#productive routine

[suspiciouspython]

Ma routine du matin (morning routine)

Je me réveille à 10h30 (wake up at 10h30)

Prière (prayer)

Préparez le petit déjeuner (généralement une pâtisserie) et le café (make breakfast, generally a pastry, and coffee)

Hygiène: Brosse dentaire, laver/raser le visage, peigner les cheveux (brush teeth, wash/shave face, comb hair)

Mets de la musique (j’aime Vivaldi le matin) (put on music, I like Vivaldi in the morning)

Lis un chapitre d’un livre (read a chapter of a book)

Passe en revue les devoirs scolaires quotidiens (review daily school assignments)

Passe en revue d’autres tâches quotidiennes (review other daily tasks)

Choisis la tâche la plus difficile sur la liste et terminez-la (pick the hardest task on the list and finish it)

Va courir our marcher (go running or walking)

Commencez la journée !

(Je pense qu’il est important de commencer la journée par l’apprentissage (lire), l’accomplissement (la tâche difficile), et l’exercice (la course à courir). Je voulais partager cela parce qu’avoir une routine m’aide à être plus organisé en tant qu’universitaire, et peut-être pourrait-il aider quelqu’un d’autre. J’essaie aussi de me connecter à ma foi, mais tu peux l’ignorer si tu n’es pas religieux :) // I think it is important to start the day with learning (reading), accomplishment (the difficult task), and exercise (the running). I wanted to share this because having a routine helps me be more organised as an academic, and maybe it could help someone else. I also try to connect with my faith, but you can ignore that if you are not religious :))

[animus-wild-magic]

One Single Page

Today I want to share the process of creating one single comic page for Animus. But rather then showing you the process of sketching, inking and coloring, which many great artists have already shared on the internet, I’d like to present a more personal approach to the entire process of creating the page from the very first stage. This is in no way a set of rules or even a tutorial, but it is rather meant to inspire you to find your own path, as well as expose how much work it can take to create each page, so that you know that you’re not alone, and this is no easy job. But we are brave, and we can do it. (:

Script and notes:

This is when I first take notes of the page, generally working with all of the planned pages together and in sequence, having the overall view of the entire story. Once the idea of the story is more concise, and the pages start to take their individuality, speeches are written down and some notes about settings and panels are taken.

Character design and studies:

Yup, if you’re gonna tell a story, you are probably gonna need characters. Some people like to create their characters before starting to write down a script, and some people would prefer to write everything about the story first. In any way, this is something you’ll need to figure out: how do the characters featured on this page look like?

Environment concept:

Since your characters are probably not floating in an empty space, it is important that you pay some attention  to where they are living, give context to their daily habits and simply know how to portray the background that are going to appear in each panel of this comic, or in our example, of one specific page.

Thumbnails:

Again, some people like doing thumbnails in parallel to their writing, and some people do not write at all, and just jump straight into thumbnailing pages with side notes to figure out the dialogues. Some people will create thumbnails as they draw more pages, and for me it seemed easier to just do the miniatures for the entire issue before anything else. It helps me feel like this stage was complete.

Environment 3d modeling:

Yup. That’s right. With so many complexity and so many panel to manage from such different angles, I’ve opted to create 3d models of my main locations in the comic. Whenever I’m confused about the perspective of a specific setting, or I simply wanna see how would that angle look when compared to that other one, I can simply “take a walk” around Arceria and the other fictional places of my comic. Many people can consider this to time consuming, and it might be depending on the theme of your story and how relevant some of those locations are. For me, it is a good investment and helps me a lot.

Role playing the script:

If you think the previous one was a little over the top or silly, this one’s possibly gonna make you laugh real hard. I choose important parts of the script and I record myself moving and acting like the characters in question. Yes, with the speeches and everything, and I’ll get to that soon enough. With this time consuming step, I gain for myself three main advantages:

1) Anatomically accuracy when portraying complex poses, torsions, foreshortening.

2) Gesture and movement. If I wanna portray a character in the middle of a jump, know what was happening in second before and what will happen in the second after is super relevant for purposes of stylization, and also helps convey dynamic in the fabric of their clothes, their hair and everything around them.

3) Facial expressions and mouth shapes coherent to what the characters are talking, the sound that is coming out of their mouths. If a character is saying “No!” you probably want the shape of their lips to have that O shape, but it is not always that obvious, so this can be pretty helpful.

Note: I don’t always do this, and I can clearly see how exaggerated this can be, but hey, I made a compromise to share my entire process, right? (Also, no, not gonna show these footage LOL)

Panels:

At this point I already have all of the references needed, and the first step towards actually drawing the page is drawing those panels. I do this with the help of Photoshop’s tools that allow me to use curves and handles, since my panels are pretty organic.

Sketch the entire thing:

Well, this is where we start to get a little more obvious and predictable. Just draw the thing!

Inking or line art:

Also a very self explanatory step. Just choose your favorite brush settings and line the entire thing!

Lights, color, aaaand action!

Time to color the entire page, again within your chosen painting settings and the premise of the comic, respecting the mood of the scene and some degree of stylization balanced with some aesthetic coherence.

Keeping track of your work:

I like organizing my pages so that I can see how they are working together so far and keep a record of how much time, in a average, one single page takes to be created. After that one single page, you know what to do: just keep doing it over and over again until the comic is done. Like I said at the beginning, it’s not an easy job, but I can do it. The world needs your story. (:

Thinking through the entire process:

You can see most of those steps apply not only to one single page, as the tittle would suggest. They connect the entire comic, because it is in fact one big project that cannot be disconnected from the final result that I desire for it. Each step and decision must take in consideration the entire project, and holding this goal near in sight is very inspiring!

[animus-wild-magic]

Art and Productivity, Part 1: Habits

“The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over - and that means, among others things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful. A piece of art is the surface expression of a life within productive patterns.”

Art & Fear

Many times people ask me about productivity and discipline, the simple recurring question: how to keep going? In fact, I think there is no smart earthshaking answer to this question but this: you keep putting one feet in front of the other, and keep stepping forward. That is, in a simple but accurate way, how the process goes. You draw a line, and then the next one, we know this.

But how do we manage to keep ourselves doing it, how do we keep inspired and energized and able to create one masterpiece after the other? Once again, a simple answer is: we don't. Honestly, I don't think there's any artist able to create one masterpiece after the other. What would make it special if it was so? Most of what I create is not masterful, but neither is it awful or an aberration. I know this is a little anticlimax, but most of what I create is pretty much mediocre, and ever once a while, a big failure.

To put simply, a small percentage of what we are able to create is not very impacting, and a precious small percentage are the paintings and drawings and songs that have the power to make people weep. The trick here is: the more you make  mediocre art, the more you make wonderful art. It's a game of resistance. And then comes into play the power of art habits.

Art, at first glance, doesn't seem to be something created out if a habit, but rather from inspiration and passion, to create something new and unknown. But the blank page is overwhelming, and the act of creation out of nothing can be pretty intimidating, which may cause us to fear it and quit making art. Like, at all.  In such cases, starting off with something familiar, as a warm up or routine, can help you truly find inspiration through habit. You can save a lot of energy from struggling to get started by using habits, and all that energy will be transferred to your creativity. The trick not to let routine imprison your creativity is to cultivate habits that are inherently yours.

Having artistic habits is a way to engage in familiar rituals in order to confront the blank page, and from there,  allow yourself to sail more smoothly into the unknown waters if creative exploration and problem solving.

If you enjoy sketching girl faces, by all means, make that a creative habit , a warm up, a way to get out of the dreaded art block. Do it daily and soon this small ritual will probably sink in your brain as a routine, a habit that ignites your creativity and interest in drawing, or painting, writing or whatever is your craft. Choose something so familiar to you that doing it will easily become second nature, and let's you free to explore from that point on all of the possibilities of the unfamiliar, of the art you still must discover before you can create it.

Find out what comes easily to you and use it in your favor. Timing is also essential in this matter, and I cannot stress how much more productive I have been after I understood how much early morning hours are precious to my creative process. Coming back to the idea of how we don’t generally associate art and routine, I had a real struggle admitting how much I enjoy having a schedule and working very early in my personal projects. Why? Because it doesn’t seem a very artistic thing to have such habits. But here is a thing I think we all need to agree on: every habit, ritual or routine that makes you create art makes you an artist. Art is not a noun, friends, it’s a verb.

My suggestions and strategies for this first part of “Art and Productivity” series (the observations I use to keep myself making art over and over) are these:

Find out what makes you move that pen on your blank page and keep repeating it.

Map out what leads you to draw, write or compose whatever is your craft.

Notice the times of the day and moments of your life when you are most productive and reverse engineer it.

Don’t indulge yourself with mysticism about creative genius, miraculously gifted painters and the expectation of producing one masterpiece after the other.

Become friends with your art. Seriously, stop demanding stuff from it and accept the entire process of art making.

Start drawing. And for the love of all that is sacred, do not stop. The world needs art.

I want to inspire and connect with more people, so if you enjoy this blog post, pleas share, reblog and tell your friends! (: As always, you can also support this project on Patreon!

[animus-wild-magic]

Organizing your time as a creative freelancer

Being a freelancer means a lot of freedom,which can be very inspiring and fitting for us creatives. Whether you write, paint or compose, being free to work on the space and time you desire can be a huge creativity boost! But that also means a lot of responsibility. When you’re the responsible for your own schedule, the consequences of misguiding your time will appear quickly and clearly, and that’s why I think it’s important to talk about the process of organizing and counting your personal and professional time.

First and foremost, I want to make clear I won’t refer to this balance as a “work versus family” approach. I believe those thing should be put side by side, not against it other, and there are also a lot of other things you’ll want to have time to do. My wish is to help you being able to efficiently and painlessly make use of the most of your daily hours without stressing out about it. Other than family and work, here are a bunch of cool things you could make time for (and you’ve probably said a dozen times you would):

Work on a hobby that does not involve your work. Creatives need some space to create stuff out of their daily routine!

Exercise. We all know we should, and it’s good for both your physical and emotional health, so just find something you enjoy to do!

Learn a new skill: a new language, origami, baking, whatever you find interesting and you’ve never tried. Keep your brain learning new stuff!

Cook your own meals, with time and care. Seriously, I think you should actually plan time for this! Don’t just take your daily nourishment for granted.

And a BUNCH of other cool things you want to do!

Having side projects and hobbies is a nice way to smooth transition from work to family, friends or personal space. Just try and make a list of them, even though you think you don’t have time for it. Maybe by the end of this article you’ll find you do!

So we’ve talked about how great is to experience the freedom of being a freelancer, and all the cool things we could do with our time, but now it’s time for the other side of our coin: responsability. Being your own boss means you’re entirely responsible for your schedule and the consequences of following it or not. We’ve discussed some tools for managing time before, so I’ll refer to them as simply “scheduling” from now on, but you can choose whatever tool fits you best.

Now let’s get to the part where we make room for everything we want to do without stress.The trick here is to be as specific as you can and plan everything ahead of time. I know, I know: this sounds boring and oppressive, not at all like a life of freedom!  But here me out: the more time you have to spend deciding on the spot what to do, the less time you’ll have, and the harder it will be to make decisions. You’ll find yourself easily drifting into confusion and stagnation, and it’s not your fault, this is just your brain trying to preserve its precious energy.

Making decisions is already hard, don’t make it harder by having to make them on the spot, when you’re probably already tired from your day and will be biased towards laying in your couch and watching Netflix. Planning ahead will free your RAM to do your own stuff smoothly and with less struggle, and your time will seem to multiply without all of those shorts, but numerous gaps during the day when you just stop and have to decide what to do next. This is crucial for both cases: if you struggle to keep focus on work or if you struggle to make time for your family, friends and social life.

So, those next steps are:

List your biggest tasks of the day (just two or three, keep it simple)

List all of the smaller tasks you have and would like to do

Split your big tasks into smaller tasks too

Take note on the hours you’re most productive for each kind of task

Take note on how many hours average you need for the big tasks and the smaller ones

First of all, I generally organize my daily routine around the biggest chunks of time I need to have. For me, during the week, those are two:

Working

Family time

Some of the other things I enjoy or need to do during my week are these:

My aerialism hobby

Reading

Learning a new language

Cooking my own meals

Journaling/ Writing

My big tasks can be divided into:

Work:

Actually painting and drawing

Talking to clients and replying emails

Managing social medias

Managing finances

Promoting my work and prospecting clients

My family time works more simply, and I particularly don’t feel the need to split this task.

For me, the most productive time for creative tasks is the morning, and so I put them on the first hours of the day, and organizational, financial tasks are set for the evening, and that is my work day. I also take note on how much time I need for my smaller tasks, both inside and outside the big tasks (e.g.: I separate one hour of the day to reply clients and e-mails, and I know it takes me about one hour to cook a meal for the next days).

You don’t have to put all of those tasks on specific hours of the day, just be conscious about how long they take, and here’s where the magic starts to happen: whenever you finish one task, you won’t have to spend one minute wondering what to do next, because you’ve decided upfront! Just pick the task that is coherent with your current shift (Let’s say it’s 07:00 pm) and see how much time you have between this moment and the next thing you need to do (Let’s say I have to leave home at 08:00 for your aerial hoop class). It’s also important to note it’s night, so, family time. We have a winner: I don’t have to think a lot to realize it’s an opportunity to spend some time with my husband while cooking us a nice meal for when we get back home!

Other important notes about this topic are:

If you work home, be very careful about creating separate spaces for work and family/friends/personal time. Once you start to mix them, it can get very stressful and confusing for you.

Try to find things that you enjoy as personal time (such as dancing or learning French) and see if you have friends or family who’d like to join you. This way, you’ll be able to have both a bonding time with family and your personal growth and hobby. Also, having a friend to be your gym buddy will prevent you from skipping classes!

I truly hope those reflections help you feel better with your time. I wish you can use those tips not to work longer hours, but to chill and be more productive in a less stressful way. Let me know your opinions, your own techniques and experiences!

You might also enjoy reading about: Burnout among artists

I want to inspire and connect with more people, so if you enjoy this blog post, please share, reblog and tell your friends! (: As always, you can also support this project on Patreon!