Every Word Out Of Guillermo Del Toros Mouth Is The Most Hardcore Thing Ive Ever Heard And He Says It

every word out of guillermo del toro’s mouth is the most hardcore thing i’ve ever heard and he says it all so casually like he doesn’t even realize how much of a gothic visionary he is 

art block, writer’s block, “art funk”, “burnout”, yada yada… it’s all the same thing, being a creator and wanting to create but having some kind of a wall preventing you from doing this.

this wall can take a lot of different forms, and i’m going to approach this post from the perspective of a visual artist, but no matter the medium, we all have a skill we’ve trained ourselves in and what I’m talking about will apply regardless.

Anyway as I said there’s a few different forms this wall can take. Here’s a few of them that I can think of:

Disillusionment with your current skill level

A loss of direction

Fatigue

Lack of drive

It’s really important to identify exactly what your wall is if you want to be able to dismantle it. This isn’t every way it can manifest either, just the most common ways that I see it manifesting, and you might have multiple at once!

Take some time to really self reflect on what the problem is if none of these are resonating after you’ve read the post, whatever it is you can find a way to manage it.

The most common advice I see for “defeating [creator’s] block” is committing to spending like five minutes a day working on something, anything at all. And that’s good advice! but not really for creator’s block, I think.

It’s GREAT advice if you’re lacking in discipline though, like I can easily get distracted and not work on things for months. So committing to work on comic related things for at least 30 minutes a day (and having this commitment be to other people that I’m checking in with each day, i think thats an important part) has worked really well for me, personally.

But I wasn’t dealing with any kind of a block, I just lacked discipline. I don’t think it’s very useful if for example, you hate how your art looks so you don’t want to draw anything anymore lmao

With that in mind, lets go through that list and I’ll try give you some advice from my experiences, and hopefully it’ll help give you the means to identify the problems you’re struggling with and find solutions to them if my advice isn’t quite what you need.

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1. Disillusionment with your current skill level

So! it’s time to pull out everyone’s favourite graphic! this version was created by shattered-earth on deviantart, though the original is by Marc Dalessio

obviously this says art, but again this is applicable to all mediums. It’s an important concept to understand, the idea of a creator’s high vs a creator’s low depending on how developed your critical eye has become compared to your skill level.

If you’re not aware of it and don’t understand what’s happening, it’s REALLY easy to lose all motivation to create anything. Because why bother, if everything sucks? Definitely one of the most dangerous blocks you can run into, I think.

The solution, as with all of these walls, is to be kind to yourself.

Your critical eye improving is emotionally taxing, but it’s also an opportunity for great growth! It’s not easy, though. To get through it, you have to really confront what you don’t like about your work and target your weaknesses, and then you have to put in the time to try and improve them. That’s tough.

But self study doesn’t have to be a solo activity. Talk with your friends, seek out communities of creators, and follow resource blogs, channels, etc. I really think the best thing you can do is surround yourself with other creators, I’m in a few discords and hang out in the creative section of various forums etc

But this is really important: The act of targetting your weaknesses in order to improve them is going to make it REALLY easy for you to lose track of what you like about your work, and can in fact compound the issue and make you only focus on your flaws.

So, be kind to yourself. If you’re not happy with what you create, take the time to critically analyse your work. What don’t you like? What do you like? Don’t lose track of what you like while you study the things you’re less confident about, and with some patience and work your skill will catch up with your eye again.

I really can’t emphasise enough how important it is to not lose track of what it is you like about your work. The biggest motivation killer is always going to be falling out of love with your work, so do everything you can to prevent yourself losing the joy of creating.

Like, sure, a work might be technically perfect, but did you enjoy yourself while creating it? If you always ensure the answer to that is yes, the mismatch between your critical eye and your skills will be easier to handle because at least you’re still enjoying yourself, you know?

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# pour les writeblr français

Parce qu’il est grand temps que je me plonge dans la face obscure (et française) de tumblr :)

Les # de la communauté française: upthebaguette (aussi avec des espaces), french side of tumblr (aussi sans les espaces), whatthefrance, french stuff

Les # Writeblr en anglais mais pour les français: french writeblr, french writing, french writer (aussi utilisé pour des auteurs publiés), upthestylo (rare)

Les # Writeblr en français: mes écrits, écrits, mes mots, mots, écriture, écrire, écrits français, texte français, poème, poésie, roman (à éviter car existe en anglais et c’est aussi un prénom), écrivain (citations d’auteurs connus), essai, atelier d’écriture, écriture créative, récit, texte français (#texte fait ressortir des résultats dans d’autres langues)

Pour les auteurs de fanfic: fanfic fr

Pour du vocabulaire : french langblr (pour les étrangers qui apprennent notre langue)

Pour les hashtags qui peuvent s’écrire avec ou sans espaces, c’est la forme la plus commune qui est retranscrite ici. Parfois, on laisse aussi tomber les accents, ce qui multiplie les possibilités et, soit dit en passant, facilite le saut de tag en tag depuis la version desktop de Tumblr (qui, oh surprise, gère mal les é, è, ç…).

Il y en a sûrement d’autres, je les ajouterai pas à pas.

a lot of people draw fat characters as like Vaguely Round stomach, throw on stretch marks (drawn in a way that stretch marks DO NOT work) and often body hair (for some reason?? like i’m fat and have body hair but it seems like fat artwork is OBSESSED with adding it on as some sort of statement), pert boobs, maybe the glimmer of a double chin, big ol’ thighs cause they’re in vogue rn, and maybe round upper arms

and it’s like… zero acknowledgement of sag

or how you can be fat and have small boobs/ass/thighs/hips

no thick neck along with the double chin

no fat rolls

all fat people are also drawn to have looooong legs as if to apologize for the rest of the proportions

i look at a “fat” character and what i see is just a skinny character with weight added on, even though that’s not how that works

and it’s just very clear to me that some artists want credit for “diversity” but don’t want to actually look at fat bodies. they apologize with hyper feminine outfits or the implication that the fat character is athletic or something. the fat character still has the perfect figure because “well, some fat people DO still have curves like that!”

we’re thicc and thick and “chubby” and plus size.

but we’re never actually fat. even the “largest” characters i have seen drawn are just… larger chubby girls. zero acknowledgement of how fatness actually works.

WOLFWALKERS (2020) dir. Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart

[…] While [Umberto] Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism,” he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features. “These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”

Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”

The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

(link)