sarah zedig! 🍉🐐

wrote a long post about dealing with writer's block and the benefits of stuckness to the process of art-making.

you can now go about 3-4 rows on google image searches for, say, a lesser known Symbolist painter before the algorithm crap starts showing up. it's kind of incredible, this stuff was much lower ranked and less ubiquitous a couple of months ago. I wouldn't say it's dominating yet but the gray goo is spreading shockingly quickly.

I'm fascinated by the particular kinds of artists cohost attracted. it feels like every week I stumble on someone else doing furry or porn art in a really unique style that on larger websites just sort of gets swamped by people doing more conventional work. there's this little network of people doing experimental work that actually feels in conversation with modern art in a substantial rather than superficial way, and it's really cool.

someone in the replies asked for some examples so I threw some together. your mileage may vary with these recs, I'm leaning towards people who are doing odd and experimental things formally, particularly people who work in traditional/physical media, and a lot of this is weird kink art so browse with care, but here's some folks doing interesting stuff:

@unibrawn has a very cool sort of Jasper Johns approach to furry art
@horse420 is doing cool very rough physical work
@witnesstheabsurd has a really distinctive rendering style
@thilinky has a cool paper cutout aesthetic
@dynasoar5 does anthro dinosaurs in styles ranging from high renaissance to post-impressionist
@DogPastry has a really cool mid century animation style abstract style
@BlushingYokai and @plushie have lush illustrative styles applied frequently to plush characters and just really uniquely designed ocs
@ygor is like, candy gore psychedelia?
@inkycap's work looks like pulp and queer novel covers from another (bug) dimension

I'm gonna cut myself off here because I keep looking at these blogs and then finding OTHER people who are cool, but I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out my friends on here, @girlpillz, @itsnero, @heroboof, @distressedegg, and @hentaireviews

There's a bunch of discourse on my tl about respect and curiosity towards game design and I agree generally speaking but also I think for me there's an element of optimism to statements like these in that probably 70% of the games I've ever worked on were, to quote the excellent Karla Zimonja, "drunk-walking towards completion" and sometimes you really do end up with a design cobbled together from a bunch of goals you're not sure how to execute, a bunch of decisions that might have been good ideas separately or at the time and now you're stuck with them. Treating that as always intentional and artistic is well meaning but well and truly, sometimes game development is in fact a polite disaster that somehow turns out okay (or doesn't)

are two concepts in play here, i think.

when you bring critical insight without good faith, it can easily become merciless. every limitation the creators were up against was their fault for not fixing. there's a paradox of objectivity here where being unable or unwilling to situate yourself in the creators' perspective probably means you will actually miss a lot of what was shaping their decisions. some of the "objective game reviews" demonology arises from this.

when you bring only good faith, you are inclined to take every decision in a game as 100% intentional, past a point of naivete - insisting a game's obviously clunky control scheme or lumpy storytelling is "on purpose" because its director's auteur cred casts a long shadow over the work itself, for example. this leads to conventional wisdoms that are unable to examine creative choices in the full context of their goals and constraints, where much of the "good game design / bad game design" dogma & discourse come from - which fwiw i do believe some designers feel overly beholden to, getting sucked into the "customer is always right" feedback loop that makes the medium stagnant and unchallenging in the broadest sense.

it can be easy to fall into either of these, but i think even novice creators learn on some level that each reflects incomplete understandings of what it's like to create something. the idea of everyone who's interested in games being able to try their hand at making one, at least once, is a nice thought.

and i think the reason that "darksidephil" (had to look up the bozo's name) video, where he demands everything be immediately legible, is so exhausting to watch is that he's bringing neither; he is totally affronted to be wondering about anything, totally incurious about why something on screen is the way it is, and also ready to assume the worst.