Community & Collaboration

The Spirit of community is very important! I for one am rather distant from how social media works and tend to not be very loud at times. I’m that chatter box who just knows random fun facts and all sorts of people because I can just walk up to a stranger and have a three hour conversation. Basically I will likely not share on social if I’ve helped someone with something or that I’ve chatted with someone or they’ve done something nice for me in private it’s how I’ve always been.

Know that I will:

• say something if it is to support a project I’ve helped someone with because I think it’s a cool project and I want to support them.
• I will share if they’re comfortable that they did something nice for me in private and I really appreciated it, I’m truly thankful and honoured that they thought of me.
• Say thank you for things either privately or publicly

The Spirit of Sharing

As the fan art guidelines suggest a healthy spirit of sharing is something I value, one of my highest values is to offer something to others. I am an ideas first kind of person so if you treat other’s well then I don’t care if you are new to the scene or are not the most knowledgable at whatever you are moving towards simply reach out and ask! If you have an idea for something and you want to create something then whether I’m apart of it or not I’m happy to help see something awesome get made!

Understandably there is a limit to how much I can be involved if I’m not participating directly as I have to value my resources and support myself. That means communicate your idea and goals, if I have the knowledge to support it I can offer you that, If it’s something I want to participate in I’m on board let’s make it happen, even if I don’t have the knowledge I can still likely direct you on the resources or way to enable your creation to start moving closer towards your idea reaching fruition and I’m happy to help!

Why Ask, Why The Call of Adventure?

I for one would never have reached this point without the community and people I’ve had in my life. I had stared away from digital art, I actually had to hear that you’re supposed to be social on social media to realize I’m bad at the social part of the social media. It would have been easy for me to never do any of these journey, and yet I took a class I knew nothing about and had a great time, I was encouraged to pursue an idea for a digital art creation and wound up at a co-op at a media arts artist run centre. A shop I had visited out of curiosity, I then found myself stopping by to chat and check in on them twice a week for almost a year since they always made my day and are now great friends.

From these kind of experiences I started to do more digital work and continue to do nearly every project or assignment for school in the most absurd or seemingly wrong way. It was not a mistake, I saw how things were designed to work to a certain extent and simply said why should it be that way or that’s not very fun, that’s rather limiting I’ll make this other solution work. Instead of crumbling when it continued to feel like I had done everything the wrong way I got up and said what’s the next step, what can I do now, what can I re-evaluate to draw a new conclusion. Not without struggles, not without tears or many upsets and breaking points.

I however, have still been given good graces, I got to hear from my heroes that I had done something in the right direction that people are often scared of change or stuck in a previous mindset of expectations or thinking. Whenever it has felt like I’m stuck and I seemingly can’t place what’s next I’ve always had bird set me straight so I get over my shit, or let me know that even if I haven’t felt enough that I’ve done something with purpose.

Imperfect or not, I still showed up as best I could at that moment, to the best I could with my skillset or time then; because I wanted to share something and thought it was important to give and offer that value to others despite whatever was going on in my life. I knew showing up could offer value to someone else, so long as it was not to the point of destruction or detrimental to the message or concept, I do the best I can to show up! (though workaholic me reaches towards destruction too often than should be so we’re working on that)

This is a far from extensive examination of some the people or events that have gotten me here and support this endeavour and my creations. I know there’s a long journey ahead still and yet already, it can be difficult to know how to say thanks for letting me cook! I overcompensate in my communication as I have seen people acting like I’m an unknowable force of nature(I mean yes? Also corporeal being though). I tend to ask a lot of questions and analyze so when not given verbal feedback like comments or response I worry a bit and don’t always know what to make of it. At the same time it’s really nice to know and hear at times that they don’t chat cause they were just want to let me cook and do my thing. I hope to find a system to help let people know here’s a chatting time and feel more comfortable chatting. You’re always welcome to chat there are just times it’s more difficult for responsive conversation. Maybe a visual signal or added explanation in description for fully interactive streams! So thanks for everything! Thanks for letting me cook it makes rough days easier to weather knowing there’s always something to be done or make!

Thanks, I hope you’ll let yourself adventure and ask more questions!