TODAY'S FEATURED POST

Sketch Survivor Island

Allen Williams

I’d like to try something a little different this August on Muddy Colors and engage you in my process in a more direct way. Below, you’ll find a full page of sketches pulled straight from one of my sketchbooks. Each individual sketch is numbered so you can reference it. What I would like you to do is take a moment, look through these eight sketches, and choose the number of the one that speaks to…

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EVERYDAY ORIGINAL

Portrait Eleven

YESTERDAY’S POST

Image

BUILDING WORLDS

Greg Ruth

August 1, 2025 - [caption id="attachment_81366" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Unused spread from THE MONKEY by Osgood Perkins/NEON[/caption] World Building is one of the most underrated essentials of storytelling, and if you do it right,  one of the most invisible. In my personal opinion, the holy trinity of storytelling World Building and Character Development are top tier with Plot as the tiny lagging puppy running keep up. Character and World Building are what draws you in to a story, and want to revisit it again later. When a story is working, Plot is merely the tick-tock of events in the service of those two. But, we've been in a two-decades long cycle of high concept/plot narratives that have crowded out the other two, leading us a seemingly endless raft of spectacular, and saccharine stories that fill seats in movie theaters for…

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  • Skadjer on Sketch Survivor IslandPerhaps a minority vote, but I'm partial to 2.
  • MrJ on Sketch Survivor IslandMay I suggest a combo of 1 and either 3 or 7. If not then just 7.

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