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Dile_
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Blog entry #2

1 min read
Hey guys!

Updated my blog again. Been spending the last few weeks  head down in my sketchybooks trying to figure out what I know...and more importantly don't know shit about..And fix it..haha...I'm making some, but not a lot so far, progress on the characters... Mostly clearing up rust.. I think.

Anyways... Here are two recent blog posts...

One with art ( Mostly Speedpaints!) (NSFW..STUDIES)

thevfxartist.blogspot.se/2012/…

And one with some of my thoughts on motivation/inspiration/flow/learning/improving quicker etc.  It's still beta.. and I just wrote it up..and I've already fixed some typos... (Too is to...too often..too. D: )



thevfxartist.blogspot.se/2012/…

Anyhow, I hope you will excuse me..and that it might be something useful in there for the few brave souls who can go through it all!

Thanks!
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Blog entry #1

13 min read
From my blog.

thevfxartist.blogspot.se/2012/…

Hi!

My name is Dennis Bjork, more commonly known as Dile(At least I like to think so) and I'm an aspiring concept-artist from Sweden.

I'll start this blog off with a little story, or at least some back-story about me, about who I am, where I am and where I'm heading at the moment. Hopefully I can go back to these post and either laugh at the points I'm making, or even better see where my current goals took me and what happened during the way.

I recently turned 20 and just right on the edge of finishing up my last semester in School, for now, that is. I'm studying social-science and I'm not a very good student. Why is that, you may ask yourself (or, most likely, not)...Is it because I don't understand or like social-science and would rather spend time on youtube, or watching tv-series like most other social-science students my age?  No, none of those. In fact I can probably count the number of videos watched on youtube and minutes watching tv-shows for the past couple years faster than I could type up this post up till this point. What am I trying to say here? I'm trying to say that going to school doing something you don't like, where you had the choice to actually do something different, while balancing that decision and it's consequences with what you like to do can have a serious effect on how things turn out and how you deal with the result of those doings.

I've had times where I've spent days, weeks, even months, just drawing, thinking, and painting, and not seen the face of a single person, got behind in school and ending up in a really, really vicious cycle of bad habits and what is by others percieved only as laziness. On the contrary, I've spent the same amount of time, at least during the past 6 or so months, out partying. Which by others can only be percieved as unresponsible and ignorant. I've missed deadlines, in life, in work and in school, more so during the last year than most people probably do during their whole life. At least hopefully.  That might sound like an exaggeration, but I've never let more people, or myself, down as many times as I have during the last year. I'm not trying to pity myself here, just realizing, and admitting what I've done and how those things came around to be, and learning how to prevent these things from happening. I played a bit of StarCraft 2 when it came out, and one of the most important things I learned from the game, or rather, from a pretty well known commentator and player called Day9, was that the problem isn't actually the problem. The problem itself should never see the light of day, its the things that lead up to the problem that is the problem. Not the problem itself. NEVER the problem itself. Don't try to solve THE problem, solve the things that make the problem appear from the very start, FIRST. Then, and only then, can you start solving THE problem. Another quote, or story, comes from Rich Dad and the book "Financial IQ" by Robert Kiyosaki and it goes like this:

"Having a money problem, is like having a toothache, if you do not handle the toothache, the toothache makes you feel bad. If you feel bad, you may not do well at work, because because you are irritable. Not fixing the toothache may lead to further medical complications, because it is easy for germs to breed and spread from your mouth. One day you lose your job, because you've been missing work because of your chronic illness. Without a job you can not pay your rent. If you fail to solve your problem of rent money, you are on the street, homeless and poor health, eating out of garbage cans. And, (and here is the kicker) You still have your toothache!"

To me this really only means that I need to get smarter in some ways, maybe even financially at times. Okay especially financially, but also overall, with time, people, myself and so on. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". -Harvey Mackay

I like to think that you should live every day as if it were your last, and I've lived that way for a very long time. The first thing that made me realize that it wasn't working out too well for me was when I broke up with my girlfriend. It wasn't the act it self (like I was talking about eariler about the problem not being the problem) it was the things leading up to it. I felt, like I think that most people do, very comfortable with my life during the circumstances. I had overcome so many obstacles and problems to end up where I was. I had the best kind of friends, the most awesome girlfriend, and I was still on a good foot with my family, kinda.(And please, everyone, understand that no matter how your family treats you or how you act around eachother, FAMILY IS IMPORTANT. I won't be cliche and say it's the most important thing you have, they might be, they might not be. Regardless, treat them with respect. Always. I see so many new and young artists that complain about their parents or family. Don't try to change them or their opinions, change yourself and they will follow.) What I didn't understood was that I had to work quite a bit, to keep up with that comfortability. The first thing that happened was that I lost contact with my friends, friends I had had for years. It started very subtle. I stopped answering calls, stopped answering texts, stopped showing up(literally, I had the greatest excuses, too, like the bus not showing up...or..my cellphone died) Then I started painting again ( which I had put on ice for about 2 years before meeting my girlfriend) so I stopped showing up in school. When I wasn't in school, I had almost eliminated the time I spent around people, and I was now only seeing my girlfriend and parts of my family which neither I was too happy to be around because I was always up at night and sleeping during the days, ruining all of my daily rythms, if I ever had one, that is.
Not only was I not showing up for school, I was slacking too, I didn't do my homework or any of my assignments and I kept that going for as long as I could, again, literally. It took the school's headmaster writing me a personal email on a saturday-evening telling me I couldn't start my 3rd and last year in school, for me to lift a finger. Although that worked out better and expected, and as always when I "have to do something" I do it with, what most that know me, call with ease and high quality. A quote from a friend went something like this, and I have many others that have gotten stuck in my mind, because I know there is some sort of truth to it, and one of the reasons I've even started this blog. "You're probably my most strange friend in a way, and my friends are all quite strange. And I feel bad. I feel bad because I know that if I wasn't occupying you, or if we weren't you'd probably disappear for a couple of days, then come back with a fortune. Thats why you're strange, and thats why I feel bad."
I'm not telling this quote to brag about myself, or trying to feed my own ego, I'm writing it here because I know there is some truth to it, even if I couldn't make a fortune, I know I have the ability and potential of someone who could. Another, not so brag-ish quote is from my younger brother, he said "You definitely share the most extreme trait with our older brother, and that is that you both are experts at pursuing something for 2 months, and becoming pretty good at it, to finally  just give up."
I know there is decidedly some truth to that. I can't tell you how many things I started, tried for a bit, gotten really excited about, gotten my friends involved into, even their friends, and then just...stopped.
      I never have the moment where I feel "I'm giving up on this shit, its too hard, too frustrating" or whatever, I just don't take the next step. I don't know if it's because I don't see the next step as I'm there, or if its just because I start something else, and theres that. However I know for a fact, that it keeps happening, and as I stand now, I have little or no idea of how to stop it from happening. Tips are greatly appreciated!

I like to make the excuse to say I have some sort of ADD, or as some people say in sweden, some sort of letter that's missing. I don't think I actually have any kind of ADD, I just enjoy doing different stuff, or just stuff, all the time. On the other side of "the ADD" you have the moments in my life where I can focus, literally FOR MONTHS without a break. I spent the first 2 years doing art, painting probably for an average 10 hours a day, and I never ever felt exhausted. Only sometimes limited and frustrated about not being able to do more. And finally, when I took my so called break, frustrated because I felt I could do anything, "if I put my mind to it", aka some sort excuse for not finding the challenge in doing painting and work. Which when coming back to doing art wasn't too hard to find, seeing as my work lacked quite a bit, and still does.
So I'm not sure when I can focus, if I can when I want, and what circumstances I need for it to work.

To break away a little bit from the norm that artists seem to must have, I don't  find painting to be the most fun there is all of the time. And I know I know, everywhere you read about becoming an artist, you see that one of the requirements of doing art as a fulltime-profession is that you have to love every moment of it. Overall I do, especially when there is a big challenge involved and it's just outside of my reach or "comfort zone" as it's called. But all-the-time? Nope. It's like long-boarding to me. I LOVE going downhill in highspeed with cars going by on both sides knowing that I erhm.. and this might sound like I'm a sadistic person, might get hurt making just the tiniest mistake. But I "don't love it so much" walking back up that hill for the second run. See where I'm going with this? I think what I'm writing about here is SUPER IMPORTANT. Because it takes off the pressure and just nullifies the frustration knowing that "not loving every second of it" is just one part of it. The next part is the ride downhill, and that part is awesome! (Or uphill, if you want... everyone wants to go up. Preferebly in super high speed...so I'll leave it to you and your imagination to decide where you want to go."
And by the way, I love longboarding. Just thought I'd mention that.

Some really great examples on dealing with frustration and slopes can be found in the book "Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking"
Which I should probably read again..since it's been a while.


Another...thing...that has a great impact on me as a person and how I act on a daily basis, and here is some more cliché shit you've heard a million times, is TRAINING. I used to be a hardcore gamer, I've spent countless of hours in the highest tiers in games such as Counter-Strike 1.6 and Quake 3. I've been so good at both these games that professional gamers would've had a hard time dealing with me. Or that my performance in a professional team would've at least been somewhat equal to my teammates. Thats how damn good I was. During the time I played on this level, I was working out 5-6 days a week. I was practicing gymnastics and weightlifting to an extent where my physical therapist told me I probably had lost a few centimeters to my final body lenght because of the amount of physical workout I was putting my body through. In 2007, I was doing tricking, gymnastics, capoeira, weightlifting, inlines, snowboarding(very casually) and probably other things as well in my spare time that could be put into the category of physical workout.
So Dile...or Dennis.. Please get to the point, you're just bragging about your video games and physique. I got those games too, and I stopped playing them in like 2003 while they were still...popular..you know?. YES YES, I will. The point is that this, and you'll probably see a(the) pattern here, stopped. The gaming, didn't. My motivation however, to "become a better gamer" (yeah, quote from day9, right there!), went away, completely. I stopped playing in teams and I started acting angry and frustrated around teammates, and not just in games, by the way. My reaction time went down and my overall alertness decreased very rapidly as I stopped doing the physical stuff.
How this, on the other hand, affected my art, I don't know. But I'm sure it did somehow, since art can be very straining on the mental level, and such is games. The end of the line is: If you can, and I know most people are able to do this, and most likely already know its importance, WORK OUT. Somehow. It's very very good. And I've repeated this process of getting mentally alert and sharp in different areas of my life, several times, only to lose that edge as I stop working out, or put the physical work away to cope with something else more important.  Other things, such as your social life, no matter how artificial it sounds, will also be greatly enhanced by working out. I usually say to people who ask me about why I spend so much time in the gym, that "just one hour, everyday, keeps me healthier and more alert for a whole week to come!" It's only a big plus really, at least for the pale "artist" that I am, that it makes me look better, too!

With that said, I'll wrap this first blog post up for the time being and just say welcome to my blog! I'll be talking a lot more about other things that concern me, artists and image-making in general and how to deal with things that gets thrown your way. Whatever it's art-making or weightlifting. Everything comes from the same place. You. Your mind. Your ideas. And that is a really huge part of what I think interest me in stuff. Trying to understand the mind and where it can take you.

Thanks for coming to and reading my blog!

-Dile
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Testing stuff

5 min read
Hi...... How will this look? D:

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Hey there people skimming through my DA page.  I just wanted to let you all know that I'm currently accepting commissions and freelance work.

my work can be found either in this gallery ( fruktsallad.deviantart.com ) or @ carbonmade ( fruktsallad.carbonmade.com )

If you want your characters painted, or environments done for your upcoming game, I am the right guy for the job! ;)

Send me a note, or a mail to sketchbjork@gmail.com if you're looking to have something painted for you!

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Blog entry #2 by fruktsallad, journal

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