some music or a movie playing in the background, but to create this tutorial I had to break my norms and pause my work every few minutes or when I hit an important milestone in my drawing process so that I could document it for my watchers. I wound up with almost 100 different pictures or segments of my picture in various stages of completion I then had to go through, crop down to size, sort of which ones were important to preserve and which I could discard, etc. etc. I then had to arrange them in a document and annotate each step in a way that my Watchers could understand. In the end the file sizes were so big I had to save them as psb.s instead of psd.s and they took up to three-to-five minutes to save.
It. Was. Tiring.
However, making them also made me more aware that, despite my Western outlook on art and my preference to the appeal of the final piece of artwork as opposed to the process it took to create them, I myself have a particular way of working. From the moment I lay down the gestural shapes, to fleshing out the sketch, drawing from left-to-right with the pencil and then right-to-left with the pen, to the way I lay down the base colors and then work over them, I'm always following a subconscious pattern and manner of working that I've been using for a while now. Creating these tuturials became a means into exploring my own creative process and being able to share it with others as well, which I love doing with my art. Their positive responses when I uploaded these to my account made the toil worth it, although ... I can't be saying I'll be doing it again any time soon.
--Sak
Monday, February 22, 2010
Creative Entry #6: Planning A Roleplay Event
This entry links back to my first Creative Entry Blog here: http://canadian-rainwater.blogspot.com/2010/01/creative-reflection-1-on-roleplay.html which was about roleplay in the MMORPG 'Aion'. As I mentioned in that first entry, the roleplay community, how much of it there is, and the kind of "Roleplay Events" that are planned are a major make-or-break factor for me in any game I play. In the past, timezones and the small roleplay community in 'Ryzom' eventually drove me from the game, as it got dull roleplaying with the same three or four people, and otherwise waiting for those same people to login. 'Everquest II' had roleplay tags so you could see who was a roleplayer and who wasn't, and there was a decent roleplay community there, but I left it to play 'Age of Conan'. I am a massive Conan nerd and LOVE the artwork of Frank Frazetta ... in fact "love" here is probably an understatement - Frazetta is my art God, so it was only natural I'd jump on an opportunity to play a game like 'AoC'. Sadly, while the roleplay community in 'AoC' was fairly active, it seemed to be only at certain hours of the day, which was usually late from 10pm-2am on for me, due to my playing on the European servers while I was living in Singapore (Asia). This made it incredibly hard to catch roleplayers during weekdays, and much of this roleplay was also "tavern roleplay" - the sort that involves sitting around in bars with a drink or some food and talking, which gets old very quickly.
'Aion' itself is a fairly new game, having been open to the US and EU for only about four months so far, so I don't expect the roleplay community to be as established and stable as in the other games I've played. As someone who was playing it since the last few Open Beta weekends, I've seen the roleplayers come and go. When the game first went live I couldn't sneeze without spraying on a roleplayer; one of the earliest things I remember was roleplaying with a friend of mine, walking throughout the main city, and running into three other people roleplaying within an area of town called the Vanahal Noble District. Since then, that area has become almost devoid of activity. While the tavern remains popular for roleplayers, it does get tedious, and sometimes I feel as if most of us roleplayers stay in contact via sending each other whispers or private tells, or by joining the private roleplay channel on Gorgos via the command /joinchannel Roleplay ARP.
Even the Aion Roleplay Forum http://www.aionroleplayers.com/ has gone eerily quiet on the Gorgos threads, which is disheartening, to say the least. I believe this is due in part to the gold farming and selling "bots" that run rampant throughout 'Aion', throwing the game economy awry, and hacking accounts. Gold botting and selling is illegal according to NCSoft's terms of agreement, and after the first month more than 27,000 bots over both the US and EU servers were banned http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=285&page=3. A further 23,000 were later banned as well, and their efforts are still continuing: http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=394&page. However, more recently the people behind the bots have begun hacking player accounts. In the past month three roleplayers I knew had their accounts hacked by gold bots, lost all their good armor, weapons, and whatever they had in their account banks and warehouses, and became what I lovingly refer to as "zombies" - mere shells of charatcers running around killing mobs much too low for them for the items they drop, selling these items and otherwise farming mindlessly for Kinah (the in-game currency). For those unfamiliar with gaming terms, they then give the Kinah earned via these hacked bots to players who pay real-world money for it, which is illegal by NCSoft's terms of agreements. These three people who were hacked lost everything, and one even got banned. Sadly, she was also the leader of the largest Roleplay Legion on our server, and when she left I began to see fewer and fewer of her legionmates online.
That was basically a tedious and drawn-out way of saying "the roleplay community on 'Aion' is dwindling, and I wanted to do something about it". Since the major roleplay Legion is incapacitated at the moment due to disagreeable botivity, I decided to try and stir up the roleplay community on my own. Obviously this wasn't going to happen overnight, but through my OOC webcomics on DeviantArt I've already had FOUR people from the US servers come to Gorgos, on the EU servers, for the roleplay. My art has been getting the roleplay community noticed, so last weekend I went that little extra step further.
The idea itself was one I'd been sitting on for a while, and even discussed briefly with said member of the other Legion. I wanted to hold a Player-versus-Player (or PvP) event instead of tavern roleplay, using the lore and game mechanics NCSoft offered the players to have a little something more than just standing around talking. Guilds in 'Aion' are called Legions for a reason - the entire game is very PvP and miltary-oriented, with multiple factions fighting for dominion over what's left of their planet Atreia after the terrible Cataclysm that split it apart (two of these factions are playable). As such, I thought it was about time we had an event that took all this into consideration.
Being the lore-whore I am, and through my journeys exploring Asmodae, I've come across readable books throughout the game that reveal more and more small snippets about the lore. I took screenshots of the books' pages and compiled them in a forum thread so people could read it, here: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2990&start=10. One of my favorite areas in the game is a level 17-19 area in Altgard called "Impetusium", which is a ruined colloseum that is being rebuilt after hundreds of years in abandonment. Following the quest dialogue you help in the reconstruction efforts yourself when you run through this area, and I wanted to combine this with the story 'Impetusium of Glory' (the first story in the above link) to hold an event where Asmodian players would partake in a day of games like gladiators in the Roman colloseums would have done. When I first proposed this idea, the leader of the other Legion was already looking to plan something in the PvP arena in our main city of Pandaemonium, so I put the idea on hold, but when I found out she'd left I decided not to wait any longer.
The pot luck event our class held proved to me that planning things can count as a creative process, and this was my little take on it. Over the course of reading break I began contacting people in-game and planning the event. I spoke with a few players in the other Legion, who live in Europe, and asked about good times for them, and then tried to find a good overlap with the members of my Legion that live in Canada/the US. I finally settled on 6pm Saturday for those in Europe, as it's shortly after dinner, people are back from work, and there's no immediate rush to get to bed early for work the next day. This amounted to 9am for me, and 11-12am for the others in our legion, and seemed the best time. Of course some people did have work, but it's hard to please everyone, and I did the best I could.
I then drew out an advertisment and broadcasted it on both my DeviantArt website: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Impetusium-A-Day-of-Games-153556234 and the Aion Roleplayers Forum: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3117&p=44974#p44974.
'Aion' itself is a fairly new game, having been open to the US and EU for only about four months so far, so I don't expect the roleplay community to be as established and stable as in the other games I've played. As someone who was playing it since the last few Open Beta weekends, I've seen the roleplayers come and go. When the game first went live I couldn't sneeze without spraying on a roleplayer; one of the earliest things I remember was roleplaying with a friend of mine, walking throughout the main city, and running into three other people roleplaying within an area of town called the Vanahal Noble District. Since then, that area has become almost devoid of activity. While the tavern remains popular for roleplayers, it does get tedious, and sometimes I feel as if most of us roleplayers stay in contact via sending each other whispers or private tells, or by joining the private roleplay channel on Gorgos via the command /joinchannel Roleplay ARP.
Even the Aion Roleplay Forum http://www.aionroleplayers.com/ has gone eerily quiet on the Gorgos threads, which is disheartening, to say the least. I believe this is due in part to the gold farming and selling "bots" that run rampant throughout 'Aion', throwing the game economy awry, and hacking accounts. Gold botting and selling is illegal according to NCSoft's terms of agreement, and after the first month more than 27,000 bots over both the US and EU servers were banned http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=285&page=3. A further 23,000 were later banned as well, and their efforts are still continuing: http://uk.aiononline.com/board/notices/view?articleID=394&page. However, more recently the people behind the bots have begun hacking player accounts. In the past month three roleplayers I knew had their accounts hacked by gold bots, lost all their good armor, weapons, and whatever they had in their account banks and warehouses, and became what I lovingly refer to as "zombies" - mere shells of charatcers running around killing mobs much too low for them for the items they drop, selling these items and otherwise farming mindlessly for Kinah (the in-game currency). For those unfamiliar with gaming terms, they then give the Kinah earned via these hacked bots to players who pay real-world money for it, which is illegal by NCSoft's terms of agreements. These three people who were hacked lost everything, and one even got banned. Sadly, she was also the leader of the largest Roleplay Legion on our server, and when she left I began to see fewer and fewer of her legionmates online.
That was basically a tedious and drawn-out way of saying "the roleplay community on 'Aion' is dwindling, and I wanted to do something about it". Since the major roleplay Legion is incapacitated at the moment due to disagreeable botivity, I decided to try and stir up the roleplay community on my own. Obviously this wasn't going to happen overnight, but through my OOC webcomics on DeviantArt I've already had FOUR people from the US servers come to Gorgos, on the EU servers, for the roleplay. My art has been getting the roleplay community noticed, so last weekend I went that little extra step further.
The idea itself was one I'd been sitting on for a while, and even discussed briefly with said member of the other Legion. I wanted to hold a Player-versus-Player (or PvP) event instead of tavern roleplay, using the lore and game mechanics NCSoft offered the players to have a little something more than just standing around talking. Guilds in 'Aion' are called Legions for a reason - the entire game is very PvP and miltary-oriented, with multiple factions fighting for dominion over what's left of their planet Atreia after the terrible Cataclysm that split it apart (two of these factions are playable). As such, I thought it was about time we had an event that took all this into consideration.
Being the lore-whore I am, and through my journeys exploring Asmodae, I've come across readable books throughout the game that reveal more and more small snippets about the lore. I took screenshots of the books' pages and compiled them in a forum thread so people could read it, here: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2990&start=10. One of my favorite areas in the game is a level 17-19 area in Altgard called "Impetusium", which is a ruined colloseum that is being rebuilt after hundreds of years in abandonment. Following the quest dialogue you help in the reconstruction efforts yourself when you run through this area, and I wanted to combine this with the story 'Impetusium of Glory' (the first story in the above link) to hold an event where Asmodian players would partake in a day of games like gladiators in the Roman colloseums would have done. When I first proposed this idea, the leader of the other Legion was already looking to plan something in the PvP arena in our main city of Pandaemonium, so I put the idea on hold, but when I found out she'd left I decided not to wait any longer.
The pot luck event our class held proved to me that planning things can count as a creative process, and this was my little take on it. Over the course of reading break I began contacting people in-game and planning the event. I spoke with a few players in the other Legion, who live in Europe, and asked about good times for them, and then tried to find a good overlap with the members of my Legion that live in Canada/the US. I finally settled on 6pm Saturday for those in Europe, as it's shortly after dinner, people are back from work, and there's no immediate rush to get to bed early for work the next day. This amounted to 9am for me, and 11-12am for the others in our legion, and seemed the best time. Of course some people did have work, but it's hard to please everyone, and I did the best I could.
I then drew out an advertisment and broadcasted it on both my DeviantArt website: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Impetusium-A-Day-of-Games-153556234 and the Aion Roleplayers Forum: http://www.aionroleplayers.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3117&p=44974#p44974.
I posted this advert a week in advance, which gave people plenty of time to prepare for it. I then contacted a few players to help me "cater" for the event. According to the lore, Impetusium was once a bustling hub of activity, of sparring, games, jousting events for money, to settle disputes, what have you, as well as a main trade berth boasting exotic goods and food. I contacted a few players to cook in-game food for the event, while I and another legionnaire made health and mana potions for the fighters. All this was done in advance, so when the day finally rolled around we made our way to the grounds early and set up player shops. We could roleplay while we sat there advertising our wares, and I thought it was good fun. I also shouted out on the roleplay channel every half an hour, ten minutes, and five minutes before the event, as well as poked anyone I knew on Skype to be present.
The turnout wasn't as great as it could have been, and I had hoped for more people to attend, but as my first attempt planning and hosting a roleplay event I think overall it was a success. We ended up delaying the fights until an hour after the original planned start, as we needed that time for everyone to trickle in to join the games, and also to get down their names for the event. My boyfriend helped me here and drew up a table, organizing people according to their level brackets (21-25, 26-30, 31-35, etc. etc. ...) and then calling them up to duel in pairs. Impetusium is a flight area, so people were able to take to the skies with their characters and duel in the air as well as on the ground. It was a proccess of elimination: two people would fight, the winner fought the next one in line, and so on. In the meantime I had written a speech about a week prior and Jaris read it aloud at the beginning of the event.
(Above: the speech I read. Originally Jaris said "and my General Bix ...", to which she intercepted and yelled "BRIGADE General Bix!" for a fun twist we had planned in advance. I put screenshots of the actual event in the image above - those are all real people playing their own characters - in the hopes of perhaps attracting more people to join us in future.)
(Above: the winners for each level bracket that attended. I spent days worrying about how to reward the winners, what prizes to give them, as many items in-game have far too much worth to be handed out simply as rewards. In the end I had the idea of using Bronze, Silver, and Gold "coins" that are easily gained by doing a few repeatable quests. They may not be worth all that much, but they stayed in the spirit of bronze, silver, and gold medallions, and people seemed to enjoy getting even such a small thing as thanks for coming.)
Although I was very nervous at first that my first roleplay event would fall flat on its face, I am happy with how it turned out in the end. People seemed to have fun - I know I did! - and enjoyed a break from their usual routine of grinding, or from tavern roleplay. I've entertained the idea of holding it again sometime in the future, after having planned a few more, or maybe planning one in the PvP arena next time, so more than one player can fight each other at the same time. My goals for improvement, then, should that happen, is to get more people excited enough to join us, possibly through more thorough planning, maybe over the course of two weeks instead of one, and more propaganda to attract more players. Heck, I can draw, I'll use my artsy skills to bribe them next time! "First place winner gets a free drawing!" Overall, I thought the event was a success, and I can't wait to host another one. Hopefully this will draw more roleplayers to our server in the future.
--Sak
Monday, February 15, 2010
Creative Entry #5: Crossover Art
As I've already established (or hope that I have) I draw a lot. As in, a whole lot, and most of this art I upload to my online gallery on Deviantart: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/ Since discovering DeviantArt more than four years ago I felt like my art's improved in leaps and bounds, and I can spend hours just poring through the galleries of artists I like. Usually I'll drop them a comment, or "fave" a piece of their art if I especially like it. Since then I've developed my style mostly following people with similar art styles to mine. For instance, I love cartoons and animations, facial expressions, and crazy angles, but dislike anime/manga with a passion, and most "realistic" art doesn't strike my fancy as much as a little comic that makes me laugh. Some artists who greatly inspired me were http://enolianslave.deviantart.com/, http://shoomlah.deviantart.com/, and http://abigailryder.deviantart.com/. More recently names like http://tracyjb.deviantart.com/, http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/, and http://teonora.deviantart.com/ have been added to my "watch" list because their styles really appeal to me. That's not to say I don't watch artists who don't draw in comic-like styles (I watch over 200 people on DeviantArt all with various styles) but, most of the time, when I see something from these artists I spend time poring over the little details: how they drew the nose, positioned the eyes, the mouth, etc. so that I might improve in my own work later on.
This brings me to one of my other favorite aspects of DeviantArt: meeting new people. Since joining four years ago I've found myself in all sorts of "circles" of people, usually based around fanart. On my first account, "solarpoweredgeek", I drew a lot of fanart of the cartoon series 'Invader Zim' or the comic book 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac' by Jhonen Vasquez (every teenager had their angsty period, and I was no different, though I hate to admit it). During this time strange original characters such as rapist assassins, dinosaur internet personas, and vampires ran rampant in my art. Some of these people who I "watch" later "watch" me back, and sometimes DeviantArt becomes a bit of a chat site for me, where I talk with the people who comment a lot. I meet a lot of people who share similar interests to the content of my work. Sometimes these friendships result in crazy collaborations like the following:
Memes. Memes are a DeviantArt phenomenon, and are usually blank questionnaires for a whole SLEW of various topics (be it Disney movies, "Meet your Original Character" memes, or procrastination memes) that you then have to fill out with art. I've done a few memes already over the course of my stay on DeviantArt, although not usually too often because I tend to spend too much time adding details to something people will barely glance at (memes are meant to be filled out quickly). Some of my previous memes were the "Art Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Art-Semen-66667612, the "Fanservice Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Fanservice-meme-Colored-114838971, the "Disney Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Disney-Meme-145061823, the "Meet Your OC Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Meet-Your-OC-Meme-145661675, and the "2003-2009 Improvement Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/SAK-s-Improvement-Meme-152319693. These are all single-person Memes, that is to say, they're about me and I filled them out by myself.
More recently, however, I came across the "Doubles Meme", which becomes a collaborative effort: http://renny08.deviantart.com/art/Remie-s-Double-Meme-127549078. This time the Meme is divided into two, and two artists fill it out (each does their half seperately) then surprises each other with the final result. I asked a friend from DeviantArt, Aoixin http://aoixin.deviantart.com/ if she'd like to do it with me, and we did:
Most of the jokes are inside jokes relating to our OCs (Original Characters) and the MMORPG 'Aion', which we both play, and through which we found each other via searching Aion art. This was such a fun Meme to do, because I was chatting with Aoixin to the side throughout drawing it, not so that I'd give anything away, but it was still fun just chatting, and the end results were hilarious. In fact, I found a collaboration like this so much fun I decided to do it again ... with my sister! http://threevoices.deviantart.com/
I don't draw collaborations very often, but I found both of these to be very enjoyable to fill out. It even bolstered my confidence about drawing digitally straight into Photoshop with my tablet, so much so that I want to draw more stuff digitally, instead of drawing it traditionally with pencil and pen, scanning it, and coloring it on the computer.
This brings me to one of my other favorite aspects of DeviantArt: meeting new people. Since joining four years ago I've found myself in all sorts of "circles" of people, usually based around fanart. On my first account, "solarpoweredgeek", I drew a lot of fanart of the cartoon series 'Invader Zim' or the comic book 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac' by Jhonen Vasquez (every teenager had their angsty period, and I was no different, though I hate to admit it). During this time strange original characters such as rapist assassins, dinosaur internet personas, and vampires ran rampant in my art. Some of these people who I "watch" later "watch" me back, and sometimes DeviantArt becomes a bit of a chat site for me, where I talk with the people who comment a lot. I meet a lot of people who share similar interests to the content of my work. Sometimes these friendships result in crazy collaborations like the following:
Memes. Memes are a DeviantArt phenomenon, and are usually blank questionnaires for a whole SLEW of various topics (be it Disney movies, "Meet your Original Character" memes, or procrastination memes) that you then have to fill out with art. I've done a few memes already over the course of my stay on DeviantArt, although not usually too often because I tend to spend too much time adding details to something people will barely glance at (memes are meant to be filled out quickly). Some of my previous memes were the "Art Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Art-Semen-66667612, the "Fanservice Meme" (OLD): http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Fanservice-meme-Colored-114838971, the "Disney Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Disney-Meme-145061823, the "Meet Your OC Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Meet-Your-OC-Meme-145661675, and the "2003-2009 Improvement Meme": http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/SAK-s-Improvement-Meme-152319693. These are all single-person Memes, that is to say, they're about me and I filled them out by myself.
More recently, however, I came across the "Doubles Meme", which becomes a collaborative effort: http://renny08.deviantart.com/art/Remie-s-Double-Meme-127549078. This time the Meme is divided into two, and two artists fill it out (each does their half seperately) then surprises each other with the final result. I asked a friend from DeviantArt, Aoixin http://aoixin.deviantart.com/ if she'd like to do it with me, and we did:
Most of the jokes are inside jokes relating to our OCs (Original Characters) and the MMORPG 'Aion', which we both play, and through which we found each other via searching Aion art. This was such a fun Meme to do, because I was chatting with Aoixin to the side throughout drawing it, not so that I'd give anything away, but it was still fun just chatting, and the end results were hilarious. In fact, I found a collaboration like this so much fun I decided to do it again ... with my sister! http://threevoices.deviantart.com/I don't draw collaborations very often, but I found both of these to be very enjoyable to fill out. It even bolstered my confidence about drawing digitally straight into Photoshop with my tablet, so much so that I want to draw more stuff digitally, instead of drawing it traditionally with pencil and pen, scanning it, and coloring it on the computer.
--Sak
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Book Response - The Element, by Ken Robinson, Ph.D.
This Book Response was a homework assignment for my FA100-A01/T01 class, as was uploading it here to my blog. Please respect this and don't copy/reproduce, nor any of the work shown. Thank you.
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'Doing something “for your own good” is rarely good if it causes you to become less than you really are’ (pg. 139) … this is a quote from Ken Robinson (Ph.D.)’s book ‘The Element’ which I read for the purpose of this book response. As with most reading assignments, I expected to find the book choices bland and dull, braced my heels in the dirt, and expected a long, dry read. However, this quote struck me hard and stuck with me despite the one-hundred and twenty one pages that followed, and in the end I am glad I chose to read it.
His book explores the idea of peoples’ creative “Element”, that is to say, “the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together” (Introduction, xiii). Throughout the eleven chapters Robinson gives examples of famous people in history, some of who are still around today, whose’ lives were changed because they found their creative Element. These people discovered what they were meant to be doing, and strove to make it their life’s work, despite usually being met by opposition from family or friends. A few of the examples he gives are Paul McCartney (pg. 9), Matt Groening (pg. 4), and Helen Pilcher (pg. 108).
It’s pretty daunting, getting handed a four-page long list of books to choose from, and my first concern was not only finding the books in the first place (in a country I haven’t lived in before), but also finding a book I liked. However, I needn’t have worried; no sooner had I skimmed through the first few pages of ‘The Element’ than I was hooked. The Element is “the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion”, and while you are engrossed in your Element “time passes differently and [you] are more alive, more centered, and more vibrant than at any other times” (pg. 21). I read this and recognized instantly that this book appealed to me because I could relate to it at once: my Element is art, more specifically drawing. It’s something I’ve always been passionate about, and that I’ve been doing since I could hold a crayon in my mouth. So why, then, didn’t I make a drawing in response to Robinson’s book? Truth be told that was my original intention, but after reading it there were so many things I had to say that I wanted to write down as much as I could in an attempt to share my thoughts.
Paul Samuelson said “Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play … this turns possible underachievers into happy warriors” (pg. 7). As previously mentioned one of the first things I “discovered” about myself was that I loved drawing. Picking up a pen or pencil and making pictures come out came as naturally to me as breathing, and all throughout kindergarten I was constantly drawing. We received cheap sketchbooks from our kindergarten teachers that we would doodle in during “Drawing time”, and I would fill page after page with mostly the same thing: pictures of dragons, fire dragons, water dragons, breathing-fire-at-knights dragons. At that time I didn’t draw humans or many other animals, but that didn’t stop my friends in my class from wanting me to draw for them too. I even irritated the teachers because the other children never wanted to draw on their own anymore, instead they always asked me “Shamine, draw a dragon for me next!” Reading in Robinson’s book that Dr. Terence Tao, a mathematician since a young age, was “extremely fortunate because he arrived at his version of the Element when he was very, very young” (pg. 101) made me giddy, because I’ve known since I was small that “when I [grew] up, I want to become an artist.” It also made me feel very fortunate that I could “be what [I] was naturally inclined to be before the world put any restrictions on [me]” (pg. 102).
What Robinson is referring to is that young children don’t see the need to think outside the box, because they don’t know the box is there. Dr. Tao—and myself—were fortunate to discover our Element before we were old enough to have the “real world” bearing down on us, telling us what would be the “right” thing to do to land a job that would keep the bills paid. That’s not to say I haven’t been met with opposition for my passion in art throughout my life, but again Robinson’s book gave me more examples that proved to me I don’t have to take others’ opinions so seriously, when they tell me there’s no future in art.
For instance, Matt Groening, who everyone knows as the artist and creator of ‘The Simpsons’, would draw in class to keep himself amused (pg. 4). Drawing in class is something I’ve been doing avidly since sixth grade, and it was only in ninth grade that teachers finally left me alone about it, because my grades were almost always the top few of the class. Also like me, “his teachers and parents … tried to encourage him to do something else with his life” (pg. 5), and it was in his first-grade teacher that he found inspiration. Throughout my life my parents, particularly my father, have turned down the idea of art as a profession because of how unstable and difficult it is. He’s a banker, graduated from the University of British Columbia with a major in engineering, and is very left-brain oriented, which didn’t help his opinion of the arts. That’s not to say he discouraged me completely, on the contrary he’d always make sure there was paper and pencils and pens to be had, so that my sister and I could whip out drawings to our hearts’ content, but the underlying tone was always there: do well in maths and sciences, because that’s where you can make a “good living”.
For Groening, his first-grade teacher kept his pieces, which flattered him because “there’s like, you know, hundreds of kids going through [there]” (pg. 5). I was surprised at this, because in the first grade I had a teacher who I still remember very well for how much she supported me, even at that early age. Ms. Velasquez was always very happy and encouraged my drawing to a certain degree. There were always times where drawing all over my paper was unacceptable, of course, and she made sure I learned that, but she cherished the pictures I drew and would constantly tell my parents that I had something there. I was living in Japan at the time, and when I left she gave me two illustrated books about the culture of Japan done in a very cartoony way, and even signed one, telling me to keep on drawing, so that one day when I was famous she could point and say “I taught her!”
Robinson also makes clear the importance of “mentors” in many of these successful peoples’ lives. These are people “who [see] something in us that we don’t see in ourselves … [or] a person [who brings] out the best in us” (pg. 174). Again I have to recall Ms. Velasquez, as my parents have told me it was her constantly reminding them that I had something there that finally led them to believe I wasn’t just another kid drawing scribbles on a piece of paper. At that time, too, drawing was just something I found “fun”, but I had never considered having any sort of talent, especially when I saw the art older students were producing. But it was things like this that have kept me going, and to see examples of others who had similar experiences, complete with discouragement from family members, in Robinson’s book gave me hope that maybe I could achieve something similar later in my life.
Robinson also points out that the reason many people are discouraged from finding (or, if they’ve found it already, pursuing) their Element is due to the outdated education systems we have. The educational systems most schools still follow were “designed to meet the economic interests of those times … dominated by the Industrial Revolution in Europe in America” (pg. 13). During the eighteenth and nineteenth century mathematics, science, and language were important because of the jobs arising as a result of the rapid industrial improvements in nations across the globe. Additionally, the academic culture of universities has “tended to push aside any sort of activity that involves the heart, the body, the senses, and a good portion of our actual brains” (pg. 13). Schools are no longer nurturing the students’ Elements. An extreme example Robinson gives to illustrate his point is of Paul McCartney, lead singer of The Beatles, and Elvis Presley (no need to introduce him) who were both rejected from their schools’ choirs because “[they] weren’t … good enough [singers]” (pg. 11). Paul finished school without anyone once acknowledging he had any sort of musical talent at all, and yet he went on to become part of a band that sold millions of gold albums around the world, and is still being celebrated today.
As a result of these academic systems being carried through into today’s generation, children’s creativity is limited, if not “destroyed”. People still believe that force-feeding their children a “nationally prescribed menu of reading, writing, and arithmetic” (pg. 15) will see them better prepared for university, and a well-paid job in the end, even when this pushes their children into a direction that doesn’t nurture their creative input. For instance, societies have even based themselves around the IQ test to see if their children are qualified for tougher systems of education. Ironically, Alfred Binet, who was one of the creators of the IQ test, intended it to be used to identify children with special needs so they could receive compatible schooling. Another extreme example of society’s preconceptions about intelligence is the SATS. Robinson quotes John Katzman, who criticised the SATS, saying “What makes the SAT bad is that it was nothing to do with what kids learn in high school … the SAT has been sold as snake oil; it measures intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades. In fact, it’s never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third.” (pg. 42).
I include these examples because I agree with Robinson’s arguments completely, in fact I ruled out the options of going to university in the USA because I didn’t want to have to participate in what I considered a useless test. However, it was also rejuvenating to read an adult’s opinion that I agreed with, stating how outmoded these IQ tests and strictly academic-based school systems are. My parents made me participate in an IQ test when I lived in Australia, and throughout my two years there they were constantly sending me off for a few weeks to participate in MENSA, a “society” of people considered to have the highest IQs in the world. And let me make it perfectly clear: I hated it. I remember complaining and wondering why I had to spend my summer break cooped inside large halls, feeling so small and timid sitting by myself, a third-grader surrounded by sixth, eighth, maybe twelfth-graders, bent over exam sheets and tables. In fact, the only thing these MENSA weeks managed to do was make me feel all manner of miserable and stupid, because the questions always confused and confounded me, and I felt like I didn’t know anything.
Some people overcame these barriers set up by the educational system, and the stress from their parents and families to conform to these linear expectations, by leaving them, even if temporarily. This reminded me of one of my creative influences who I absolutely idolize: the Gothic musician, artist, stop-motion animator, writer, and teacher, Mr. Aurelio “Voltaire” Hernández (quite a mouthful isn’t it). In his blog (yes, he keeps one, and it’s a very interesting read, including not only snippets of stories that he’s written, but sometimes his creative process as well) he mentions, in regards to his family looking down on him, that “ … at seventeen I was smart enough to know when to run. And that's what I did. And I never looked back.” He also states in an interview that “I think that schooling is important for some … However, some of us are better off without schooling.” I think he’d be interested in reading Robinson’s book. These days he’s released ten song albums, nine comics, two books, and has made many stop-motion animations and, perhaps ironically, teaches stop-motion at the New York School of Visual Arts.
The final point in this book that really stuck with me, was when Robinson suggests that “most of the people in this book … found [their] way not only when [they] found [their] Element but also when [they] found [their] tribe.” (pg. 131). He also mentions being in “The Zone”. To be in the Zone is to be “deep in the heart of the Element” (pg. 86), and finding the right tribe involves finding people who share your passion about your Element, or a similar one. I could relate to this once more as I associate my tribe with the website DeviantArt . DeviantArt is an online art community I discovered accidentally more than four years ago, where artists around the world can create an account for free and upload pictures into an online gallery. As Robinson said, “often we need other people to help us recognize our real talents. Often we help other people to discover theirs.” (pg. 25). On DeviantArt many of the people there have already discovered their Element is art through whatever means (digital photos, digital paintings, traditional oil paints, watercolors, pencil sketches, prisma colors, you name it) or at the very least enjoy art to the side and can offer constructive criticism and support to artists they admire. Occasionally I’ll get a comment on my page from someone saying my art inspires them, and it’s a nice feeling, to know they’re finding their tribe, too.
Robinson includes a good quote by Isaac Newton, saying “If I saw further it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants” (pg. 118). This refers to Newton’s discoveries not having been completely his own, but as a result of building off the discoveries of scientists before him. This quote is relevant, as, like Newton, I through DeviantArt and the artists I’ve met feel as though I’ve developed even in my own “field of expertise”. Recently I completed a “meme” that had been circulating DeviantArt, where you post snippets of your art in 2003 through to 2009 to show how you’ve improved, and the jump from 2006, when I first joined DeviantArt, and to where I am now is tremendous. Throughout the last four years I’ve been looking up tutorials on how to effectively color digitally, asking other artists (who were kind enough to answer!) how they achieved this certain effect, and lately exchanging art or having other people so enthralled by my own characters that they want to give me gift art. It’s really an empowering experience, and gives me all the more courage to pursue my Element. Additionally, some of these people on DeviantArt such as Nathie, Kerem Beyit, and Richard Johnston, do what they love for a living: they’re in their Element.
I’m not suggesting Robinson is egging me on to run away from my home in the hopes of building myself an artistic empire from the bottom up, or ditching school in the hopes of achieving what Voltaire managed to do, but ‘The Element’ offered many inspiring examples of people who have been able to do what they love for a living, and how they did it. The main reason I enjoyed reading this book so much, despite my initial intimidation, was that I felt I was able to connect to it, and relate what I was reading to people I know and/or idolize.
--Sak
External links:
Voltaire's blog: http://voltairenyc.blogspot.com/
Voltaire interview quoted: http://www.starvox.net/intview/voltaire.htm
Voltaire's official website: http://www.voltaire.net/
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'Doing something “for your own good” is rarely good if it causes you to become less than you really are’ (pg. 139) … this is a quote from Ken Robinson (Ph.D.)’s book ‘The Element’ which I read for the purpose of this book response. As with most reading assignments, I expected to find the book choices bland and dull, braced my heels in the dirt, and expected a long, dry read. However, this quote struck me hard and stuck with me despite the one-hundred and twenty one pages that followed, and in the end I am glad I chose to read it.
His book explores the idea of peoples’ creative “Element”, that is to say, “the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together” (Introduction, xiii). Throughout the eleven chapters Robinson gives examples of famous people in history, some of who are still around today, whose’ lives were changed because they found their creative Element. These people discovered what they were meant to be doing, and strove to make it their life’s work, despite usually being met by opposition from family or friends. A few of the examples he gives are Paul McCartney (pg. 9), Matt Groening (pg. 4), and Helen Pilcher (pg. 108).
It’s pretty daunting, getting handed a four-page long list of books to choose from, and my first concern was not only finding the books in the first place (in a country I haven’t lived in before), but also finding a book I liked. However, I needn’t have worried; no sooner had I skimmed through the first few pages of ‘The Element’ than I was hooked. The Element is “the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion”, and while you are engrossed in your Element “time passes differently and [you] are more alive, more centered, and more vibrant than at any other times” (pg. 21). I read this and recognized instantly that this book appealed to me because I could relate to it at once: my Element is art, more specifically drawing. It’s something I’ve always been passionate about, and that I’ve been doing since I could hold a crayon in my mouth. So why, then, didn’t I make a drawing in response to Robinson’s book? Truth be told that was my original intention, but after reading it there were so many things I had to say that I wanted to write down as much as I could in an attempt to share my thoughts.
Paul Samuelson said “Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play … this turns possible underachievers into happy warriors” (pg. 7). As previously mentioned one of the first things I “discovered” about myself was that I loved drawing. Picking up a pen or pencil and making pictures come out came as naturally to me as breathing, and all throughout kindergarten I was constantly drawing. We received cheap sketchbooks from our kindergarten teachers that we would doodle in during “Drawing time”, and I would fill page after page with mostly the same thing: pictures of dragons, fire dragons, water dragons, breathing-fire-at-knights dragons. At that time I didn’t draw humans or many other animals, but that didn’t stop my friends in my class from wanting me to draw for them too. I even irritated the teachers because the other children never wanted to draw on their own anymore, instead they always asked me “Shamine, draw a dragon for me next!” Reading in Robinson’s book that Dr. Terence Tao, a mathematician since a young age, was “extremely fortunate because he arrived at his version of the Element when he was very, very young” (pg. 101) made me giddy, because I’ve known since I was small that “when I [grew] up, I want to become an artist.” It also made me feel very fortunate that I could “be what [I] was naturally inclined to be before the world put any restrictions on [me]” (pg. 102).
What Robinson is referring to is that young children don’t see the need to think outside the box, because they don’t know the box is there. Dr. Tao—and myself—were fortunate to discover our Element before we were old enough to have the “real world” bearing down on us, telling us what would be the “right” thing to do to land a job that would keep the bills paid. That’s not to say I haven’t been met with opposition for my passion in art throughout my life, but again Robinson’s book gave me more examples that proved to me I don’t have to take others’ opinions so seriously, when they tell me there’s no future in art.
For instance, Matt Groening, who everyone knows as the artist and creator of ‘The Simpsons’, would draw in class to keep himself amused (pg. 4). Drawing in class is something I’ve been doing avidly since sixth grade, and it was only in ninth grade that teachers finally left me alone about it, because my grades were almost always the top few of the class. Also like me, “his teachers and parents … tried to encourage him to do something else with his life” (pg. 5), and it was in his first-grade teacher that he found inspiration. Throughout my life my parents, particularly my father, have turned down the idea of art as a profession because of how unstable and difficult it is. He’s a banker, graduated from the University of British Columbia with a major in engineering, and is very left-brain oriented, which didn’t help his opinion of the arts. That’s not to say he discouraged me completely, on the contrary he’d always make sure there was paper and pencils and pens to be had, so that my sister and I could whip out drawings to our hearts’ content, but the underlying tone was always there: do well in maths and sciences, because that’s where you can make a “good living”.
For Groening, his first-grade teacher kept his pieces, which flattered him because “there’s like, you know, hundreds of kids going through [there]” (pg. 5). I was surprised at this, because in the first grade I had a teacher who I still remember very well for how much she supported me, even at that early age. Ms. Velasquez was always very happy and encouraged my drawing to a certain degree. There were always times where drawing all over my paper was unacceptable, of course, and she made sure I learned that, but she cherished the pictures I drew and would constantly tell my parents that I had something there. I was living in Japan at the time, and when I left she gave me two illustrated books about the culture of Japan done in a very cartoony way, and even signed one, telling me to keep on drawing, so that one day when I was famous she could point and say “I taught her!”
Robinson also makes clear the importance of “mentors” in many of these successful peoples’ lives. These are people “who [see] something in us that we don’t see in ourselves … [or] a person [who brings] out the best in us” (pg. 174). Again I have to recall Ms. Velasquez, as my parents have told me it was her constantly reminding them that I had something there that finally led them to believe I wasn’t just another kid drawing scribbles on a piece of paper. At that time, too, drawing was just something I found “fun”, but I had never considered having any sort of talent, especially when I saw the art older students were producing. But it was things like this that have kept me going, and to see examples of others who had similar experiences, complete with discouragement from family members, in Robinson’s book gave me hope that maybe I could achieve something similar later in my life.
Robinson also points out that the reason many people are discouraged from finding (or, if they’ve found it already, pursuing) their Element is due to the outdated education systems we have. The educational systems most schools still follow were “designed to meet the economic interests of those times … dominated by the Industrial Revolution in Europe in America” (pg. 13). During the eighteenth and nineteenth century mathematics, science, and language were important because of the jobs arising as a result of the rapid industrial improvements in nations across the globe. Additionally, the academic culture of universities has “tended to push aside any sort of activity that involves the heart, the body, the senses, and a good portion of our actual brains” (pg. 13). Schools are no longer nurturing the students’ Elements. An extreme example Robinson gives to illustrate his point is of Paul McCartney, lead singer of The Beatles, and Elvis Presley (no need to introduce him) who were both rejected from their schools’ choirs because “[they] weren’t … good enough [singers]” (pg. 11). Paul finished school without anyone once acknowledging he had any sort of musical talent at all, and yet he went on to become part of a band that sold millions of gold albums around the world, and is still being celebrated today.
As a result of these academic systems being carried through into today’s generation, children’s creativity is limited, if not “destroyed”. People still believe that force-feeding their children a “nationally prescribed menu of reading, writing, and arithmetic” (pg. 15) will see them better prepared for university, and a well-paid job in the end, even when this pushes their children into a direction that doesn’t nurture their creative input. For instance, societies have even based themselves around the IQ test to see if their children are qualified for tougher systems of education. Ironically, Alfred Binet, who was one of the creators of the IQ test, intended it to be used to identify children with special needs so they could receive compatible schooling. Another extreme example of society’s preconceptions about intelligence is the SATS. Robinson quotes John Katzman, who criticised the SATS, saying “What makes the SAT bad is that it was nothing to do with what kids learn in high school … the SAT has been sold as snake oil; it measures intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades. In fact, it’s never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third.” (pg. 42).
I include these examples because I agree with Robinson’s arguments completely, in fact I ruled out the options of going to university in the USA because I didn’t want to have to participate in what I considered a useless test. However, it was also rejuvenating to read an adult’s opinion that I agreed with, stating how outmoded these IQ tests and strictly academic-based school systems are. My parents made me participate in an IQ test when I lived in Australia, and throughout my two years there they were constantly sending me off for a few weeks to participate in MENSA, a “society” of people considered to have the highest IQs in the world. And let me make it perfectly clear: I hated it. I remember complaining and wondering why I had to spend my summer break cooped inside large halls, feeling so small and timid sitting by myself, a third-grader surrounded by sixth, eighth, maybe twelfth-graders, bent over exam sheets and tables. In fact, the only thing these MENSA weeks managed to do was make me feel all manner of miserable and stupid, because the questions always confused and confounded me, and I felt like I didn’t know anything.
Some people overcame these barriers set up by the educational system, and the stress from their parents and families to conform to these linear expectations, by leaving them, even if temporarily. This reminded me of one of my creative influences who I absolutely idolize: the Gothic musician, artist, stop-motion animator, writer, and teacher, Mr. Aurelio “Voltaire” Hernández (quite a mouthful isn’t it). In his blog (yes, he keeps one, and it’s a very interesting read, including not only snippets of stories that he’s written, but sometimes his creative process as well) he mentions, in regards to his family looking down on him, that “ … at seventeen I was smart enough to know when to run. And that's what I did. And I never looked back.” He also states in an interview that “I think that schooling is important for some … However, some of us are better off without schooling.” I think he’d be interested in reading Robinson’s book. These days he’s released ten song albums, nine comics, two books, and has made many stop-motion animations and, perhaps ironically, teaches stop-motion at the New York School of Visual Arts.
The final point in this book that really stuck with me, was when Robinson suggests that “most of the people in this book … found [their] way not only when [they] found [their] Element but also when [they] found [their] tribe.” (pg. 131). He also mentions being in “The Zone”. To be in the Zone is to be “deep in the heart of the Element” (pg. 86), and finding the right tribe involves finding people who share your passion about your Element, or a similar one. I could relate to this once more as I associate my tribe with the website DeviantArt . DeviantArt is an online art community I discovered accidentally more than four years ago, where artists around the world can create an account for free and upload pictures into an online gallery. As Robinson said, “often we need other people to help us recognize our real talents. Often we help other people to discover theirs.” (pg. 25). On DeviantArt many of the people there have already discovered their Element is art through whatever means (digital photos, digital paintings, traditional oil paints, watercolors, pencil sketches, prisma colors, you name it) or at the very least enjoy art to the side and can offer constructive criticism and support to artists they admire. Occasionally I’ll get a comment on my page from someone saying my art inspires them, and it’s a nice feeling, to know they’re finding their tribe, too.
Robinson includes a good quote by Isaac Newton, saying “If I saw further it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants” (pg. 118). This refers to Newton’s discoveries not having been completely his own, but as a result of building off the discoveries of scientists before him. This quote is relevant, as, like Newton, I through DeviantArt and the artists I’ve met feel as though I’ve developed even in my own “field of expertise”. Recently I completed a “meme” that had been circulating DeviantArt, where you post snippets of your art in 2003 through to 2009 to show how you’ve improved, and the jump from 2006, when I first joined DeviantArt, and to where I am now is tremendous. Throughout the last four years I’ve been looking up tutorials on how to effectively color digitally, asking other artists (who were kind enough to answer!) how they achieved this certain effect, and lately exchanging art or having other people so enthralled by my own characters that they want to give me gift art. It’s really an empowering experience, and gives me all the more courage to pursue my Element. Additionally, some of these people on DeviantArt such as Nathie, Kerem Beyit, and Richard Johnston, do what they love for a living: they’re in their Element.
I’m not suggesting Robinson is egging me on to run away from my home in the hopes of building myself an artistic empire from the bottom up, or ditching school in the hopes of achieving what Voltaire managed to do, but ‘The Element’ offered many inspiring examples of people who have been able to do what they love for a living, and how they did it. The main reason I enjoyed reading this book so much, despite my initial intimidation, was that I felt I was able to connect to it, and relate what I was reading to people I know and/or idolize.
--Sak
External links:
Voltaire's blog: http://voltairenyc.blogspot.com/
Voltaire interview quoted: http://www.starvox.net/intview/voltaire.htm
Voltaire's official website: http://www.voltaire.net/
The Meme I completed to show the improvement of my art found here http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/SAK-s-Improvement-Meme-152319693:
Examples of fanart mentioned in the reponse above
My character Jaris from the MMORPG 'Aion - Tower of Eternity' as drawn by me (Sept. 6th, 2009) found here: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/OOC-About-Alchemy-p2-136067555
Fanart of Jaris by Nathie (January 25th, 2010) found here: http://nathie.deviantart.com/art/Hello-Mr-Sexy-151712083
My original creation, the dragon species called "Baroca" (Nov. 14th, 2009) found here: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/art/Watersports-152749364
Fanart of my Baroca, a sculpture by Richard Johnston found here: http://richardj.deviantart.com/
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