Mindset and Perspective is everything.
Tell me if you can relate to this: You tend to work harder for others than you do for yourself.
If someone wants some work from you, then you will drop everything and do all you can to show up for them but when it comes to yourself all the projects that you want to do get pushed further and further away and never lands as a priority. I would like to change that. As a freelance worker who wants to create things for myself and build my own brand, working for myself has to become a priority. I have noticed that the work I do for myself is usually last minute, or something that comes from a late night inspiration surge and after that it gets pushed back into the depths and won’t return until I feel so guilty that I reluctantly return to try and make more parts for my project. If I were to see that as a client I would hate that so much! I would feel so disrespected and that my work won’t receive proper consideration. I would hate myself as my artist! And as the artist I hate working like that!
The work is done in such a toxic way no wonder that I never get things done for myself. With all this in mind I would like to nail down some structures that I have learned trying to build my brand. I am Nina Nomori, and from now on I will start to step outside of myself and see me as my own client and not as the boss of my brand. I want to shift the perspective to see Nina Nomori, a powerhouse of creativity as someone who isn’t me, and someone who I would drop everything and do all that I can to show up for. This is how I would approach the task of building a brand for Nina Nomori. Let’s begin.
1. Concept Art
Character design, environments, and platforms.
Since I want to work in Game Development I want to see Nina Nomori as a game. At the beginning of a game we need to come up with concept art. The types of platforms that the concept should function on are: Twitch, Itch.io, YouTube, and this Blog. With character design you want to fill in this rough list to get a good idea of who you are making.
Who: Nina Nomori. The Hero, a gamer, concept and game artist, who also makes art dolls inspired by the games she plays and anime she’s inspired by.
What: Artist, game player, art doll maker, concept and game artist. Her impact on people is to inspire. She wants to inspire artists, game devs, and to help shine a light on marginalized communities, and life styles, to break out of the mold of traditional society and be creative. She wants to make art that is transformative, and as well just want to have fun, especially during stressful times.
Key Traits: Cunning, truthful, reflective, creative, a safe space.
When, Where: Current day wasteland, but within a sweet little forest nook where creativity has a space to breathe.
Why: Her motivation is curiosity. Her motivation is community. Her motivation is to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Personality in Design:
Color palette: purple, red, black, jewel tones. This gives off a vibe of maturity, and wisdom.
Elements reflecting her ‘what’: scissors, maybe a seam ripper? Scissors are so typical in character design, and a seam ripper is cool because it breaks open things, it releases old structures to build new things with the materials we have, to recycle and rebuild. How to reflect the concept artist part… or the gaming part… hmmm… futuristic mixed with nature solarpunk, but not that “bohemian” shit because that’s not what bohemian looks like and it’s not a dead culture but I digress. It’s like natural textiles and video games, tell me in the comments what that is. She can build a house but also looks fly doing so, jewelry and hard hands, geta shoes for that japanese otaku cringe, also because I do want to cosplay as this character, and I want to see people cosplaying as Nina Nomori and I think it would be wicked to get a pair of geta and learn to walk in them.
Body: Face, she’s older, a wise woman – no kids… she’s sexy she’s fierce. Thick thighs save lives.
emblems, anarchy, acab, rainbow flag, Samoan tattoos, a kilt. She repairs her own clothes, there’s a pocket for her iPad, and a paper phone.
Outfit Variations: maybe a red carpet version, an artist version, a gaming version.
Inspo: ghost in the shell, aeon flux, aaah real monsters, the Addams family, Junji Ito, Masamune Shirow,
Note: This is just to pull inspiration from, my style is my own, and their style is their own. I just want to enter the work with these people in mind, hoping they can be neighbors and not mirrors.
Post Mortem
How the process felt, important take aways.
During the process, it was very hard to find what i wanted my character – i mean, my clients character to look like. And I definitely have a tendency to over cook, i think this is another obstacle to think about when making art, it should flow. I remember that on animation you don’t want a character that is too complicated because it will be a pain in the butt to animate. so trying to keep things loose simple is important, I ended up omiting a bunch of items for the character for that reason. I think they can be added in in different ways in the future though. Also there is a school of thought that you want to make your portfolio and what you show to people what you would like to do in the future, for example, you don’t want to have a portfolio all about fruits when all you want to draw is cars. you want to present what you want to do in the future and if I constantly over cook then that is what i will be attracting, and what people will expect from me. over cooking instead of loose flow and relaxing work. I think also what hurt me creatively was that i didn’t give myself a specific time or intention to warm up. That is something that is so important and something I think artists forget to do often. I have been told that it takes about 20mins to get into the flow state and remembering that, and to use that time to warm up will help, often I wouldn’t warm up and I would take the first sketch that I did and carry it all the way to the final stages and the next day i would look at it and be so unhappy at it, feeling like it wasn’t what I wanted and I think if I just locked in on the first 20mins and used it as warm up time and not to feel pressure to use what I made in the final product, then I wouldn’t have made that mistake. I noticed that my workflow is so much faster when I sketch on paper and then transfer that image into Procreate and finalize the work there. Making initial concepts on paper just hits different.
- sketch first on paper, then take the work into the digital world, it’s faster this way.
- you have to warm up, always. First 20mins of each session.
- make it simple so animation is easier
- show/create what you want to do, make it cohesive in your branding
Alright this is already a really long post, so I will turn this simply into Part 1 of my “Be my own client, not a boss series”
Next entry will be about streamlining canvas sizes and the next steps to building a brand.
and with that in mind, I will see you later.
-nina
