Showing posts with label Advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advice. Show all posts

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Art vs. Real Life - Being a "Creative Person" Is a Bad Excuse

For artists there seem to the two worlds: the world of art and "real life". While it might be legitimate to enjoy the former more than the latter it's dangerous to neglect one's everyday duties and responsibilities ...

If you don't care about anything else than your art,
you're destroying your own life and that of your loved ones.

Sometimes artists seem to live in another world. Here are all the hustles, daily needs and responsibilities - and there is that world of beauty and imagination. There is that world of creativity and endless possibilities. That world without limits.

We tend to glorify that world. But is there really no danger in it?

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Art and Self-Confidence - Feeling Your Art Is Garbage

A man's praise in his own mouth stinks? But what if your art actually is good? Artists often tend to be overly self-critical and lose sight of reality ...

Self-criticism is a core requirement for being a good artist.

Sometimes when looking at one's own art it does feel great. Yet more often than not, we tend to be overly self-critical and see our weaknesses rather than our strengths. Nikolai Gogol, for example, one of the greatest writers of Russian literature, is known for burning his manuscripts, including the sequel to his famous novel Dead Souls.

In my experience so far, most artists face this struggle, be it writers, painters, musicians ...

So what can we do about it?

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Art and Self-Discipline - The Struggle to Finish

Losing passion for one's creative project is just part of being creative. So don't stop. Because finishing is one of the factors that qualify you as an artist ...

Sadly, some artworks remain unfinished ...

We're always so full of energy when starting a new creative project. We have an idea and we are passionate about implementing it. We burn and burn and burn until ... until the creative project suddenly becomes a chore.

Are you one of those people experiencing this?

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Clichés and Stereotypes in Art

Usually clichés and stereotypes are considered bad. They can even deprive an artwork of its artistic value. But what are they actually and are they really as bad as many people think?

Both clichés and stereotypes put our world in order, categorizing everything and everyone.

When I first started writing I unknowingly used many clichés and stereotypes. That's actually part of what defines a beginner: Someone who is yet inexperienced doesn't know what has already been there and may fall for some false beliefs.

The next stage of my development was avoiding clichés and stereotype at all cost and praising works by others that did it as well, regardless of their actual artistic value.

Now I believe that clichés and stereotypes are neither good nor bad. They're merely tools and it's up to the artist to decide how to use them (no matter if it's about writing, painting, music or even game design).

So ... What are they and how to use them? Here are my two cents on the topic.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Good and Evil in Stories

Interesting, complex characters aren't "grey", since grey is still only a mixture of black and white. Good characters have colour. And for that storytellers need to shift more towards an alternative worldview ...

The very idea that there is only one true god expresses that
there is only one right way to think and to live and everything else is bad and linked to evil forces.

One advice storytellers often hear is not to make their characters black or white but grey. Everybody seems to be fed up with shiny, good, pretty heroes fighting evil queens, overlords and their ugly henchmen. So the advice is to put both good and evil into one's own characters, to blend black and white into various shades of grey. This, people say, turns two-dimensional characters into complex three-dimensional characters.

However, what people often forget is that grey is, still, a mixture of black and white. It technically isn't even a colour. "Grey" is still a symptom of a two-dimensional, even deeply religious worldview.

Good, Evil and Religion


I'm not quite sure when this binary perception of the world first was created, but there's no denying that monotheistic religions eagerly make use of it. The very idea that there is only one true god expresses that there is only one right way to think and to live and everything else is bad and linked to evil forces.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Should Artists Create for Financial Success?

Modern technology makes it possible to calculate what you have to do if you want to be financially successful as an artist. But wouldn't following those calculations kill art and turn it into faceless, commercial crap?

Selling well and quality aren't opposites, but it's good that not every artwork is a bestseller.

A book doesn't become a bestseller by coincidence. This is result of Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers' research, summarized in their book The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel. The software they developed for analyzing novels has read about 5000 books, both bestsellers as well as non-bestsellers. It took a closer look at things like topic, sentiment, writing style, characters and so on and noticed some specific patterns that are found in bestsellers.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Does Fan Service Destroy an Artwork?

There are different kinds of fan service, from using elements you think your fans will love to allowing your audience to participate in the art creation process. But doesn't fan service destroy an artwork?

Sometimes artists turn into magic fairies and fulfill their audience's wishes.

If you want your art to be seen by a large audience, you need marketing. Marketing means understanding and acting according to your audience's desires. And one very special form of marketing is fan service ...

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Art and Intuition - How Trustworthy Is an Artist's Inner Voice?

Artists are expected to follow their intuition. But does it always lead to great results? What if your intuition is playing a trick on you?

Intuition is important when creating art.

The stereotypical artist uses some kind of sixth sense instead of his mind. His ideas seem like a divine vision that he only has to bring in a physical form in order to create a timeless masterpiece ...

Only it doesn't work like this. Well, following one's intuition mindlessly does work sometimes. Paul McCartney is said to have composed the ingenious melody of Yesterday in a dream. But in most cases, especially in the cases of average-talented and yet inexperienced artists, this results in stepping into every cliché trap possible.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Art and Marketing - Know and Respect Your Audience!

We all want to be "free" when creating art, but we also want our work to be loved by a large audience. So should artists think about their audience's needs and wishes when creating their work?

If you want to be understood you have to speak the language of your audience.

I'm a writer and a hobby artist. I'm also an internet marketing manager. And as such I know that if you dream of building a large audience (which every artist does, let's be honest here) you have to start with your "product". If there generally aren't many people interested in the kind of work you do you have no right to complain about how little people care about your art. A "product" that is meant to be successful is always created with the "customer" in mind.

This, however, is the exact opposite of what people often consider "true art". Artists are expected to express themselves, completely ignoring what the audience wants. In fact, the audience is often considered uneducated and having a bad taste anyway. It's a very popular trope that an artist is doomed to be not understood by society.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Art and Personal Experience - How Much Do You Need to Know?

Life would be boring if art dealt only with everyday life. We want art to be exciting, we want our characters to face hardships we never faced ourselves. But how can we create art around something we have no idea about?

If you lack personal experience: Do research!

How much personal experience does an artist need in order to create good art? This question has bothered me ever since I started writing. There was so much I wanted to write about, but being a teenager, there was so little I knew.

I still don't know much. But certainly more than fourteen years ago. And so this is what I came to believing during the past years. Please do argue with me, if you disagree:

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Does Specialization Kill Creativity?

Sometimes artists we admire don't seem to move forward. They're good at what they do, but they don't seem to evolve. May they be trapped in their respective field? And is it bad for creativity?

The multipotentialite Leonardo da Vinci would have had quite some trouble in our era.

I've followed quite a few artists so far. I enjoyed their books, their music, their paintings, their movies, their jewellery designs ... And even though their art still amazes me, with time, I stopped following some of them. - Why? Because their art bored me.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Feedback You Give, Feedback You Receive - What Is It Worth?

Even if a person is older, more experienced and more educated than you it doesn't mean
that person is competent enough to give you advice.

When I was in first grade of school my German teacher told me to forget my native language, since I wouldn't need it anymore. This is when I first learned that teachers sometimes say plain b***s***.

I never took that advice seriously. Later I've learned that being bilingual helps a lot with learning new languages and that forgetting one's native language leads to tragic developments in the family. Today I have a master's degree in Russian literature and am hexalingual, I can read four alphabets and am still eager to learn. I don't dare imagining what I would have become if I had followed my teacher's advice.

One more important thing I've learned in later life is that this lesson applies to many areas of life, art being one of them: Even if a person is older, more experienced and more educated than you it doesn't mean that person is competent enough to give you advice. To decide whether a critic is right or wrong is up to you and nobody else.

Questioning Advice


When we try to become better at our art we naturally look for advice. And if we're lucky people approach us by themselves and tell us what we do well and what we should work on. It helps a lot which is why every artistic community encourages its members to give each other feedback and appreciate other people's critique. What we're often not encouraged do to is to question the feedback we receive.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Art and Academic Education - Why Artists Should Study

Education is one of the best sources for inspiration and innovation.

Last week I've published a video explaining the Typological Model of Narrative Situations by Franz Karl Stanzel, one of the most important theories in narratology and part of the basics in literary studies. At least, this is the case for Germany.

Well, in that video I mentioned something my senseis at university would have hated me for: I said that knowing this model is important for both readers and authors, since it helps us to understand literature better as well as to write our own prose. The "problem" with this statement is that literary studies are about analyzing texts and not about giving guidance how to write them. And yet ... One of the reasons why I've studied literature is that I wanted to learn the depths of this art genre in order to improve my own writing.

As far as I'm concerned, in the US you can actually study creative writing. In Germany you can't. Over here you can "only" become a highly educated scholar who has spent years researching great masterpieces of literature and their historical and cultural contexts. Yet I don't believe I've missed anything. In fact, I believe that studying literature helped me more that studying creative writing would have.

Learning by Analyzing


When learning any art the best thing you can possibly do is to learn from the masters. And the best way to learn from the masters is to analyze their artworks: How did they achieve a certain effect? What do they do to convey emotions? How do they structure their artworks? And so on ...

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Keep Calm and Carry On - 4 Ways How Computers Keep Us from Creating Art (And How to Deal with Them)

Computers are important nowadays. This is why it's so frustrating when they don't function as we want them to.

Last Christmas my old computer said goodbye to the world of the living and for a while I had no access to my writing, art and tools. A new computer had to be bought, an adapter to read the hard drive of the old one was ordered and there were issues with the delivery and, last but not least, once I finally had the adapter, there were technical issues with the old hard drive, so transferring my data was a long and painful process. That adventure inspired me to write about how fragile art becomes with advancing technological progress.

Don't get me wrong, though. Computers are an amazing tool for creating art. Even though I miss some advantages of traditional painting I really, really love toying around with Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI. They are great tools with an endless number of ways to use them. As a writer, I can't imagine going back to pen and paper. On a PC, I can edit a text as much as I want without it getting unreadable because of countless corrections. I can search my text for keywords to look up story details I already wrote. I can copy-and-paste a text wherever I want.

Musicians can create great artworks where they play all the instruments themselves. Movie editing is easy, fast and accessible. Computers and the internet allow us to share our art with others, to discuss it, to learn, to connect. They help us to find other artists and get inspired by their art.

Computers are important nowadays. And this is why it's so frustrating when they don't function as we want them to. And since today is one of those days when I planned to do something creative, but eventually spent the whole day fixing technological issues ... Well, I'm in the mood for a rant.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Filler Is Killer: Why Spice Lies in Brevity, Mostly

Even though filler content sometimes has a good reason to exist,
too much of it usually kills the recipient's interest in an artwork.

There is this extremely successful anime called Naruto and Naruto Shippuden. The original manga series started in 1999 and ended in 2014. The anime adaptation premiered in 2002 and still isn't finished.

Because the anime would catch up with the manga at some point they started to release filler episodes. Some function as prequels, some are nice spin-offs ... The main plot didn't progress, but since it takes time for the manga to continue, the existence of filler episodes was fairly reasonable. However, when the manga was officially finished in 2014 ... Well, if you say that the final battle truly started with the reunion of the original Team 7, then the anime version of this final battle started in 2014 and continues to this day. With weekly episode releases.

According to AnimeFillerList.com Naruto Shippuden has a filler percentage of 45%. In other words: Almost half of the episodes do not contribute to the main plot! Considering this, it isn't hard to understand all the fans freaking out all over the internet.

Action No One Cares About


Fillers aren't a problem existing only in TV shows. Movies, too, suffer from this phenomenon. Personally I like the first Matrix movie, but as for Matrix Reloaded, I still remember that one endless fight between Neo and Smith. I still remember the shocking realization that despite my love for fighting scenes and special effects I got so bored that I left for the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. When I came back and glanced at the screen I simply had to ask: "Are they still fighting or again?" "Still," my mother answered and I was glad I hadn't missed anything.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Chemistry of Romance - 4 Rules for a Good Love Story

Which rule is most important to you?

Love is one of the most common subjects in all genres of narrative art. And as it is with common subjects, there are good love stories and bad ones. Furthermore, I believe that the romance genre is especially vulnerable to overdoing: If there's too much violence in an adventure story you can just roll your eyes and go on; yet if a love story is too cheesy it's really hard not to throw up.

So what can we do to spare our audience the need for vomit bags? Here are some thoughts on this question.

Clichés: Good or Bad? 


My personal love story trauma is the movie Waterloo Bridge from 1940. And I can take much, actually. I generally enjoy romance anime, I love the movie Désirée (1954) as well as the original novel by Annamarie Selinko and I love shipping fictional characters. I generally like love stories. However, watching Waterloo Bridge was a torture. I hated the story, I hated the characters, and most of all I hated their relationship. I know the movie was made at a time when people had other ideals concerning love, but I still couldn't help but think that Roy is an a****** and Myra a stupid cow without a noteworthy personality. From the very beginning of the movie I wanted them to die, and when Myra threw herself under a bus I was genuinely happy her miserable and annoying existence finally ended.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Case Study: "Game of Thrones" and Its Overuse of Character Death

Game of Thrones and Its Overuse of Character Death

Many are looking forward to April 24th when the start of the sixth Game of Thrones season is scheduled. I too can't wait to see how the story continues, and yet ... Well, the great success of the series proves that it does many things right. But as any successful project it does a few things wrong. And one of these "mistakes" kind of sours my watching experience.

What I'm talking about is character death.

I'm generally a fan of major characters suffering a dramatic death, but I really dislike it in Game of Thrones: Just for the same reason as why stories in which it's pretty clear that nobody will die often are boring. When you know that there isn't real danger for your beloved heroes an adventure loses potential for suspense.

With Game of Thrones it's the exact opposite: The past seasons have made it clear that everybody - or almost everybody - will die sooner or later. Character death is simply what I expect to happen and when another bunch of characters gets their throat slit my reaction isn't shock or surprise but a rather bored: "Oh, again? Who's next?"

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Make Art, Not Procrastination! - 10 Tips to Overcome a Creative Block

Step 1: Go to wherever you usually work.
Step 2: Get started.

Procrastination ... It follows us everywhere, and sometimes it haunts us even when we're doing something we enjoy. I think the only thing you can't procrastinate is watching cat videos on YouTube. And as an artist, you can procrastinate art. In fact, I believe that a creative block is nothing else than procrastination. Just plain, banal procrastination. So just erase this romantic "creative block" euphemism from your vocabulary. It's procrastination. And in order to overcome it you have to treat it as procrastination.

You don't believe me? Well, this is how I experience a "creative block": First I notice that I didn't write anything for a long time. I don't really feel like writing, I haven't been feeling like writing for weeks, but I don't wait for "inspiration", open the file and stare at the white space. My head feels numb and squeezing out words from my brain feels just as reasonable as trying to squeeze toothpaste from an empty tube. All depressed because of the failure I decide to make a pause and watch cat videos on YouTube. I watch and watch and watch until I realize that it's time to go to bed. Nonetheless I open my file, hoping that "inspiration" will come, since night is its favourite time of day. Yet after staring at the empty space for some more time I call it a day and hope that tomorrow it'll be better. But the story just repeats itself.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Rules vs. Artistic Freedom - Why Perfection Is Boring

The only rule in art is that there are no rules.

If you ever joined an artist community you surely came across people crusading for the one and only true faith in the world of art: rules. People who criticize those who dare to disobey conventions, those who don't do what they consider "good" art. And maybe you're even one of these people. Maybe you're extremely annoyed by all these kids who justify their obvious mistakes with "artistic freedom". Hell, I've even seen amateur writers defending their spelling mistakes with this argument!

So how many rules are necessary and how much freedom is allowed?

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Art and PR - Why an Artist Needs Boldness to Be Successful

Shyness and modesty are very likely to become the death of an artist's career.

Right now it's a very personal matter. This is a very "young" blog, and I've started enough internet projects in my past to know that it takes much time and patience until it'll get at least a very little bit of attention. That I don't get many clicks and comments right now is actually what is to be expected, especially considering that I didn't do much PR for this blog. I should be rather surprised and happy that it actually got a few clicks without me doing anything.

It isn't like I don't have any ideas for how to promote my blog. I have more of them than time for implementation. The reason why I didn't do much so far is that I'm afraid like a total newbie. My train of thoughts is like this: "I've just started, there isn't much content yet, I'm still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, so there isn't much I can offer to potential readers." To make it short: I'm afraid of getting readers while my blog is still in a beginning state.