My Creations!!!
I made a show. God i love fanime.
Uh... Watch it. Watch it now!!!
Holy shit there's a lot...
The original draft of Pinecone's Pitch
I had just seen Sparkle On Raven: The Life of Drillgirl and i fucking exploded.
I had to do something. And that something was pinecone.
I was working at a grocery store, i had a lot of paper bags from it. Buildings.
Stuffed animals were the actors. I got paperclips, strings, and chopsticks to make shitty pupeteering rigs.
Props were all just random bullshit i had around because i get given weird shit i don't want and keep it for some reason.
I didn't have any good camera stuff, just my phone. Propped it up against random objects or held it in one hand while pupeteering with the other.
It was a mess, it was obtuse, and it was unpleasant.
And i loved it.
Of course, this iteration of the project was never finished.
I burned out maybe. Or got too busy with college. Or depression hit.
It could've been a lot of things honestly.
But it was dead.
It was over.
I love fanime
A friend mentioned Sparkle on Raven. I rewatched.
And the demon returned.
Except I didn't make something. I didn't have the means really.
But i dug.
The creators had mentioned at times some things that were inspirations for their show.
My Jungle Book: Your Year?
I popped off. Holy shit.
Its peak.
And there's more things like this?
What the fuck?
And so I watched a LOT of fanime.
Shoutouts to Fanime Realm and Fanime Station.
Ur goated.
Fanime changed me.
My thoughts on and relationship to art changed.
Or rather, old thoughts and philosophies regarding art resurfaced.
I'm not a good artist. I'm not a good writer. I'm not a good animator.
That doesn't matter. The act of creation in itself is the closest that anyone can come to being real.
The end result is merely a byproduct of the act of creation.
There's a great image of 2 people in a museum, both saying "I could make that".
One of them returns with nothing, the other returns having done it, saying "Where's yours?"
This, in my eyes, is fanime.
To see art and see beyond the flair, the glamour, the bells and whistles.
To see what actually was made.
To see the people behind it, the steps it took, and to realize
"I COULD DO THAT"
And to say it with your heart, to say it with love.
And its true. I could.
ANYONE COULD
So why hadn't I?
So I made it.
Manic episode happened. I drew the whole thing in a week.
Then I decided it'd be funny to have a theme song.
That took 2 weeks and was about the same size as the rest of the show (number of images).
Then I edited it all together in 1 day.
3 weeks.
And I was done!
I for some fucking reason decided it'd be funny to make an episode 2.
Fuck.
I already made the opening animation bit though.
So uh... I had to make it make sense.
The plot from episode 2 onwards is based off of the theme song.
Funnily enough, as of writing this, last night I was a (disavowed) guide on things to avoid.
This is BIG on that list. Which I find quite funny!
The naming scheme for the episodes is that they're all called "Pinecone's Pitch"
But "Pitch" has a lot of definitions.
A Proposition, Baseball, Glue, Sounds, Gear Tooth Spacing, Slope, Rotation, etc.
There's so many options.
The plan is to have 4 episodes. Then I'm done.
Each episode takes about a month to make.
But I'm not working constantly and taking breaks, so its a bit longer between them.
But I should be able to finish before 2026 ends.
Bad art is a moral imperative.
Every day you see the wonders that people have made. The best of the best.
And in being shown only the best, we lose sight of the path to that point.
We lose sight of the fact that the best of the best isn't all that there is.
Expectations are set. And they are set astronomically high.
But you don't need to make the best of the best.
You don't even need to make something that's good.
Because all art is good by virtue of having been made. The only bad art is art that doesn't exist yet.
The concept of "Bad Art" is paralytic and actively corrosive towards creativity and is easy to recognize intellectually as being garbage.
And yet it remains in the mind. A parasite that cannot be removed.
To understand it does not mean you feel it.
And so how do we counter this? How do we defeat the demons that hold us back?
You make new words, new definitions. You make new bars that are lower.
An animatic is just an animation, but it has a new name with lower expectations.
A storyboard is just a comic with different expectations.
Fanime is just Anime with different expectations.
You are making a show. A whole ass show.
It isn't on TV, you don't have a studio, you don't have all sorts of things.
But it is just an anime.
I'm conflicted on words like these. Words that derride the things they describe.
An animatic carries implications of being somehow lesser than an animation and separates itself from that.
Fanime carries implications of ameteurity and again is separating itself from anime.
But the distinction being made isn't real.
It is entirely constructed.
And the fact that these are being used to exclude yourself from that to which you aspire is tragic, I feel.
And yet, they serve a purpose.
If I were trying to make an anime, I'd fail.
If I were trying to make an comic, I'd fail.
Because as stated above, the expectations set are absurd. They are astronomical.
But these words and categories exist as tools to combat that.
They are expectation resetting devices.
Which is honorable.
While the world would be better if they weren't needed, that is not the world we live in.
We NEED these.
Every time I see an animatic I say "that's just an animation, why is it that they exclude themself?"
And then I remember, I am the same.
Animation is scary, intimidating, and difficult to get into.
But animatics? There is no such wall.
In making "Bad Art" we can normalize a lower standard.
We can make it clear that even if you are not the best, you deserve to create.
Bad art is good art. Because it exists.
And it actively makes the world a better place by showing us that.
Make bad art.
It will be good anyway.
As a byproduct of simply existing.
