Art In Pinkerton
(mis)adventures of Martin in Writing, Podcasting, and more
If I am Ahab….
White Whale
I have noticed on my various projects that there are always one or two things that cause problems (besides technical issues). For my texture mods, this tends to be a (or “a few”) texture that I just can’t find the mojo to complete satisfactorily. Usually when I work on such textures, it just turns into a series of mis-starts and redos. Sometimes (in the case of Arena), it’s that I have an idea of what I want to do but either I struggle with how to make it happen or it doesn’t materialize as I wanted.
Not without a fight
The one texture in Arena has cursed me for almost a year is DWJ02. Don’t let the plain innocent name fool you. It taunted me with it’s ambiguous rocky look. During the many hours I toiled on it (sadly not an exaggeration), I aborted multiple attempts to complete it and in several instances started completely over. It should be noted that this highly specific artist’s block is in no way logical. I can complete several similarly abstract textures in a single day and still would not make much, if any, progress in DWJ02. I think the problem was that I locked in how I wanted to have it look pretty early on but every time worked on it, I just didn’t feel quite right or I felt it looked too similar to other textures.
At last, victory
Last week, I barreled down finally and finished it (despite my son accidentally shutting down my computer when I was 2/3 done with it…curse….curse). The final result is not even a particularly sexy texture, although I do like it, but really that wasn’t the point. The point, obviously, was that I could not let it beat me. I faced my demon and I struck it down. Now what it this DWO02………………
– Martin
Art In Pinkerton 