Alice Winterhold
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Venting about the creative malfunctions (NSFW animations inside, reposts)
🕑 Added 2025-08-21 12:20:35 +0000 UTCI’m going to vent about my own shortcomings now! YAY
I came to the bitter realisation that I do not have creative control over myself. The urge to create a certain something, when it arrives, is overwhelming and honestly kinda of a nuisance. I don’t want to sleep or eat or do anything but work on that thing, well maybe want is the wrong word; it’s more I feel like I HAVE to do it. Considering how mentally ill I am and how little day to day capacity to do much of anything I possess, this is problematic as I will often be stuck unable to work on a thing but also unable to leave it and take care of myself like I know I need to.
I realised that a while ago and while the self awareness certainly helps a little, I am still utterly terrible for this… and it doesn’t help that I’ve also now come to accept I have another related but also slightly different issue in that I really struggle to stick to a brief and constantly expand the scope of what I’m doing. This is real problem because I have plans to start making quick animatics for short video content and that needs to be something I can make efficiently.
Take this gif, for example,
you’ve seen it before but I’m posting it as a reminder. I did this in a couple of hours and called it done. Now, I set about making this with the express goal of making something simple quickly and I think I managed that but am I happy with it? Absolutely not. I see the satisfying movement of the butt and feel like it is wasted on the sloppy line-work, lazy colouring, tweened and unanimated torso, and rushed background. I just want to go back to it and keep working on it, it doesn’t feel finished to me. Even before I ‘finished’ it I couldn’t help but add extra frames to make the butt more jiggly when I really just wanted a basic up and down motion and those extra frames added probably 15 to 20 minutes of work.
And that’s the crux of it I suppose, it’s so easy to “just add a little here” over and over until the thing never gets finished at all. Remember the “Caught Short” cartoon I was working on? Yeah, haven’t worked on that for a year, oops. I didn’t have a solid plan, a full brief, a complete idea of what that would be when it was finished and so as I kept working on it the scope for what I wanted it to be kept growing and growing until I got so overwhelmed by the idea of it that I had to just abandon it. What a waste.
The last thing I posted is another example of this, the wolf and the pig. I started working on it with no plan, just once again the aim to make something quickly; “Animation of a girl getting boned from behind” was the only brief I gave myself. Easy, I thought, but then the IDEAS started to creep in…
What if the guy is fat? - Now I have to draw not only a lot more of a male body than just some hips but also the complicated motion of a big belly rolling
Oh, he could be like a pig man! - Now I have to draw his head too
Oh and he could like, have her on a leash! - Now I need to draw her head jerking up
So I ended up with something a bit like this…
She didn’t have ears at this point and the lines were all a lot more choppy and shit, I had to go and sort of reconstruct what I had at this phase. Anyway, I should have called this done, it had already taken about 3 hours of work which was longer than I wanted to spend on it and I had an idea for a weird little story to go with it; basically the girl pleaded with her big bellied partner to wear a pig mask and he was little uncomfortable with it but still generally up for it, light hearted and comedic. Brilliant!
But, I failed to stop. I had another idea for a story where the big bad wolf gets fucked by a pig, which was at that point also supposed to be quite funny with loads of stupid fairy-tale references, and like, she wanted to have three little pigs in her tummy from EATING them but, o-ho twist! Little pigs in the tummy from RAW SEX! Hilarious! So then I had to add a tail and ears and then I added loads more face frames and then I thought I should add the shading and neaten up some lines and then I may as well add a background and some text and drool and cum and motion lines and
Well, I spent another 6 hours on it before I finally made myself stop….
Now, obviously this is a huge improvement but I still look at it and feel like I could “just add a little here”, the story ended up being markedly darker than than I meant it to be too, and longer, and also I made myself stop writing pretty early into the ideas I wanted to cover because I really shouldn’t be investing so much of my limited energy into writing one story that was supposed to be a very short, funny one and not a AA3 style slow-burn novela about sexual slavery or wherever the fuck it was going.
And that’s all on-top of the fact that I utterly failed to make something quickly. Including writing the story I must have spent close to 11 hours on something I set out to spend 2 on! I need a manager or something to keep me in check, seriously I don’t have the discipline for this stuff.
I’ve been working on a longer animation too (which I keep meaning to post WIPs for, oops) that’s got a girl being swallowed up by a barnacle tentacle thing, it’s got voice acting and stuff but it’s just taking forever because of the same problem, I keep wanting to add more! I’ve been getting the other artist I mentioned a while ago to help with colouring it and that’s speeding things up nicely and I am DETERMINED to finish it just to prove I can but I am also just feeling the frustration at myself at this point.
If I had the energy and mental fortitude, I could probably make the things I want to make without any trouble… but I don’t so I have to either force myself to make a compromised version of what I want or waste my life adding to the pile of unfinished projects :( Both make me sad but at least I do get something out of the former. I wish I was well; it's tiring to be reminded of what was taken from me whenever I try to do things
Comments
john gallagher
DaVinci is said to have quipped “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” He still had the Mona Lisa in his possession when he died. You are a true artist, Alice. Time is just a construct. Don’t let time restrict your genius.
Alex
I certainly understand your frustration! Its my own story. I've ADHD and getting something completed is so soooo hard. Hell, actually starting something and getting the idea(s) out of my head is the first hurdle. Once a project is started constantly tweaking never stops. I work around filmmakers and get inspiration from them how to stop. It works! Sometimes 😐 All of your work is inspired and beautifully erotic and edgy and dark. That's how I take it in as you present it. I don't see what you mean BUT I 100% understand the feelings you write about. I hope this makes sense!
