Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "drawing"
Wasted Years
I've been feeling like picking up drawing again - I haven't so much as picked up a pen in more than a decade. But I remember why I stopped, I know what I'm like, and I know there's precisely zero-percent chance I can keep it up. It's a passing whim that I'll have forgotten by tomorrow.
What hurts is knowing that if I had kept it up, I'd be pretty good by now. No way I'd suck at anything after some fifteen years of doing it. And I'm probably going to look back at this very moment another fifteen years from now, wishing I'd picked up drawing again after all and stuck with it. I wish I could get back all that wasted time - the years I spent doing nothing at all, just sitting there and staring into space - only this time with some clearly written instructions and a whole lot of reference books to make sure I wouldn't just waste it all over again. It would be enough time to learn not just to draw, but also - the true aspirations of my dreams - to animate.
I'm convinced that the very medium of writing is now dead. The modern world has no place for it. Two reasons.
One: anyone can write - just open up a new word file and get to typing - yet almost no one can distinguish good writing from bad. There's not a single publishing agent or short-story publication in existence that doesn't have to deal with dozens if not hundreds of daily contacts by hopefuls with high aspirations and no skill to back it up with - and when their stories are inevitably rejected, they can still self-publish it on their own. End result: thousands of stories out every single day, most of them never read by anyone, any nuggets of real merit drowning in an endless evergrowing ocean of garbage with no one ever learning to appreciate them.
Why would anyone with any measure of true determination and willpower stand for this? Why would they not struggle to break through their confines and learn something real, something more tangible, easier to appreciate, with less competition? Learn to draw at the very least, to make a comic book. Then you can learn to animate it and get to the business of cartooning. Or you could go ahead and do something entirely different, such as coding a video game or perhaps direct a movie. Join together with friends and form a whole company to cover each other's backs. That's the second reason writing is dead: we all have the tools for pushing to greater heights now, and no real excuse not to. If you don't struggle and improve, if you just do your own thing with no one to help you, you'll make it nowhere.
Sure, then your comic or cartoon may not be written or plotted out that well, since you didn't learn to write quite as much. But what does that matter? As I've said above, no one can tell the difference anyway! Follow the current trends and you'll be fine.
I beg you now - don't make the same mistake I did. Don't build yourself a future filled with regrets and remorse and ruined dreams that you can no longer change. Flee this accursed place. Learn something real.
It's always easier to tell others to change, than it is to change yourself.
What hurts is knowing that if I had kept it up, I'd be pretty good by now. No way I'd suck at anything after some fifteen years of doing it. And I'm probably going to look back at this very moment another fifteen years from now, wishing I'd picked up drawing again after all and stuck with it. I wish I could get back all that wasted time - the years I spent doing nothing at all, just sitting there and staring into space - only this time with some clearly written instructions and a whole lot of reference books to make sure I wouldn't just waste it all over again. It would be enough time to learn not just to draw, but also - the true aspirations of my dreams - to animate.
I'm convinced that the very medium of writing is now dead. The modern world has no place for it. Two reasons.
One: anyone can write - just open up a new word file and get to typing - yet almost no one can distinguish good writing from bad. There's not a single publishing agent or short-story publication in existence that doesn't have to deal with dozens if not hundreds of daily contacts by hopefuls with high aspirations and no skill to back it up with - and when their stories are inevitably rejected, they can still self-publish it on their own. End result: thousands of stories out every single day, most of them never read by anyone, any nuggets of real merit drowning in an endless evergrowing ocean of garbage with no one ever learning to appreciate them.
Why would anyone with any measure of true determination and willpower stand for this? Why would they not struggle to break through their confines and learn something real, something more tangible, easier to appreciate, with less competition? Learn to draw at the very least, to make a comic book. Then you can learn to animate it and get to the business of cartooning. Or you could go ahead and do something entirely different, such as coding a video game or perhaps direct a movie. Join together with friends and form a whole company to cover each other's backs. That's the second reason writing is dead: we all have the tools for pushing to greater heights now, and no real excuse not to. If you don't struggle and improve, if you just do your own thing with no one to help you, you'll make it nowhere.
Sure, then your comic or cartoon may not be written or plotted out that well, since you didn't learn to write quite as much. But what does that matter? As I've said above, no one can tell the difference anyway! Follow the current trends and you'll be fine.
I beg you now - don't make the same mistake I did. Don't build yourself a future filled with regrets and remorse and ruined dreams that you can no longer change. Flee this accursed place. Learn something real.
It's always easier to tell others to change, than it is to change yourself.
Pankarp
Pages fallen out of Straggler's journal, and others.
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