#68.1 Larger than fear

I know, I know, I know, I'm late!

But not because I was slacking off (ok, a little bit, but not only!).

I just don't know how the calendar works...

This post will be a weird one. As you can see, there is no art (I guess you can't ever "art" here, but you know what I mean). Instead, I want to talk about one of the reasons for the lack of post, last week and give more insight into the first steps of this incredibly painful process that is: Having too much ambition about the pose you want charatcer on your art to take, and not enough abilities to make them do that.

So first things first, I had some time to pixel last week... Unfortunately, I accidentally edited a YouTube video...

"But Citrus" I hear you ask, "how can you ACCIDENTALLY make a video???" . Well, my friend asked me the same question, and all I have to say is: one clip at the time. Literally, I just started doing it and didn't stop.

And here's the thing I want to talk about. It was my first time doing an edit like this ever. I didn't watch any tutorials or have any experience in the field.

When I first loaded the material, I closed the program. Immediately.

"It's stupid, I have never done something like this before, I have no chance, it's too much"

But after a while I opened it back again, cut one clip, and it turned out to be so awful that I closed it again.

The funniest thing is that I recognized that feeling. The dread of being afraid of failure. It was exactly the same as doing pixel art.

And then, only because I was familiar with it, I was able to push through it. I actually started enjoying it a lot.

In the end, it's not the best video out there, but I have seen some people like it. The person I did it for was grateful. I hope I did something good.

What I'm trying to say is: doing stupid shit is not stupid. Somehow making those silly pixels made me more resilient, focused, and even tempered my laziness a little.

My friend said that he admires that I want to do all of this, but I just do what I think is good. It might be hard, but if I learned anything before starting this project, is that the pain of never trying is much, much worse than the suffering of failure. And there is no chance for success, of course!

So, my friend. Do stupid things. Your stupid things.

After this yap time for the even weirder part!

Because I'm insane, I dreamed of the art of a character (originally this was supposed to be Ide, but Ekko will have an anniversary and I want to prepare something special. I didn't forget about Ide, I promise!!!) hanging upside down from a tree branch, in phone wallpaper proportions. A little angle would also be nice. To add more spice, I decided that I aim to make it completely from scratch, without any reference.

I wanted to show how many changes and tries I need before even getting to the sketch.

I don't really have an idea if I want to have the full tree or just the branch. So I just decided to start with the main object of interest that will (I think) determine the whole pixel.

Things are going to be moving all over the place, prepare for that.

At that point, I didn't even think about keeping correct proportions or distances. Working with an angle like this is already way past my comprehension limits.

Ok, it starts to look like something. But I still felt like the angle of the body is not correct.

Yep, it looks weird. The body and the branch are not aligned at all. Or maybe they are? My 3D imagination is absolutely dismal.

So here's my genius idea. Just put the lines so I will have something to reference. Lines are, of course, another layer.

Yea, I made a lot of them. I thought they would help me. Look, I even started doing both hands and the face aligned with them.

I got up to this point, only to realize... Something is not right. The body looks more like a leaf floating in the wind than a human (or Bat) hanging down.

So I scrapped all of it and started all again.

Decided that the lines aren't really helpful.

Slowly getting there. I'm not showing every change, of course, but every step forward, was preceded with 4 steps backward.

That's how it ended. I only added color so it won't look so terrible on the page.

I'm fully aware how little there are chances of me doing this art the way I want. But I have to try. If not this, the next one will be closer to my vision.

Thank you for reading this incredibly long (I think my longest ever) and weird post. I hope you are doing well, or at least decently.

Don't give up. Do your sillies, so you don't have to regret not doing them later.

See you, baaah.