Writing

I hate the story I'm writing. I write and re-write, and run the thing through an online grammar checker and collate it into one document and then re-read it and realise how much is still wrong with it and break it down into chunks and re-write it again, and it never EVER reaches a finished stage. It's not that I can't write, and it's not that I can't write funny things, but producing something that says everything I want it to say and makes the reader laugh and moves the story along is really difficult.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I don't know what kind of book this is. At different moments I feel like I'm writing: a L'Engle-esque sci-fi book for kids; a Douglas Adams-style comedy; and a C S Lewis cosmic allegory.

Another issue is that my writing style is quite terse, and unless I make a conscious effort, my sentences come out far too short. When I try to pad them out a bit, I start repeating information and waffling.

Freebies

I'm feeling annoyed with myself. Just before Christmas someone asked me to do a couple of drawings of family members for them from photos that they supplied. They didn't mention a price for the pictures, and neither did I enquire, imagining that the subject of cost would "just come up". I did the drawings, ordered prints of them, and presented them to the recipient. The pictures were accepted and that was the end of the matter, with no offer of payment for the work I'd put into the things, and barely a thank you.

It brought to mind a conversation I had with a professional illustrator/designer a while back. He told me I had to decide what my work was worth and set a cost. At this stage I know that my pictures are not worth nothing, but I know also that there are people out there who are prepared to let me put my time and work into a project and take the output for free. I should have charged a fee upfront for the work, and will know to do so next time.

There was a reason why I stopped doing pictures as little gifts for people years ago. Generally I found the recipients quite unappreciative - not always the case, but most of the time the reward wasn't worth the effort. I also felt that giving away what I did for nothing was devaluing it rather than being generous.

U2 gave away their last album for free. Rather than feeling impressed with this gesture (free album!) I found myself questioning the quality of the album. Would these guys be giving away their product if it was any good?

Developments

I have put the coloured pencils away for the time being and embraced traditional drawing with good old grey lead pencils. So far the results have been encouraging. I previously ditched lead pencils because they didn't "grip" the paper enough, but I've recently bought a pad of paper from WH Smiths that has enough of a grain to provide the friction that I need to produce controlled lines. There are few things worse when trying to draw a picture than having one's control reduced by excessively smooth paper or excessively slippy pencils.

My evening yesterday was spent downloading models from the DAZ website. They were all models - characters, clothes, props, scenery - that I'd purchased or got free from DAZ previously but which I still have active download links for on their site. My plan is to make an ordered directory of models on my computer in order to have easily-accessible models to use as reference for pictures. I have more or less given up on using Poser to create 3d art and have fully embraced using the program as an artists' reference tool (the purpose for which Poser was originally created and for which I originally bought it before getting sidelined into producing digitally-rendered art). I've done a few pictures of characters from my Razorback story using modified Poser models, and am very happy with the resulting images, with the exception of the sole human character, who I can't draw for toffee, for some reason.

I also spent some time last night looking into an issue with one of my 3d characters. There's been quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with this one. A while back I sent a model of a monkey to my friend and expert rigger in the States. He produced a rig for the character, but then asked me to re-do the UV mapping for the model as the original texture map was fragmented and very un-user-friendly. This I duly did, only to get a message back saying that the material groups on the figure all now had their names prefixed with "monkey_", which caused him major difficulties in the rigging process.
I managed to find a way to change the material group names in Hexagon, but doing so appears to have completely wiped the texture mapping from the renamed material, which takes me back to square 1.

Writing quote

Someone (and for the life of me, I can’t remember who!) once said that whatever story you’re working on should be written as if it’s the only one you’ll ever tell—pouring all your thoughts, feelings, ideas, ideals, passions, philosophies, hopes and dreams...every iota of Who You Are...into it.  That’s what I did with Moonshadow.
J. M. DeMatteis