Mutation March 2020

…didn’t happen—but not for what could be obvious reasons in hindsight! After completing the challenge in 2019, I wanted to try something different with this project. I was beginning to feel like I had given myself an unreasonable workload—each day draw quick studies of the animal prompt, brainstorm sketches of possible mutation ideas, pick at minimum three to finalize, then share across social media—on top of working a day job!

So, I revised the timeline of the challenge. Instead of one month, what if it was over an entire year? Instead of one day per prompt, what if I had a whole week per prompt? I spent most of December 2019 figuring out a list of 52 prompts (48 animal prompts, plus four miscellaneous animal group prompts). I learned a lot about how much grey area there is to animal taxonomy—really fascinating stuff!

This year-long Mutation March plan really only lasted a few weeks before I lost focus and motivation. Looking back, I think the main mistake I made was not building in clear structure within each week—how much time spent studying the animal, brainstorming ideas, finalizing. I also had never fully decided how and where I wanted to share this online. So, things fizzled out, and by the time March actually came around, a daily art challenge of weird animals felt incredibly frivolous.

I do think there’s still potential for turning this project into something bigger than a month-long daily challenge, but for now I’ll continue to keep things to a tidy, yet frantic, 31 days.