The Power of Ideas

Muddy Colors' Howard Lyon just wrote a post on Ideas vs. Skills - what matters more in art. It's an extremely worthwhile, thought-provoking read (as pretty much anything on Muddy Colors is.)

What is it that makes you love a particular piece of art? Is it the technical skill on display in the piece? Or is it the idea, the emotion, the story behind it? Which do you value more in your own work? Lyon says it certainly doesn't have to be either/or, but it's worthwhile to consider what's important to you.

Everyone's answer will be different. But I realized a long time ago that for me, the idea is key. I actually remember the exact moment that I realized this. And you guys are gonna think it's way dumb.

Way back when I first started concentrating seriously on art (and thus was in a constant state of extreme frustration with my skill level), I was looking for fun geeky t-shirts and came across this one (link to shirt on Redbubble). I grew up infatuated with Pokémon and so I instantly loved it, but I also had another reaction - just being in awe of its simple brilliance. This isn't exactly a technical masterpiece. There's nothing wrong with it either - it's just simple. I can't imagine that making this image took more than an hour or two at most. But (if you know Pokémon at all) you know what it is instantly. The colors are perfect. The silhouettes are perfect. And most of all, it communicates perfectly what the game and the ideal of Pokémon is all about - evolution. Growing stronger. My two simultaneous reactions were "This is so simple that I could do it" and "That's brilliant and I love it." (I still haven't bought the shirt of course.)

By the way, none of this is meant to slight the artist - here is a link to lomm's profile on Redbubble (and if you love Pokémon I really recommend checking him out). I can't find any further info on him but he is clearly a VERY skilled artist.

Personally I am at a place where I'm trying to get my skills to catch up to my ideas. (I think all artists are always trying to do this, no matter how good you get... but I could do with a little more closing of the gap than most.) For me, there's a certain amount of technical skill that's necessary to express my ideas effectively. So what I am concentrating on, in the day-to-day, is leveling up my skills. However, it's always in the service of how I will execute my next idea.

I love, love, love beautiful pieces of art. I will stare for hours at certain technically masterful pieces trying to understand how they got everything to look just so right. But the pieces of art that linger in my head for a long time are the ones that fulfill me the most intellectually, emotionally through their ideas and their storytelling.

© Gina Florio 2014

San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Recap

Jack, Dave and myself arriving on the train, Fri July 19

Disclaimer: the super nice, non-instagram-sized pictures in this post were all taken by my boyfriend, Dave. You should go check out his Flickr!

This review is coming about five and a half weeks' behind everyone else's SDCC recaps, because I'm slow and bad at life. I also don't have many pictures to illustrate my favorite memories, because I am terrible at asking people I admire for a picture, and awkward in front of a camera to boot. But in a nutshell, and in no particular order, these are my favorite memories from my very first San Diego Comic-Con:

1. A FANTASTIC, intimate panel for the upcoming documentary on the great movie poster artist Drew Struzan.
     1a. Meeting and getting to shake the hand of the man himself.
     1b. Meeting and getting to shake the hand of Dean DeBlois, the director and genius behind the How To Train Your
     Dragon trilogy, and getting to tell him how much the movie means to me, during which I'm sure I sounded supremely
     juvenile.
     1c. Scoring an EXCLUSIVE HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 poster by Drew (one of only 2000), which has quickly
     become perhaps my most prized possession.
     1d. Getting said poster signed by Drew, who is without a doubt one of the kindest, most humble men I've ever met.
     1e. The movie is called Drew: The Man Behind the Poster, and you should absolutely check it out. A favorite quote
     about Drew: "His art creates a feeling of nostalgia for something you've never seen before."

Bonus picture: HTTYD director Dean DeBlois holding aforementioned poster. It's beautiful.

2. Meeting an artist I've admired for a long time - Aaron Diaz, who writes and illustrates the famous webcomic Dresden Codak. I happened to catch him at a kind of lull at the Topatoco booth, and we ended up having a fairly extended conversation, where he mostly talked my ear off about Metropolis... which is pretty much exactly what I would expect from the creator of Dresden Codak. In any case I was mostly just relieved it was him talking MY ear off and not me being worried about the reverse, as I usually am in these situations.

One of my favorite pieces of Dresden Codak art.

3. Simply standing at the Schoolism booth for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon (looking exceptionally mature in my Pokémon costume) and getting treated to not one, but TWO, awesome, FREE demos by artists I love, the amazing character designer Stephen Silver and the absolutely legendary Nathan Fowkes. No one else watching was speaking up too much so I just peppered them with as many questions as I could think of as I watched them make beautiful art. Oh look, I actually have a picture of this one.

He signed my sketchbook too despite me looking like a complete weirdo. Success!

4. Meeting Brett Bean, a smaller, more local artist, but one of my absolute favorites! As far as I am concerned, Brett is the master of the very technical, specialized technique that I call 'Fun Shapes™' (a few examples below). I almost worked with him and his wife Julie (an equally amazing jewelry designer) editing a video for his latest Kickstarter project, but unfortunately their deadline was pushed up at the last minute and I was unable to help on such short notice. Even so, they were perhaps the nicest human beings I've ever met, and as a bonus I was able to pick up a cool steampunky compact mirror by Julie!

 

5. Dressing in my Pokémon costume! This was my first time wearing a costume to a convention and thus joining the worldwide phenomenon known as cosplay. It wasn't a terribly difficult costume - I already had the shorts, T-shirt and socks, so I got a wig, bought and modified the jacket (I'll wear it again), bought the hat from etsy (this one, in fact - it's great quality), bought green fingerless gloves, and got some cheap black Vans knockoffs from Target and painted them (unfortunately you can't see the shoes in this picture).

By far the most time-consuming part of the costume was making the pokéballs and belt. Usually when people make pokéballs they make them out of styrofoam, but I really wanted them to look like super shiny, manufactured, hard plastic like they do in the show. I ended up buying those clear decorate-it-yourself Christmas ornaments, painting the insides to maintain evenness on the outside, and adding a black rim and white button on the outside like I saw in this video. Then I secured them to the belt by using snaps (in the front, so I could take them on and off and pose with them) and by sewing the ornament-tail to the belt itself (in the back).

It's not an elaborate costume, so I didn't really expect anybody to take notice, but actually a fair amount of people took pictures of me! By far my favorite was a little kid who was ALSO dressed as Ash Ketchum (or rather, Ash's his current outfit on the show, mine is the 'retro' version now I guess. In related news, the Pokémon show is STILL GOING, you guys). He was so curious about how I made my pokéballs, and was very intent on showing me the little stuffed pokémon he was carrying around.

It's not drawing or painting, but cosplay is definitely a very fulfilling creative craft! It definitely felt good to get away from my desk and work with my hands using physical materials. If I wasn't concentrating so hard on drawing, I'd be diving headfirst into more cosplay projects. It was a lot of fun.

My dear friend Thadd is on the left, cosplaying Spock from Star Trek IV.

6. Meeting the cast of Heroes of Cosplay! As an editor, this is something I don't get to do a lot. The producers prefer to keep us in dark windowless little rooms and never let us out. But since almost all of the cast had booths or some type of business at the con, I sought them out and saw their awesome costumes in person. Unfortunately I don't have pictures with Holly and Jessica, who I actually went out to breakfast with and had a great time. But here are some pictures with Yaya Han (cosplaying the Invisible Woman), Victoria Schmidt, and Riki LeCotey (as Yeoman Janice Rand and ... someone else from Star Trek, respectively). They are all wonderful and incredibly talented people!

7. Last but not least, check out these awesome photos of other cosplayers, all taken by Dave.

This guy was huuuuuuge. His costume basically looked professional.

Pick up that can, citizen!

Leeloo multipass.

SDCC, you were crazy, exhausting, and fun. I'll be back next year.

© Gina Florio 2013

'CosWorld' news / Remastered Super Metroid Screenshot

Despite appearances, I AM still alive and I DO still plan on keeping up the blog and daily sketches... it just might be a bit here and there over the next few weeks. Work has really ramped up and is keeping us pretty busy. The good news is, I'm editing the first show that I'm actually really excited to work on. It's called 'CosWorld,' a docuseries following several well-known cosplayers as they build their costumes and compete at comic conventions around the country. It will premiere on SyFy on August 27 (right after Face Off, one of my favorite reality shows)! Full press release here.

An awesome Zelda cosplay, which is NOT in the show because that would be illegal for me to show you.

Team Rocket... that's right! Also not in the show.

Needless to say, as a huge nerd, I'm very excited about this and have been enjoying my time cutting this awesome footage immensely. I'm also simultaneously disappointed at the number of people in my life who I've explained the premise to and their first question is "What's cosplay?" I tend to forget that not everyone lives in a nerd bubble like myself...

But I digress. Art things!

I came across this video some time ago on Laughing Squid. It's a timelapse of artist TJ Townsend's process 'remastering' a screenshot of 1994 SNES game Super Metroid. Even having never played the game, I got a lot out of watching this video. What's amazing about this artwork is that he didn't draw a single thing - this is all internet found photo manipulation. When I watch videos like these, I'm reminded of what an amazing program Photoshop truly is.

TJ says,

In order to give the screenshot a 16×9 aspect ratio this is not an actual screenshot from the game, but made up of several screenshots and sprite sets. Included in this scene is a metroid, which is not accurate to the game, but believable since there wouldn’t be a logical reason that one could not wander into Mother Brain’s room (And I really wanted to remake the metroid).

Have a great week, everyone - I'll be back as soon as I can!

© Gina Florio 2013

"Self Help for Nerds" by Chris Hardwick

I had plans to post about other things today, but then someone sent me this article and I knew: This is what I must blog about.

Self-Help for Nerds: Advice from Comedian Chris Hardwick 

(Wired magazine)

I'll try not to say too much because really, you should just click the link and read it. But I'll just say that, for me, the pursuit of artmaking skills that I've been undertaking for the past year now is, in large part, a psychological shift in the way I've been living my life. I wrote a whole post about this already so I won't go into detail here. And I'm certainly not saying that a year ago I was an unemployed alcoholic and now everything is great. But I was certainly at a low point, and I was aimless. Having goals and being driven has literally changed my life, as it did for Hardwick.

When I began to draw again, it was because I had the startling realization that I only get this one shot at life and I had to try to do something with it - otherwise I would be sitting on my deathbed feeling I'd wasted it. This is perhaps my greatest fear, deathbed regrets.

On a side note - I've realized recently that it's possible to be too overambitious. Originally I had myself on a set schedule of having to have a stellar portfolio by July of this year and jumping right into supporting myself as an artist, hopefully at a major animation studio. This has made me rush through studying a lot of the things I should be taking more time with. I need to learn to slow down and really absorb - otherwise I'll never truly learn, and the time will have been wasted. Hardwick's observation that "Nerds tend to spend a lot of time in the past and future, but to achieve happiness you have to cultivate the skill of living in the present" applies completely to me. I have stopped attaching specific places of work and even a certain timeframe to my art - as long as I'm progressing, learning, and enjoying the work, I'm happy with myself. Keeping an end goal in mind is a good thing - so long as it doesn't get in the way of your focus in the present. "Enjoy the burrito," as Hardwick says.

© Gina Florio 2013