Studying Hard

Just completed week two of my studies and start week three today.
I'm learning so hard, I have to learn how to learn.
I won't be posting very often during this period unless I want to put up some of the things I've worked on or insights I have found, but otherwise things'll be very sparse around here until about...July :/
To make Guillan Seed with the best art & story I can muster, I'm redrilling all the things I've learned over the years to a new level of understanding. And it feels amazing. Since I quit my job and can live at home until I go to college in the fall I have ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE to waste this time. So I won't jump the gun on GS and give you an inferior product.

I just finished listening to this audiobook called "Mastery" by Robert Greene and it talks about how people from all over the world became undisputed masters in their respective fields of study. It was a very powerful look at how so-called "geniuses" got to their breakthroughs the undeniable process behind it. I'm recreating that in my life as I write this. My ultimate goals have been reenergized and my work ethic has kicked up at least three notches. I still need to apprentice under a master at some point, but I can find that person later. For now, I want to lay A TITANIUM SOLID FOUNDATION. 

In fact, I've learned ALL this stuff before. You can see it in all the tutorials and what-not I've collected throughout the years.
But since my knowledge of those things has not been reinforced by my practice, my skills in those areas dwindled severely from lack of proper practice. In another book I'm currently reading, "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin, I learned that in some cases people get WORSE at the jobs they're doing over time. He mentions doctors and auditor's, but it's something I also notice happening with A LOT of artists including me up until now. It becomes rote. They seem to learn all they need to and then kind of settle into a style and lean on it more heavily than the reality in which they may (or may not) have based it off of in the first place. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just something to be aware of. A pitfall to avoid. I actually just became aware of it myself. My skills were going on autopilot and I wasn't doing anything substantial to fix it. I wasn't pushing myself beyond my limits with every drawing (whether out of fear of messing up, trying to get attention, or just sheer laziness). I thought I was good. But I have so much to learn and that in and of itself is a great reason to get up in the morning. 

Right now I'm learning the ins and outs of facial expressions. I had managed to fool myself into thinking I was really good in that department when actually I'm not. I thought just by observing Fooly Cooly's super expressive faces, or looking at the Lackadaisy Expression sheet I would get to where I wanted to go, but that would have been too easy on myself. Last week I found the direction I really needed to go in and also remembered how I learned anatomy so many years back: By learning everything concerning the face, from the skull to the muscles to the skin, then drawing and comparing with the expressions of characters in real faces and cartoons. This type of holistic approach is highly recommended in the book Mastery, as it gives the person with that knowledge a huge advantage over people who kinda guess. The person who reads and learns has a deeper well of knowledge to pull from and can thus extend his reach beyond mere guesses.

IMO this guessing seems to happen in A LOT anime. Most of their facial features move independent of one another, and the resort to stock expressions to cover up the fact that real faces weren't studied to begin with. It's becomes so stylized that a lot of anime relies more on the style than they do reality. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's actually nice, but when you see a character whose expression based on reality, you'll know it. The characters feel like real people Jaime Hernandez' work, Fooly Cooly, or Miyazaki films no matter how styled they are, because they're all based on real expressions. Their character's expressions are what I like to call MALLEABLE and that's a topic for another day.

I'm reading both Gary Faigin's book and Scott Mccloud's Making Comics section on expressions and body language, so I can learn how to make the expressions consistently powerful.
I want to create characters that'll make people laugh out loud, or cry their eyes out. To do that I'll need to master the face and all it's intricate expressions.

As I increase in levels of understanding, I'll be sure to report more of my findings as I go along. The next thing I plan to learn before my next week of training is "What can I do to consistently learn more AS I create Guillan Seed and apply (and experiment with) my new-found knowledge?" Basically how can I improve and learn more as I go along?
I asked Ryan Ottley on his tumblr and he said to read a new book (on art) every month during work. Sound advice
I want to set up a system that allows me to do this continually for LIFE, so that I never become stale or bored. Ever heard of Moebius? Now THAT is a guy who never became stale. 

I want to study hard, but not blindly.

Until next time...