That thing called guilt

After a day of researching I feel quite guilty. I haven't created anything today. Not a painting, not even a pencil scrawl. And that kind of makes me feel sad. It's very hard for me to research without creating anything.
I'm sure some of my classmates feel the same. So usually my way of creating things is either building a 3D model. Paint on paper. Or create something with photoshop.

But can I use that for my research. Can I tell stories with my images? Are my paintings quite good enough. In my opinion I still have much much to learn. Composition for example. When you look at movies no camera angle or arrangement is a coincidence. There is a whole theory behind composition. The old masters did it and people are still doing it. Even in games. A good composition can tell the story for itself. And that's a thing my paintings lack. So can I learn this? Because that is what I really want. After school I'll probably try to become a concept artist or someone who creates worlds for videogames or film, so I need to make my work stand out. A graduation research would be the perfect opportunity to research these things. But I still need to keep interaction in mind though! Because just images will never be enough.

So this would be a question to ask myself

How can I pull people into my game without using spoken word. So how can I make visuals speak for themselves?

I'll probably have to change my thesis again. But this would be a good place to start, when I learned a thing or two and practised a bit (there is the fun part) I'll try to come back to my initial question.

How can I make people interact with eachother and face them with tough choices that can possibly have negative outcomes for the rest of the group.

And how can I make people interact with eachother without using too much spoken and written text.

So the use of visuals is a must for me if I really want to function in this project. Some people research by reading articles. And some people just need to create things.
So lets make some fun and something good will hopefully come out of it.

After practising, sketching and reading, I'll probably need help from my friends to see if the images tell their story without me having to explain what's happening.
Afterwards it's up to me to come up with some core gameplay elements, keeping interaction between multiple players in mind. Then come up with a clear visual style that I can use for production.

So it's on to research, composition, color, light, values and shapes to tell my story.

It will probably be pretty hard. But at least I'm researching while creating things. And that makes me happy.