Snowflake challenge | Day 11

[readmethesigns]

Popping in for another day! I always find hearing about peoples creative process to be really interesting, so I look forward to checking out other posts from today.

Day 11 – In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?

When it comes to gifs, it depends on what kind of set I'm going for – if it's a set that only really relies on visuals, like a general character or episode set then I'll usually just go through screencap galleries and narrow down which scenes I want to use. If it's a set like my Buffyverse character arc appreciation series (that I do plan on continuing!) that has... not quite sure of the right word to choose here, but a theme, maybe? then I tend to do more thorough research. Back to the character arc series example, I went through the transcripts for all of the BTVS/ATS episodes Faith is in and made a big list of all the relevant quotes from Faith that I believe exemplified Faith's character journey and somehow narrow that list down to 10 quotes! Inspiration usually comes very spontaneously; often I'll just pick up on a pattern while I'm watching a show and then I want to visually explore that.


For fanvideos, most of them are products of a rewatch – except my Buffyverse ones because I know the show pretty well – and I'll think, "Oh I really want to vid this ship!" When I hear a song that makes me think of a show/ship I make note of it so I don't always have to do song research, but when I do, I listen to playlists, watch other vids for inspiration, and check out songs on some of the youtube channels I follow that just post, like, indie songs and all of this usually results in me finding a song... it can take a while, but I haven't come up empty handed yet.

Once I have the song, I break the song down lyric by lyric just onto a note on listography and make notes as I rewatch the series of moments that I think either just fit the song or fit a specific lyric from the song and match it accordingly. Sometimes I think to myself how over the top it appears but it's a good way to keep track of what moments I've already used and also I'm very forgetful/my thoughts are super fleeting so if I don't make note my ideas, then I'll often forget them... I'm not sure if my explanation here is very clear so I'll post a little snippet from my Buffy/Angel – Favourite Colour vid:

Paint me up, me up, me up / You're my favourite colour / Paint me up, me up, me up / You're my favourite colour

• 107 – Cross burn
• 312 – Always, 320 – Buffy&Angel4Ever, A107 – Buffy's photo
• [A vampire got me hot. One.] 322 biting and 403 scar
• [Do you realise how rare that is? True happiness?] 213 – In bed together

Paint me up, me up, me up / You're my favourite colour / Paint me up

• 101 | 214 – Cross

Please don't go / Look real close / Eyes that show / Kaleidoscopes

• A108 ending
• 304 – Gets humanity back
• 222 – Gets soul back
• 107 – After Angel stakes Darla

So basically... I guess I put a lot of thought into vids so I really appreciate the times when people comment on things like my scene selections. When things aren't going the way I want them to, I'll usually just take a break and return to the vid another day and things go a lot more smoothly after that break. Because I do all of the planning before even making the vid (same with gifs), any complications usually have to do with trying to figure out transitions and beat-matching.


All in all, I have lots of ideas but I definitely struggle when it comes to getting the motivation to actually bring these ideas to fruition which can create a cycle where I get overwhelmed, not knowing where to begin on my to-vid/gif list and because of that, I am super inconsistent when it comes to posting new things. Maybe that's something I'll work on in 2019...

Comments

[g_uava]

Hello fellow gif maker! Your gif blog is so organized omg and your 'Currently Working On' section is really neat. Would like to ask: with the changes tumblr is going through, what are your plans for your gif blog?

[meridian_rose]

This is interesting to read, thanks for sharing :)
I only occasionally vid and don't make proper outline notes (I don't outline fic most of the time either though) though I've seen other people make notes like those and it must make the process a bit more manageable :)

[gracenm]

Really cool to learn about your process. Thanks for sharing!

[readmethesigns]

Hello! Thank you, I like playing around with coding every so often. No doubt, tumblr has a lot of issues but I've been using the site since 2010 and I don't post very often as it is, so I'll probably stick with it for a while; there's still a good amount of people there when it comes to my fandom interests so there's an audience for me to share with. This could of course change in the future and if that time comes I'm not sure where I'd go, what's your perspective?

[readmethesigns]

Yeah I think it makes the process more manageable because it's all mapped out and you just have a few blanks to fill, though I definitely admire those who can be more spontaneous in their creative process!

[readmethesigns]

Thanks for reading!

[g_uava]

That's great to hear that there's still an audience for your graphics on tumblr.

I don't know if you've experienced this - sometimes when I post a new gifset on tumblr, the gifset wouldn't appear even in the first 5 tags I've used. It seems such a waste to only share graphics to followers of my blog and that can't be found by non-followers exploring the tag :/
This is my main issue with tumblr on top of the anxiety of sometimes having to appeal for non-NSFW fanworks being unflagged.

Before tumblr, were you an active graphics maker on LJ or other fandom sites? I only started creating and sharing graphics on tumblr so would like to know if you've got a different experience :)

[readmethesigns]

Oh yeah there's definitely an issue with the tags on tumblr for a lot of people! I think it's been going on for a while so who knows if/when that'll be fixed. For my giffingbuffy blog I mostly reblog things I find in the tags because I haven't had much time or inspiration to make things, and I always wonder how many posts I'm not seeing because they wont show up in the tags.

Before tumblr I just made graphics for fun and to get some practice, then as I spent time on tumblr I grew more confident in my graphic-making skills :)