rrhodes25

[rrhodes25]

Some concept sketches for a thunderbringer animatic, really trying to get my version of Zeus nailed down

[rrhodes25]

It's unfinished, but here is my favorite clip from the Hoist Up the Thing animatic. It's the only part I haven't shared yet, because it was going to be something I was going to save until the whole thing was done.

But I don't think I can finish this, at least not anytime soon. I'm not going to ramble on about details here (I already did that earlier) but tldr it is becoming more of a burden on my mental health to continue trying to work on this project than it is worth at this point. I'm very upset about it, but I have to put this project away before I burn myself out completely. More art coming soon, I hope y'all can understand.

[rrhodes25]

bro im gonna CRY i didnt know this 🥺

[rrhodes25]

I'm gonna shout into the void again because I went for my stupid mental health walk and I drank some stupid water and my brain feels organized enough to try and get the swirling mass of thoughts out of it so maybe I can be normal again. All this rambling is pertaining to my Hoist Up the Thing animatic that I've been working on.

I'm really trying to put into words what exactly the struggle here is, and I think it's a combination of a couple of different things coming together to make me have a bad time. Specifically, making me have a bad time trying to finish the Hoist Up the Thing animatic that I wanted to have done like 2 weeks ago. Full transparency, I haven't hardly touched it in that time. It is about halfway completed, and I am really struggling with it.

Part of it is hardware and software troubles. I'm using an my ipad which was old when I bought it almost 5 years ago. I was drawing it in a program called Toonsquid, an animation program that is very rudimentary and clean, but doesn't have the drawing tools I like. I would be better off if I just did in on my PC, and I do have a drawing tablet, but it isn't one of the display ones and I have tried for years to get myself comfortable with that stupid thing but I physically cannot bring myself to try and animate with it when drawing feels that clunky (believe me I tried that was the plan for how I was gonna make this thing in the first place)

Another thing is that the time limit and the poll to pick the song and the general notion of me wanting people in the fandom to know I was making it is making me feel even worse for not having it done. I did it that way to try and keep myself motivated, but when life slowed me down and got in the way (I had my friends wedding like a week and a half ago, among other things) it just started to feel like I was letting people down? Like I know logically that very few people online even are aware of my existence, but it still feels like I am failing those few who do, because I was really committed to making this.

This is kind of a combination of the software issues and the mental ones, but I also just do not like how it looks right now. At all. I sketched it out very loosely on one layer, with intent to clean it up later. Problem is, it looks too clean, and the art style is so simple it barely looks like I made it at all. The motion is what I want, but the actual art itself makes me very unhappy. I decided to finally look up some guides on how other people make animatics, and a lot of them said to draw the frames in a separate program then import them into an editor to compile everything. This is an entirely different process than what I was used to, because at this point I have made several full-length animatics entirely within Toonsquid, drawing and editing in all, and I have almost no experience with actual editing software. So I feel very stuck. I don't want to make a final product that I myself hate (and honestly I wonder if I even could push myself to finish it in the current style it is in), but I also feel like the absolute mess my brain has been in because of all the stuff mentioned above plus outside life stress has left me with a lot of negative associations with this particular project, making it hard to work on no matter what. It doesn't help that the primary path I see forward with this project is to completely redo it, trying some form of a new process to make it feel better.

In short, I have no idea what to do. Since I started learning how to make animatics, I have been craving a method of doing them that feels better, that works with my brain in a way that will make the process more comfortable. Like I love making them, I love making things move, I love watching back through them after I am done with them. It fills me with so much pride and joy to see it but the actual process feels more unpleasant than it needs to be.

I've recently gotten myself a job (finally, that was another thing stressing me out massively) and after a bit of time saving i plan to buy myself a display tablet. I hope to do it as soon as possible, because I have wanted one for years and I think being able to use the more robust programs on my PC in a way that isn't agonizing will do wonders for me, but that'll be a minimum of a few months away. I just feel very lost and demotivated, and I feel really bad not only because I was telling people I was making this thing and I feel like I've done them a disservice, but also because I really wanted this project to be a sort of gift to the whole cast. I plan to make more fanart, obviously (even some more animatics, hopefully) but this show means so much to me that I wanted to do something big and elaborate and fun as a way to say thank you.

I don't know if this was at all comprehensible, I hope it was at least a little bit. I don't know if I got it all out of my system, but I hope this can clear my head enough that I can at least work on something today. If you read all of this, I appreciate your time and attention that was definitely not necessary to give. If you did read this through, and managed to understand any of it, any words of advice you might have would be appreciated but I very much understand if there is none to give.

I don't have anyone in my life who makes art, much less anyone who knows the first thing about animation. So I have absolutely nobody to talk to about this stuff, hence the screaming into the tumblr void.

[rrhodes25]

I don't know how I did this. WHO LET ME COOK ON THIS IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A RANDOM ASS DOODLE WHILE I WAS WAITING TO GET MY NEW PHONE EARLIER AND???

[rrhodes25]

big fan of Katya I need to figure out what she looks like

[rrhodes25]

Aside from the obvious reasons to dislike the ultra-wealthy, rich people irritate me for one very specific reason. They have no flare, no sense for the dramatic, no pizzazz. They don't make rich people like Renaissance rich people anymore. Or honestly they don't make rich people like they did for all of human history up until the last 50-80 years.

In the past, the rich would go out of their way to sponsor artists of all types, from writers to architects to painters, to make cool shit for them to raise their own prestige and often put something beautiful into their environment that intentionally or not benefitted everyone. That's not even to account for the funding of public works and services and charities, which does still happen but infrequently enough that it illicits a massive reaction because it just isn't the way things are now.

And as a (now officially) an educated historian, this just seems downright stupid to me. Despite what it may feel like sometimes the court of public opinion will at the end of the day always be important. One way to improve your public image, perhaps even enough so that nobody goes sniffing around in your potentially nefarious business, is to give things to the public. To show that you are not just a dragon sitting on a horde. To show that you appreciate those who have skills you don't, to show that you are capable of using your vast resources for good. It's just like, the basics of how to maintain a position of power. If the people hate you, you won't get things done very quickly under the best of circumstances. Under the worst, I can point to the French Revolution as a pretty notable instance where the rich forgot this lesson, and that didn't turn out too well for them, did it?

I just felt like getting this out of my brain, feel free to disregard me and continue on.

[rrhodes25]

Obligatory redraw of Live Telemachus Reaction

[rrhodes25]

i will give tiktok one concession and that is that it has spawned a comment that contains a phrase that i think of often at relevant moments: pack it up boys we've made a social blunder

[rrhodes25]

[rrhodes25]

The push and pull of “relationships can be very affectionate and still be platonic” and “those are the gayest motherfuckers I’ve ever seen”.

[rrhodes25]

"It often feels like I've not lived one life that was far too full, but instead I've lived dozens of lives that I have left broken behind me. And I can only remember one of them at a time."

[rrhodes25]

giant redwood trees really are so cool, they just have something incredibly special going on. it's hard to describe if you haven't seen them

[rrhodes25]

I see now why everyone is so hype about this Artfight stuff

Having someone else draw one of my OCs is quite possibly the most amazing thing that has ever happened ever

[rrhodes25]

people are so lucky i can't explode them with my mind

[rrhodes25]

how it feels to submit an attack on artfight

[rrhodes25]

The problem with playing smash or pass is that there's a lot of characters which I'm not sexually attracted to but I would fuck in a heartbeat out of sheer curiosity and ego, like I don't find Mickey Mouse attractive at all but if he approached me at a bar and went "Hey sexy, want me to show you my mouseketool?" I would say yes because then I get to tell my friends I fucked Mickey Mouse