ratcreature: RatCreature as memesheep. (memesheep)
RatCreature ([personal profile] ratcreature) wrote2011-08-02 09:15 am

Thirty Days of Fanart Meme: Day 25 & 26

25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you create fanart? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" for art? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

In general I need quiet to concentrate and music distracts me. I don't use music to create a mood, don't have playlists, and actually I listen to very little music, because I can't read with music on in the background either. Depending on how frazzled I feel (I'm easily distracted, especially on the computer) sometimes background noise helps, so then I may have some tv on in the background, but mostly not.

26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a piece of fanart?

I don't really draw research intensive things, like historically accurate costumes and backgrounds or such. I look for relevant references, whether screencaps for characters, or pictures of movement or postures or animals, but the closest I've come to "research" was getting a few books on machinery for the steampunk puddlejumper picture. You wouldn't think such a basically whimsical picture needed much research, but I still wanted the parts look like machinery, and the prompt this picture originated from was "Victorian steampunk AU" and I didn't settle on a mechanical pterodactyl right away. It turns out children's books explaining technology are quite good if you want detail pictures of machines. For my HP magical creature series I browsed through google books looking for scans of old encyclopedias to get an idea for the style I'd need to fake something like that. That was fun too.