How to build and organize a file for Background Design: animation pipeline tips.

Or: how to befriend a BG Painter for life I felt compelled to make this after this tweet by @jackieskribbls

https://twitter.com/jackieskribbls/status/1592229880741396480

Note as well individual productions may have their own file structure standards. (***follow them***)

Something I've observed through my own and friends experience with art school is that at some point you lose the fun in drawing. At some point you move through the motions of class assignments and all that magic and wonder of the art you used to make for yourself dies out. Not a universal statement for sure -- but for me especially, my third year in art school was ROUGH. I wrestled with whether or not I was even "an artist." My school was driving me away from all the things I enjoyed and wanted to explore in art, and I became internally confused.

Control (@remedygames) is easily the most captivating game I've played in a long time. I'm amazed at the tight handle the game has on presenting its concepts and story to you without ever feeling like its always drilling you with exposition or losing the plot to padding gimmicks. Brutalism is also my favorite type of architecture, and the fact the game takes place entirely in a seemingly endless labrynth of it makes the game feel like it was made specifically for me lol - it makes for an interesting commentary on the convolution of government bureaucracy.

Not that I think anymore should be taking writing advice from me, but if you're having countless false starts on your story, trashing it, starting over, you might be getting too hung up on how it *exactly* starts, which is hard. You probably don't know how it ends either, but... ... chances are you have an idea for an important scene you want to happen somewhere between. So? Start there, write that scene out. Don't be discouraged if you restart this scene a few times, but these won't be false starts. You're refining because you're learning the story.

While I'm not a successful artist yet, I do have a career with a good company in a creative field, as well as a small yet dedicated following of wonderful people who have stuck with me for years. Here are some of the people who had the biggest impact on me being where I am now: @Coestar through the early 2000's, Coe generously gave me a spot on his webserver. There, he taught me a lot of the basics of creating a website, allowing me to explore myself creatively in ways few had access to at the time. I was the only kid in school/college with a website.

Being able to be self critical of your work is good but dont let it get out of hand either. I became SO critical of my work that I would stop myself from even starting an artwork because I was scared of failing these weirdly high expectations I developed for myself as an artist. I look back at myself during college and I drew all the time. And for some reason I wasn't bothered if what I was making was total shit. I'd do it, share it, and was proud of it. But after college impostor syndrome somehow set in and I grew cynical.

The longest part of developing Synthesis has been by far just figuring out what the story was exactly that I wanted to tell with it. @foxorian I've been through many versions of the story over the last few years. Many ideas thrown out. Some awesome, some that were sub par.