A Tired Ramble (Pixiv Fanbox)

Tired, but having trouble sleeping, so I figured I'd just ramble a bit. I've been having a bit of a "animator's block" for a little while now, started as far back as April, but has gotten progressively worse. It's partially the weather - as it gets hotter, the less I feel like doing anything at all. Usually takes me a while to acclimate, and getting an animator's block around this time of year is standard for me. Haven't had a year go by since I started this that I haven't become demotivated around this time of year. That said, having been doing this for a while, I'm able to at least maintain a somewhat steady output of animations despite it all. It's just less than some times.

The other thing is that I tend to cycle around like a sine wave, going from being able to just do anything and not really care, to becoming very hyper focused on being repetitive. It's that sort of mentality of needing to constantly one-up yourself and do something new and exciting. It's one of those curses that afflicts most creators. The silly thing in this case is that what exactly is there that's new and exciting about sex? I'm not gonna be the guy to create Sex 2, and if we do get a Sex 2 it will probably be some obtuse thing that requires signing a consent form that has to be notarized by at least two witnesses, agreeing to a 30+ page long terms of service, requires internet access, and will be a transcendental experience involving artificial stimulations fired directly into the brain while the insemination is done through a pneumatic tube that maintains at least six feet distance from both involved persons.

Jokes aside, I'm going on about this for the main purpose to express my own habits of combatting the creative block. One thing is to just take a break, but I'm the type that gets very uptight taking a proper break. I can procrastinate for hours and hours instead of doing actual work, but taking an actual break where I DON'T do at least one thing every hour or so? Hell nah, that's a one way trip to anxiety city. Instead, I tend to just switch gears. One thing I'll do is rig up characters I haven't rigged yet. That's kind of how Sice that I teased last week came about. I don't have a strong desire to animate her(or anyone), but I wanted to have the model, so I rigged her up. A lot of times rigging models is boring and tedious, but when I'm in a creative block it's therapeutic. Allows me to compartmentalize a lot of things in my head and just zone out doing something mundane.

Compounding on this, I'll also just hack together various models and create new characters. A couple of the results showed up a long while ago, at the end of 2020. It was in the "Year End Bonus" pack I released at the end of that year. There was the fox-girl:

And then the pig-tail girl:

They were essentially just me taking an existing face model, modifying it somewhat, then slapping some different hair and maybe minor texture work before calling it a day. But it's also the same sort of thing as rigging a model(and it also requires rigging a model to boot) in that it's weirdly therapeutic to do. I'm not sitting there thinking about "what pose should I do" or "I've done that pose so many times I should really try something else" or "dear god, I'm a hack" and instead just get that same sort of satisfaction as creating a character in a video game... but one with the express purpose of being put into sexy poses without needing to mod the game in extreme ways to do so. It's... cathartic. I've basically been doing this again as a means to keep creating something while I hit my usual slump of not animating as much.

Most of the time they just stay tucked away on my hard-drive, since they're "OCs donut steel" and so most people won't care for them like an established video game character(and believe me, I get that 100% - I may have hacked these characters together, but I'm not particularly attached to any of them myself), but I figured I'd show them off while talking about how I do this. Creative blocks are one of those things everyone deals with differently, and it's a topic in my experience people tend to like seeing talked about. Before I started 3D stuff, I used to write as my main creative output, and I still do that from time-to-time when I'm in the mood or need a small break from 3D stuff... but back then I didn't really have an alternative way of getting my creativity out when I hit my writer's block. I usually just straight up took a break, and usually played games or something instead, and then my creativity would just kind of die and I wouldn't write again for months and months.

So, if nothing else, I'm glad that I've got a few alternative methods of doing something creative. Helps a lot in the long run. Half of the reason I picked my name is that I initially expected to upload my stuff for a few months, get bored, and then just disappear with people assuming I'm just being lazy... but having options, new things to learn and master and all that jazz actually helped with keeping me coming back to this. Next year will mark my 5th year of doing this stuff, and it's kind of baffling to me. Certainly not a bad thing, by any means, but it is surprising. I will admit it helps that people like my stuff, but that really isn't the driving force for me doing this. I don't post literally everything I do, as this post is evidence of, so a lot of it is just me having a good creative outlet. Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED talk. I hope you got something out of this, be it some enlightenment, maybe a laugh, or liked one of the pictures. Whatever the case, this sleepy lazy man will go to bed now.