A Rain of Frogs

Tim Burton has a couple movies in the works for this year. I doubt anyone has failed to see the trailers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnnie Depp as Wonka. But have you seen the trailer for The Corpse Bride?

Reminiscent of A Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride looks to be a full fledged assault on the bastions of 3D computer generated imagery. Like Nightmare, Corpse Bride is stop-motion, lending it a solidity that CG is still attempting to capture.

The fact that Burton is using stop-motion instead of CG says a lot. It tells us we don’t have to do something just because we can do something. It also tells us that the old ways, while not right for every situation, can still have their places.

I’ve always loved the “Nightmare Aesthetic” and I’m really excited about this new movie. I’m also looking at my own work from the past, to see if maybe my old ways can help me out of the funk my new ways seem to be in.

Regardless of the impact on my own creative engine, Corpse Bride looks to be that touch of strange the Hollywood world has needed for a long long time.

A friend recently commented on my creative slump. He suggested that perhaps I am trying too hard. There is definite merit in this, but I cannot and will not accept that I am trying to hard.

I explained to him that I feel on the cusp of a leap to a new level of understanding (at least in terms of visual art). I keep leaping, trying to grab the ledge of this new level and pull myself up, and every time I jump, I get just a tiny bit closer, but end up standing in the same place I was. I’ll keep jumping, and I’ll keep grasping, and some day I’ll pull myself up onto that new plateau and start exploring.

But until then, I have to keep striving. I cannot stop jumping, or I’ll never reach the ledge. There is not easy way up to it, and there’s not shortcuts. Trying too hard CAN choke you creatively, but the difference between what I’ve been doing and trying too hard is that I have NEVER tried for force my work. I try and I try to open my “innocent eye” but I never – EVER – try to force something onto the canvas, torturing contrast into some horrific stillbirth of my creative misery.

You can’t force it. But you can keep leaping for that ledge. And I will keep leaping, till I finally get there. In the mean time you’ll all just have to suffer along with me.

Indeed, a Rain of Frogs is now officially a week old, and like so many of my other projects, unencumbered by anything resembling a design. I truly do need to extricate myself from this quagmire of uncreative thought I seem to be stuck in.

I’m working on it. I’ve been considering taking a beginners drawing course at a local art store. Do I need art instruction? Hell no. I’ve had more than enough. What I need is to relearn how to see things with fresh eyes. I’ve also been gigging with musicians I don’t normally play with, in hopes of finding something new and infectious that I can take home with me.

But in terms of hard results, I’ve got nothing. Not yet, anyway. The hardest part of this for me has been accepting that I’m in a creative jam. I’ve done it though. I’m in a creative jam. I’m NOT producing anything of merit, musically, visually or literally.

They say admission is the first step to recovery.

Good gods lets hope so.

I have all these fragments of ideas. They spin around my head, passing across the field of vision of my minds eye. Sometimes I can glimpse them long enough to understand what I’m looking at, but more and more frequently they don’t and I can’t.

I used to be very much in touch with my visual imagination. I could pretty much duplicate on paper (canvas, emulsion, LCD) what I saw in my mind, but that faculty seems to be escaping me. Maybe it’s old age, or maybe it’s just that I am out of practice. Maybe it’s like I said on a design blog recently that I’m too trapped in the HOW to see the things my mind is showing me.

I really want it back. I have been inspired a great deal lately by exposure to some local artists (both visual and musical) and I want to feed my need to create. I want to grasp those fluttering visions while they are in front of my mind’s eye and hold them there until I can reproduce outside my head what I see on the inside.

I want to be able to pick up my lead holder again and just put on paper what I know is supposed to be there, instead of suddenly finding myself unable to draw anything.

I don’t want to be vacant any more.

Don’t judge me on the appearance of thos blog. It is ugly, and I know it.

I’ve got a significantly busy community site in the throes of a major redesign and restructuring, and the only purpose of Rain is to let me blow off steam.

Yes, a new, and hopefully unique and original design is also coming here. But it’s not ready yet, and besides, this site is like, a week old.

Don’t hate my blog because its ugly.