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Mar. 27th, 2008 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tammaiyaSince I have posted 8 times this year, including the post earlier today, I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting things-- particularly since I'm heading to Japan next week. Which is why you get a post on Siobhan's Writing Practices (part 1?). Writing, like posting, is one of those things I haven't been doing lately. I've been playing a lot of video games and watching some tv, but not so much writing. When I HAVE been writing, I've been working on this Cecil/Kain FFIV fic. It's saved on my harddrive as badtouch fic and involves Golbez in a past sense, but whatever, that's not the point. Nor is the fact that this fic is now over 11,000 words, despite that I never intended it to be that long and as much as it pains me.
The point is, I went back to working on this fic today, and I hit a roadblock in the form of physical placement. Namely, how do they get from point A to point B to point C? Usually I have a fairly good spacial awareness and can keep in mind where my characters and their various limbs are in relation both to each other and the space they're occupying, but every so often something will complicate it and I'll feel the need to resort to stick figures. The main other time I've had to do this is working out the seating arrangement for the quiz scene in boyband!X, because with 16 characters and certain requirements (such as, Fuuma and Kamui have to be on either side of the dividing wall) it was going to be insane trying to figure it out as I wrote. That diagram turned out very useful, as it so happens.
This time there are only two characters in the scene, but I was having trouble figuring out where they were standing in relation to the room and furniture (where is the window? where is the door? where is the bed? how do they get from the window to the bed? and how does A grab B's wrist when one of them is next to the window and the other stops in the door?), not to mention how they could go from not facing each other to facing each other.
Hence, stick figures! They're NUMBERED. In sequence. And they actually have provided a lot of help, because I've realised that one action I'd included was a little unnatural and that by changing it a little-- and changing which hand was doing the wrist-grabbing-- I could also solve the turning around problem. (I still haven't figured out point A to point B, but hopefully I'll get there.)
The one issue is that drawing stick figures is all very well, but I have this horrible tendency to get too caught up in my so-called "stick" figures and they start to become more like sketches. "Oh, you can't see which way he's facing without hair." "Hm, it's a bit hard to judge what that arm is doing, I'll make it thicker." "I need an actual torso to be able to tell how this works." Until in the end, you can't really call it a stick figure at all.
In summary, when you start drawing clothes onto your "stick figures", you can only conclude that ur doin it wrong. XD
(It probably says something that I drew clothes on my boyband!X stick figures as well. And hair. And shoes. I actually still have that sketch; for "stick figures" I consider it to be a work of art.)
The point is, I went back to working on this fic today, and I hit a roadblock in the form of physical placement. Namely, how do they get from point A to point B to point C? Usually I have a fairly good spacial awareness and can keep in mind where my characters and their various limbs are in relation both to each other and the space they're occupying, but every so often something will complicate it and I'll feel the need to resort to stick figures. The main other time I've had to do this is working out the seating arrangement for the quiz scene in boyband!X, because with 16 characters and certain requirements (such as, Fuuma and Kamui have to be on either side of the dividing wall) it was going to be insane trying to figure it out as I wrote. That diagram turned out very useful, as it so happens.
This time there are only two characters in the scene, but I was having trouble figuring out where they were standing in relation to the room and furniture (where is the window? where is the door? where is the bed? how do they get from the window to the bed? and how does A grab B's wrist when one of them is next to the window and the other stops in the door?), not to mention how they could go from not facing each other to facing each other.
Hence, stick figures! They're NUMBERED. In sequence. And they actually have provided a lot of help, because I've realised that one action I'd included was a little unnatural and that by changing it a little-- and changing which hand was doing the wrist-grabbing-- I could also solve the turning around problem. (I still haven't figured out point A to point B, but hopefully I'll get there.)
The one issue is that drawing stick figures is all very well, but I have this horrible tendency to get too caught up in my so-called "stick" figures and they start to become more like sketches. "Oh, you can't see which way he's facing without hair." "Hm, it's a bit hard to judge what that arm is doing, I'll make it thicker." "I need an actual torso to be able to tell how this works." Until in the end, you can't really call it a stick figure at all.
In summary, when you start drawing clothes onto your "stick figures", you can only conclude that ur doin it wrong. XD
(It probably says something that I drew clothes on my boyband!X stick figures as well. And hair. And shoes. I actually still have that sketch; for "stick figures" I consider it to be a work of art.)
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Date: 2008-03-27 11:14 am (UTC);p
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Date: 2008-03-27 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-01 11:49 pm (UTC)Looking forward to seeing you here in Japan! I've had a look at my calendar and I think the best time I'll be able to come visit you in Tokyo is in Golden Week which is the beginning of March! Other than that, there's a long weekend in July and there's the summer holidays in August! I'm actually looking at going home in August 'cause my program finishes in July so yeah it all depends on how things are going at the time!
Wow, the time of your life at the moment reminds me of last year :) So crazy excited yet crazy nervous, but you're going to been in your prime! You'll be able to settle in immediately and take it all so well! You're going to have an amazing time :D
With reference to your previous post - you will be able to eat fresh food, it's just generally tasteless and expensive. I saw a rockmelon with a diameter of about 15cm for about 2500yen at my super market yesterday o_O; However, strawberries and mandarins/みかん (people argue that the two are different things... Oh how I beg to differ ;D) are REALLY yummy here and they're somewhat reasonably priced so you might be able to get away with that. Fresh vegetables are very good here though. You're going to get a lot of use out of your rice cooker :O
I'm guessing you're leaving today so good luck, have a safe and comfortable trip (abuse those Jetstar schmucks on the flight, you'll need all the snacks you can get, just as I did!!) and let me know when you're in Japan if you want to chat :) Take it easy!!
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Date: 2008-04-02 02:32 am (UTC)It'd be totally AWESOME to see you in Golden Week. <3 For serious cool.
I was supposed to fly out today, but because my body has provided the ultimate proof that it hates me, I've come down with some kind of flu-type thing. >< I no longer feel like I'm dying, though, so hopefully it should only delay me a few days. Thankfully QANTAS let me rebook (today!) without charging me anything.
Ooh, good! that's nice to know. mmm, strawberries.