Recently, I’ve been telling myself to learn to draw because I seriously can’t stand it anymore. Seeing all those awesome drawings online and stuff, seeing my friends draw with ease, I’ve always wondered how the fuck do people in general. I do not understand sketching and drawing. Do people ACTUALLY picture pictures in their minds and draw them out? Maybe. But I don’t know and I need to know.
Why? I have tons of reasons. First was that I’ve always wanted to draw *something* but couldn’t bring the willpower to do so. Secondly some cartoon 2D pictures, esp anime style pictures (ie chibi/etc) are just plain cute/cool/awesome/you get the idea. Thirdly, I find that drawing a picture you are satisfied with can bring really great momentary happiness inside. It’s very different than the feeling I get after I complete a game. I even think that artists get more satisfaction seeing their pictures in action than us seeing our codes work them out. It’s just my personal opinion. I think that some programmers are secretly trying to make themselves extra satisfied by saying “hey without me the graphics are nothing”. That’s not the point. Do you feel satisfied when you show your lecturers how things are created when you present? You want to show them in the 10 minutes but you can’t. Meanwhile the artists have shown everything they have done because…well…everything is on the screen!
The thing is, no matter how complex your codes is, no matter how efficient your codes are, as long as it runs well and buglessly on a mediocre platform, it’s good. On the artists side, they sure as hell don’t have to crack on their heads on whether I am ‘newing’ a class here would cause lag or whether a certain ‘for’ loop will crash the system or not. They draw. And when they complete drawing, they feel happy because they can VISUALLY see their end product. I find it sad for us that programmers, no matter how crucial we are, we don’t get the global credit for making things work. Many many casual gamers always fucking go “z0mg kewl grafix!1one!!” which is done by the artists. Then gameplay. Gameplay is done by designers and sometimes suggested by other team members. Then…? Nothing. If graphics = gameplay = good therefore the game = good.
Okay I’m getting abit out of topic here, but the thing is that I’ve always wanted to draw and failed many many times. The last time I ever drew something right was Sonic the Hedgehog around…er…many years ago. At least I know from that that I am not totally hopeless in drawing as I *always* claimed to be. It’s because I never bothered to practice and pursue it. I’m that kind of person. If I pick something up and didn’t like it for the first 10 minutes, I’ll drop it. I think I should really stop that habit and try some more.
I think it works both ways for us and the artists. I’m not sure…I haven’t really asked them. Maybe when I go “Holy shit how the hell did she turn a line in the drawing board into something?!” they go “Holy shit how the hell did he create stuff with all these maths?!”
Hmm maybe I should start asking. I think I’ll go draw some more. I’d just drawn something really satisfactory and it kinds made me happy. Hmm.
