Week 1 of being creative

drawing, dancing, writing, and comics

Day 1:

“Go Slower.”

“And stare into my eyes.”

And I feel more naked than having sex.

Day 2

I wanted to choreograph a song but had too many judgments and couldn’t dance freely. I decided to take a small step and interpret a choreography from my favorite dancer, Galen Hooks, in two different ways. The first one is more fluid, and in the second, I imagine myself as the monster in the song.

Galen showed how you can tell very different stories with the same song. And I’m amazed and inspired forever since watching how she helped dancers tell stories with Freestyle Roulette series.

Day 3 + 4

Finished Re-manifesto of this blog

• Day 3: Drafted and Illustrated

• Day 4: Edit. I mostly reorganized the ideas and cut down excessive self-doubt moaning parts, thanks to chi Phuong’s feedback.

Comic (Day 5 - 8):

Created a short comic for my friend’s birthday gift. This is for Phuong, and everyone who’s been helping me be more honest with myself lately.

Day 5: Ideation

Sypnosis + Initial Storyboard

Sypnosis

Initial storyboard P1

Initial storyboard P2

Day 6: First drawing

I also received some guidance from Yufei saying I can limit myself to only 4 frames for more “punch” in the images. I tried and cut 8 frames → 4 frames.

Day 7-8: Excessive drawing

It turns out I can raw reasonable human shapes as long as I just observe what is there. I also find this process - drawing, picking the right color, minor adjustments to taste - really therapeutic.

I tested out the 4-frame comic style, but the color combination didn’t seem right.

I settled down with a 4-page comic instead. There’s still a coherent heart-area piece, but next time I’d think more about elements that can tie the comic together.

Take-aways

1. Simply committing to finish a project is very liberating. I get extremely disheartened on day 6 because the idea I initially thought was “cool” seem to be so cliche by that time. But since I already committed myself, I just went ahead and execute.

2. I kept having more ideas since. It’s true that action drives inspiration, not the other way around.

3. Iterate!

Thanks for being here =D

With care,

Trang.

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This is the week #1 update of my daily creative challenge, as outlined in the Re-manifesto of this blog. I’m inspired by MỞ - Mơ và Hỏi’s course, Writing On The Net 2 (#wotn2), and all my friends who write and create consistently for the sake of it!