Quantity over quality can get you past the trap of rethinking your work before completion. It can also trap you into writing reams of useless material for its own sake. You can’t edit a blank page, but you do need potential for refinement. For that, you can harness the quantity beast by giving it a sense of direction.
So you want to write a story with a lot going on under the hood, from characters’ goals and frustrations to greater challenges of society. These varied pressures can create a desirably layered narrative. They can also explode into a scattershot mess – or intimidate you into fearing the rigors of development.
With some thought and planning, you can sort out all these ideas and get them to play well together.
So you want to expand your story idea into a road map. Or you’re stalled out on plotting or planning or rewriting. Or you’re mired somewhere in the wilds of Indecision, Overthought, or I Got Nothing. Time to take a high-fiber brain dump.
Traditionally, NaNoWriMo focuses on word count. An alternative measure of work time might ultimately be more productive. Which metric best suits your project?
Want to spiff up your digital artwork with fabric prints, metal textures, and so on? Pattern overlays can easily create effects that would be tedious to paint by hand. They are simple to use, surprisingly versatile, and great fun to play around with.
Whether you’re new to drawing or an aspiring pro, you can benefit from some quality reference material. This selection of drawing books will get you past sticking points while refining your knowledge of the fundamentals.
I embellished Zhang He’s gauntlets with real peacock eyes. The process is simple, but it requires some trickery that I only learned by messing up the first attempts.
The art of patterning costume armor is difficult to teach. It requires a good understanding of how a 3-D shape can be formed from 2-D surfaces, which is best learned by experience. That said, I can share some tips to get you started.
Once upon a time, I attempted to make fiberglass armor and claws for a Zhang He costume. With time running out before Otakon, I revisited an idea that I had never thought would work for me – craft foam propmaking.