Some images, and the purpose of creating

This is a post where I want to share my feelings. I want to express why I create the way I do, and what both my art outside the game and Caverns and Dryads mean to me. And why I will never, ever stop developing this game or creating.

Along the way, I’ll show you some illustrations. I’m not sure if I’ll include them in the game, but I’m happy with them. I hope you like them too, adventurer. (I don't put wallpapers because I found a new better way to do them and I'll may do them later).

Three years ago, I was deeply depressed. Due to various circumstances, I had been forced to stop creating for years.

Even as a highly productive person, I had absolutely no time to do anything.

When new digital tools emerged, everyone panicked. Meanwhile, I began creating with them—abstract shapes, colors, and monsters with a pseudo-figurative look.

I didn’t want to resemble anyone. I explored ways to create in my own style.

I returned to drawing and blended those forms with my handmade designs.

That’s how the first images of caverns and underground palaces were born. And the first images of Tamzyn.

I wasted time arguing with others. It was pointless, because I didn’t identify with either the critics or the practitioners. What I was doing was something else—too personal to be widely understood. They only wanted to form teams or attack others—not create.

WHAT IT MEANS TO CREATE (for me)

Art is a worn-out word. It deteriorates every time someone visits a museum and finds a chair with a urinal next to it instead of an oil painting.

It means things to others that don’t mean the same to me.

So let’s talk about creating.

For me, creating is invoking. It’s taking from whatever means surround you and using them to summon something into our reality that, until then, only existed in the mundus imaginalis.

It’s not a technical exercise. It’s not intellectual.

It’s taking time and space—things that exist in alternate worlds—and materializing them here.

It’s passion, instinct, will. It’s not your intellectual brain that creates, but your emotions, your gonads, your blood.

That’s why people like Odilon Redon or Delacroix are great artists. One had no technique beyond his expression; the other was sublime in technique and even greater in expression.

That’s why I use manual techniques combined with very basic software. I seek intuitive use, which clashes with the intellectual mind.

Creating is not executing a technique. It’s loving, feeling, expressing, invoking, conjuring. It’s sorcery.

Where do these creations come from? From Henry Corbin’s mundus imaginalis—a real space that manifests through creative imagination.

What all these people commenting everywhere don’t understand is this: some are in favor of the communion between art and technology, others strongly against it. But they don’t understand. At least they are not talking about the same thing as I do, but about another thing.

Painting or drawing is not using a technique to depict an object. It’s capturing a sensation so that someone else feels the same when they see it.

Writing is not narrating. It’s invoking a portal to another universe.

In the intro of Caverns and Dryads, when Sioul tells you to have a last look to the dandelion flowers, "because soon we will be underground", you are crossing a portal. Then you make the adventure yours.

WHAT IT MEANS (to me)

Stopping creation was like going to hell. Nothing made sense. I can only celebrate everything that allows me to reconnect with creation. I will never again give up creating.

This blog, as it says on the front page, I write for myself. And also for you, who want to read me. There's a bloodline between you and I, made with our imagination.

So I must be honest: I don’t create to make money, nor to please anyone external. That’s the path to unhappiness. I create because I exist—because it’s my nature.

Dryads represent nature. Caverns and underground palaces represent the exploration of the unknown. That’s why I exist: to be true to my nature, to create and explore. And the people who enjoy what I do want to explore, want to feel, and in some way, want to create too.

Through your imagination, you are invoking into your reality this world I have found—and that is deeply meaningful to me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

In another post, I’ll talk about Tamzyn (again, yes). A warm embrace.