SomethingSpicy:- I never feel frustration at the thought of spending months, or even years, creating something and then having nobody see it. I create because that's my nature; ideas, concepts, characters, worlds - these things grow and multiply in my mind at a rate I cannot hope to keep up with. I HAVE to get some of them out as drawings, sculptures, digital art, novels, NWN stuff, whatever, just to clear some of the chaos out of my mind lest it otherwise rupture itself like a turgid camel.
I create for my own benefit; as an artist I don't really have much interest in "speaking to others through my art" or whatever. I produce stuff I myself like to look at, listen to, read, etc. Whether anyone else likes it or ever even sees it doesn't bother me in the least.
Yes, it's nice when you've put time and effort into something and somebody sees it and says "Oh, that's good", but that's not why I do stuff. If I sought adulation, given the moderate response to most of the NWN stuff I've ever done, the fact that none of the few things I've done more recently (as distinct from the older rubbish) that might even vaguely merit such have never gone to "Hall of Fame" or anything and certainly won't now since there's not many people left in the Community and more or less nobody bothers voting on stuff on the Vault, then, had adulation and praise been my goal, I'd have left the Community many years ago.
The NWN stuff I've released I've put out essentially just as a vague return gesture for all the stuff I've had from other artists in the Community who've been kind enough to share their stuff over the years... For example, without Ryuujin's double-jointed leg model that I adapted for Lucirath wwaaaayy back before I knew what gmax was, I couldn't have even attempted to start a NWN version of Demoness Tales and so probably would never have done much with NWN in the first place).
Truth be told, though I'm now firmly nailed to NWN having put far too much effort into it to stop, I'm constantly on the edge of leaving the Community and just keeping to myself, since a release of "stuff" takes A LOT of additional work in checking Haks cobbled together solely for the Community out of my own chaotic, bloated, stupidly immense Haks, being ludicrously concerned with getting nice screenshots done, etc, etc. Takes a surprising amount of time, just for the sake of the Community - and then a mere fifty people or less ever download it and maybe two or three actually vote on it at all if you're lucky.
Nobody sane would do that amount of work for that kind of "reward".
So I keep saying to myself, "forget it - I'm packing this in - I'm only creating these Creatures and Placeables and things for Demoness Tales anyway, so..." But then, some silly, enjoyable interaction occurs or there actually is a noticeable reaction, such as to the first selection of Maldrapur Chronicles stuff I put out, and those few stalwart lunatics individuals who keep being enthusiastic about my rubbish still fly the banners of appreciation and so I carry on here for another few months...
I'm sure I'm not the only one here to have similar feelings.
Tarot:- The above more or less covers what you said too. Given that I create, essentially, for my own benefit, simply because I have to 'cause it's who I am, I really don't care how much work I do - and the Doctor Who project entailed a great deal - that is never seen (beyond Fifi and myself). I don't create art for others and I don't give a damn if the world "loses" by never seeing it. I don't lose anything by not sharing all the stuff I do. I mean, I've got something like 25 novels completed, 6 plays, 140-odd graphic novels, I don't know how many paintings, drawings, etc, piles of weird sculptures, figurines, maquettes of some seriously bizarre Spleen monsters, my musical compositions, not to mention all those gigantic, life-size Creatures all crammed into this rubbish house. The passionate work of a lifetime. Ninety percent of it has never been seen by anybody but Fifi and I plus a very few close friends and very likely never will. This bothers me not in the slightest.
And it's only that the malignant cesspit that is human so-called civilization forces one to have to have money, that I've ever sold a few paintings, shared a bit of writing, etc, over the years. And, having been ripped off by the reeking film industry, more than once, big-time, such efforts generally just make me even more insular, embittered and rabid than I was to begin with.
And money's such a farcical thing anyway. It isn't real... It was just cobbled together one afternoon 'cause the barter system was getting impractical as people learnt how to traverse greater distances. Damned hard to carry a few camels jammed in your pocket or lug forty oxen everwhere you went or drag the tools of your trade with you at all times on the offchance you needed to build a shed for someone in return for sixteen goats and a stack of clay vases... It probably seemed a good idea at the time. "Yes, I know, let's have some worthless little, easily-carried tokens that REPRESENT goats and camels and pots and stuff, then we don't have to cram live cows in our pockets any more...
Yet within a few very brief centuries, these worthless, representative tokens has ceased to be a handy convenience and were now THE purpose and motivation of the entire human species. Armies waged wars for it. Tyrants starved and bled their own people dry for it - were tyrants precisely through their insane lust for it. And worst of all, it didn't even represent anything any more. Now it was just fought and clawed for simply for itself. It became power, luxury, a psychological imperative of the first order. It altered the gross behavioural structure of a species, enslaved them without awareness. It destroyed mankind.
And today, most humans live their lives with the accumulation of money as the primary goal, a fixed necessity, and they don't even stop for a single second to ask why, to wonder what the stuff really even is or why it exists. And worst of all, those of us who do think, those of us who still belong to that hated and resented tiny minority - individuals - must also strive for money, whether we want it or not, because without money, one cannot purchase basic necessities such as paints, fibreglass, epoxy resin, inks, paper, etc and thus create monsters... oh, and there's rubbish like food and shelter too, I s'pose...
Anyway, with regards sharing the Doctor Who stuff privately, I have thought of that, be assured. However, with twenty fairly large Modules and a billion tons of completely mandatory CC, it's not something that I could just quietly e-mail to someone and I have no other means (beyond a Vault sub) of sharing that vast amount of stuff online. As I think everyone's aware, I have no internet access of my own and have to come over here to my mother's lair and use hers and she is paranoid (family trait, I guess) about "registering" "signing up", that kind of thing. It was a long and bloody battle just to get her to agree to my adhering myself to Photobucket so's I could plaster pictures of rubbery Spleen Creatures and things on these forums. The Dropbox Wars, the Mozilla Fiasco and the Firefox Incident went nowhere and aren't likely to. Short of psychic transmission, it would mean recourse to sending discs through untrustworthy international postal systems. Hm... But let's not say that I'm utterly against the general idea. I said nothing about it, even in that PM to you, regarding "private viewings" 'cause I didn't want to raise your hopes only to then squash them again when I found no practical means of doing it...
(As to the latter, I assume that's for other people's attention, since you know my views on the so-called "new series" of Doctor Who and can't imagine what difference a bit of crap directing by a director as hopelessly amateurish as Peter Jackson would make...)
Klatchain of the Tribe of Coffee:- As I think I mentioned above in one of my interminably long and rabid posts, I messed around with the idea of just a small Module or two purely done for Vault release.
My problem there is that by the time I get something to the point that it's good enough that I think, "Hm, this is worthwhile", I don't want to post it for all the above rabidly-foamed, paranoiac reasons in the provious posts. And if it's NOT up to a standard I'm concerned about, I want to post it EVEN LESS 'cause it's completely rubbish and pathetic and I don't want people thinking that's the level of my work.
Catch 22.
As to e-publishing, since I'm more or less wholly unfamiliar with the internet, I'm not even REALLY sure what e-publishing even is, beyond the blisteringly obvious. Doubtless there are shades and degrees and different copyright applications within the framework. It's something I keep telling myself I'll look into some time... probably for about five years or so now...
As to art being a process you splurge and then refine to shape... Of course, absolutely. How could it be otherwise? I can often keep refining over several years. The trick is to eventually be able to say "OK, I'm going to call this finished and leave it alone now" at an efficacious point. Difficult... And, Zwerkules, of course, it involves bricks. Naturally it involves bricks. OBVIOUSLY it involves bricks.
Never attempt anything without sufficient Big Bricks!
