The 1st of all on Leão Fucsia's Playground: about the habit of writing

This is the first post here in Leão Fucsia's playground. Yes, the website is supposed to have a more profissional profile to it, but I thought about how interesting if would be to have an informal and fun area in the website, where I could share some of the activities I do and thoughts I have. Activities and thoughts of all kinds, even the ones that are not directly linked to being a visual designer or within the realm of 2D animation, character design, branding and art concepts. Hence the name "Playground": a place to destress, to have a little bit of fun, and be completely carefree, just like a kid.

I thought about listing some of the reasons I have to start posting here. It's nice to share my reasoning, I think, because I believe other people might take something from it:

1 - The habit of writing helps forming thoughts

To write a text, you need a certain level of concentration and a level of commitment. You can't write without thinking, and without thinking you can't have ideas, even less so good ideas. As a creative by heart, I feel like it's constantly necessary to think and to come up with new ideas, so I can progress on whatever I might be doing at the moment. So, creating this habit of writing here on Playground will help me creatively in all areas of my life, after all, in the world we live in, it's necessary to be creative at all times.

2 - We need more writing made by people who exist

Point-blank: I don't like generative artificial intelligence. I don't have any desire of using it, or feeding it my thoughts, or worse, to make it think and create for me. Nothing, ever, will substitute human intuitivity and ingenuity, and any person that aims for minimal quality and have any glimpse of decency of what a humam being is capable of doing, which is to create, know that generative IA is nothing but a small character flaw that the system we live in made it possible.

I'm just one guy that is almost 30, that uses his hands and brain to work. I can't stop the technological advances, neither the systemic exclusion of what makes human beings unique, but I can create, think and be despite all of this. It maybe be just a drop of rainwater into the ocean, but I'm willing to show the world, with my little silly protest banner for imagination's decline and incentive to create, even if the creation is inherently bad, or badly made, or unfinished. Those are human qualities, of flaws, but human characteristics nonetheless.

3 - I'm not just a visual designer

The truth is that I have a lot of interests that both intersect or are completely unrelated with my visual design practice. However, in almost every moment of my life I feel forced – by myself or by the need to pay my electric bill – to write, it's about the same subject: arguments and concepts for projects, graphic especifications for production, instructions for the development of brands or campaigns. I believe everyone involved will benefit from me exercising my writing beyond visual design (thought I imagine that the one that will benefit the most will be myself after all). The same way it's great to travel and to visit new places, writing and thinking structurally about other subjects surely must do well too. It's the way to travel withing yourself, to discover new places inside our infinite mind.

My idea for Leão Fucsia's Playground is to talk about my particular and special interests, mainly: gastronomy, videogames (specially Minecraft), animals and plants, culture and books. Of course, when convinent for me, sometimes the Playground will have something related to visual design and 2D animation, because after all it's a work field I have the most appreciation and I'm very fond of it, because it interest me and brings me much joy. Working in a visual identity branding project, on a well rounded and well written animation is one of the best feelings ever for me. So, besides the themes in and outside of design, I believe ocasionally there will be more introspective and personal themes about my life, my friends' and family's. Only time will tell!

4 - Live by what you stand for

It's been a couple of weeks I've been thinking about writing. Writing about many things, random stuff, profound stuff, shallow stuff, things that maybe are only important and make sense to me. I believe I was looking up to be a man that aspired to write, but I stopped and pondered: why can't I be the man who writes? There are no disadvantages on this activity. During the time I'm using to laid out my thoughts in this blog post, I would probably be wasting my day in "useless bands of time", where screens would destroy my attention, making the comsumption of short duration content even bigger. So I thought, that's enough! It's past the time for me to live with so much information and idea input and so little output. I want the dam of my mind to brust, and all of my mind's trains of thoughts that I normally keep it inside, to be externalized, and because of that, to also be registered, be elaborated, be raw and badly made, maybe even sometimes perfect, and for it to exist in all its glory and sorrow and frustration and joy. So, that will be it.

I think it's going to do me well.

Some ideas for the next games here in the playground:

• My previous experience with blogs

• The importance of domestic plants in my apartment and in my life

• Thoughts about Minecraft's 26.1 update

• The importance of the (not so ancestral) art of cooking

• What I thought of By The Sea, by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Alright, for now this is it. I thank you all that did read this all the way through! :)

P.S.: This blog post was originally written in Brazilian Portuguese, and this translation was made by yours truly! - M