Journey before destination

 Over the past few weeks I have been listening to the Deep Dive podcast with Ali Abdaal. I'd followed Ali's work over on YouTube where he focuses on productivity and the pursuit for meaning in life. Ali would sometimes mention his love for Brandon Sanderson's books and had a podcast episode with the man himself talking about his journey to becoming an author and his creative process. After listening to this episode I was instantly inspired to go back to Sanderson's work, as the Mistborn series had become some of my favourite fiction books. I've dived back in to The Way of Kings picking up from where I left Kaladin training bridge crew 4 and excited to continue the series!  It's good to be reading again.

Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. - The First Ideal of the Knights Radiant - Brandon Sanderson

I've almost finished the Coffee Food Cart in Blender this week. I need to make some final adjustments and add some final details and I will be ready to start following the UV's and materials tutorial! I am feeling more comfortable as I go through this pushing myself through the things I'm feeling anxious about! Once I've completed these basic tutorials I am itching to begin focusing on building characters again.

I am continuing the fun exercises of figure drawing which I am so grateful to Adorkastock providing such a great resource for free. This meditative process is a great finisher to my days and  I feel more comfortable each time doing them with the quicker timings becoming a lot easier and more expressive than before.

Not much to report on my Character design challenge for this month or last month. Last month I'd focused on completing some private work and didn't manage to finalise my idea however I will definitely look to finish it. The idea was around fighting clowns who had formed gangs in a time of unrest and my character was formed from a living Jack in the box'er inspired by characters from Nintendo's fighting game Arms. 

Jack in the Box'er idea

This month's challenge is to create a Dog adventurer, I'm trying to decide between Gunner the Boerboel wielding his devastating pitch fork (based on true events) or Ollie the Havanese as a little warrior adventurer. I may work on the ideas of both a bit more from the rough sketches I have created initially and then choose from there!

Ali will always finish a podcast by asking his guest 'Journey or Destination' and to me it will always be journey. While it's good to always have a destination in mind as a way of directing your journey I think being able to appreciate the journey is a more meaningful. This journey is hard but I'm grateful I get to experience it and learn from it everyday. The destination is ever changing to adapt to the knowledge that we gain along the way. Have a great week and I'll update you again with the progress of my journey.