Obscurum Opus
The Pitch
Have you ever found That Special Idea that you end up working on for weeks/months/years on end only to come up with a new angle that’s so much better, which means starting from scratch or repurposing everything? Then you find an even better angle and begin the cycle over again? It’s addictive and exhausting and though tons of work has gone into the project there’s actually very little to show for it. This idea of the Magnum Opus is something I’ve found to be incredibly harmful as a storyteller. You get attached to it and hung up on how perfect it must be, usually at the cost of finishing, or even working on, any other creative work.
Of course there is fulfillment and value in endlessly working on the Magnum Opus. Many artists love the process and are only interested in channeling their efforts into it. This post isn’t for them. This is for artists who feel trapped by it. Unfulfilled and unable to execute it “correctly” or shift priorities to smaller projects. To those artists I offer a solution that’s helped me. Something we can call the Obscurum Opus.
The key to this is simple: We need to get comfortable with the fact that we’ll likely never finish the Opus. It’s too special. It’s too complex. There’s just no time to complete it. This frees us up to work on, and execute, smaller projects , while revisiting the Obscurum Opus periodically. Since it’s no longer the entire focus of our efforts it instead becomes a release for unrestricted development. It’s now a pleasure to revisit the experiment, sometimes with a refreshed outlook and new take, knowing there’s no real goal in mind.
This can be a difficult practice sometimes when social media comes into play. We may get excited and want to share peeks at the project. Obviously that alone isn’t a problem, but it may create a sense of expectation from the audience for some final product. But we can all find our own solutions to this. Some might make a blog dedicated to the concept’s development, others might share context-free peeks, and yet others might keep it entirely to themselves. We’re all built different, and what works for some artists may not work for others. But I can confidently say that applying this to my own work has made a dramatic difference in how much I get done.
My Obscurum Opus
I actually have two, but I’m more of a sharing-context-free-peeks guy, so I won’t say much. Cluster of Apex is based on a very old idea that I was making into a webcomic before being invited to pitch it to a now-defunct publisher. Below is a character sheet included in the 2015 pitch and a recent update showing changes in the cast and their looks, followed by some early concept sketches.
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I’m listening to Brazilian Girls today.
