I love the work you all are doing and have been following for years! How do you build your visual library in a deliberate way (rather than just "watching media" and hoping for it to grow)?

I am so glad someone asked this question!
Cause it is a thing that i, personally - will refer to a lot in the posts on this site, and something i generally tell my students when teaching. 

So let’s talk about Critical Media Consumption in regards to artistic development. 

Effectively expanding your visual library

https://www.orchidsinternationalschool.com/why-students-should-be-allowed-to-read-comics/

You’ve probably experienced it before, someone telling you to step out of your comfortzone, watch a series you don’t really have an interest in, read a book that sounds godawfuly boring to you, or play a game that doesn’t really appeal to your preferences. 

You politely decline, or tell the person that “ yes! i’ll put it on my list “ ( Said list of course being the proverbial “ I hope you’ll take the bait, and won’t actually force me to sit down and watch/read/play this with me” list ) 

This is fine. Nothing wrong with not spending your precious spare-time on consuming media that you defenitely know you aren’t going to enjoy.  

But, if we take a step back: Exposing ourselves to these new kinds of experiences opens up our minds to new perspectives. Something that will be critical down the line - if you intent to expand your horizon as an artist and creative person ( and just in general round yourself and your preferences out ). 

Your consumption of media of any kind, adds to a collection of perspectives, emotional and physical experiences, methodology and history of the media which you are consuming. We’ll refer to this collection as: Your visual library.
 
It plays a vital part of any research phase, which will preceed many larger projects’ visual inception, and lay down the groundwork for their look and feel. 

This visual library  is the vault of input that your brain will draw from when you work on drawings, projects, etc. Taking inspiration and experience from the library as it goes and implementing it in your designs.
You can learn to control which input in said vault that you get to use in your projects and which to leave out - through trying your hand in the respective genres, formats and methods that each of these inputs proposes. Say-  as in trying to write a comic set in the neo-noir setting, or drawing in a completely different style than your own. Eventually, with experience and knowledge enough of these seperate inputs, you can start combining the experiences in your visual library to concoct unique concepts and methods to bring your projects to life. 

But in order to use this vault effectively - we must of course, first, stock it ( Passive Consumption )  

Doing this is pretty simple at its core. Typically, a person will consume media and experiences pretty automatically as they engage in their daily life. Reading their favourite books, watching their favourite shows, playing their favourite games. This we’ll call Passive Consumption: Consumption of media and experiences that seeks to entertain us and fill up the gaps of boredom in our day.

We do this without much need for motivation or provocation, and it provides a baseline of insight into the given experience. 
This logs into your visual library as well, however - your engagement with the experience will be somewhat basic, and thusly give a pretty basic understanding of the medium. ( More on that later ).

Make it a study! ( Critical Consumption )

A disclaimer: I will be using the word “critical”, which in this context is not to be conflated with the word criticism, but rather as a term for thoughtful and reflective engagement with the given media. 

I am personally absolutely terrible at leaving my comfortzone of experiences if i rely on my Passive Consumption alone. There are many things that don’t interest me, and even things that interest me - can bore me to no end if i don’t engage with it in a certain way. 

Trying out new things can sometimes lead to disapointing or sub-par experiences, and that’s perfectly fine. But how do you take those demotivating experiences and turn them valueable despite their drag. 

For me, i found that it helps to treat the foraging into foreign experiences as an assignment of analytic study. When i watch movies, play games or read books, not out of leisure, but to expose myself to it to expand my visual library - i approach it through critical analysis, with a purpose and a research-question in mind. And then i’ll evaluate and preferably discuss my experience with others afterwards. 

- How does the style of this particular animation impact the storytelling?

- How does the author handle dialogue in these action-frames of this comic?

- How does this musician reflect their indigenous culture through their music?

^Questions such as these can help alleviate the experience from simple passive watching, to something you engage with on a deeper level. Something you’ll gain knowledge and perspective on answering. You are now engaging in Critical Consumption - a highly effective way of acquiring reference for your visual library. 

If you’ve ever gone through media-studies, art-classes or similar creative classes, you may find that the teacher will expose you to a host of experiences before letting you run wild with your assignment. These experiences can showcase any number of things; the; at the time - groundbreaking CGI of the matrix, a specific animation style’s approach to backgrounds, or an author’s unorthodox way of writing characters. 
They are likely doing this to make you aware of just how much material is out there, ripe for you to go explore and add to your visual library. 
( Personally, i can say that a lot of my classes prior to an assignment is basically just our teachers exposing us to any number of media so that we can get inspired to engage with the experiences critically, for later reference in our assignments ). 

Your way

We hardly all approach Critical Consumption the same way. Some might prefer to do it alone, from under a blanket and with a snack in their hand. While others prefer it in classrooms. 

Personally, my favourite way about it is to grab a friend or classmate ( i have certain friends that help me in my creative endeavours ), pick a drink of choice, grab my notebook and sit down and go through the experience- and then discuss our analysis during and after the experience ends. 

Lately, this has consisted of me and one designated friend drinking cocktails and watching old Samurai flicks from the 1960s and discussing their significance and meaning way into the early morning hours.

^Some small, extremely messy footnotes from my viewing of two Kurosawa movies - from a Critical ‘Cocktail’ Consumption session, as part of a narrative project. 

Can I cheat my way to a larger Visual library? 

If i watch a lot of video-essays on Youtube, am i then still building my visual library?

Yes. and No. 
Mostly no. 

When watching video-essays, or consuming any media that has gone through someone else’s venacular before yours, you are experiencing a moderated and appropriated version of the media itself. Essay’ists are telling you about the experience in ways that underline the point they are trying to argue, and will not be giving you the full picture no matter how hard they try. 

That isn’t a problem in itself. Video-essays can be educational and broaden your horizon. People with academic approaches in particular can help expand your vocalbuary within the fields of which they cover - however, experiencing something secondhand is far from as valueable than experiencing it yourself.  Your immersion, your perception and analysis is wholly unique to you, and this uniqueness will come through when you implement the material from your visual library in your work.  No one can make the observations exactly like you do, and that is critical to building an extensive but personal library. 

This is not me discouraging you from watching video-essays, i am personally a bit fan of them as well - but i would not regard them as Critical Consumption due to the minimal involvement you personally have in the analytical aspects. I’d file it somewhere between Passive and Critical Consumption. 

I hope this shed a bit of light on the matter, otherwise - feel free to poke in again, and i’ll try to elaborate further :) 

- Mod wackart ( Ko-fi ) 

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