Mad Max: Fury Road is hands down my favorite movie. Aside from how cool the idea of a post-apocolyptic desert wasteland inhabited by a coalition of resource-hoarding-city-states run by warlords commanding armadas of weaponized cars, wagons and trucks, this movie’s cinematography and overall visual feel makes it one of the most unique piece of visual storytelling I’ve ever seen. The entire movie is essentially one big chase scene with very little dialogue, conveying a range of conflicting emotions: tensity, melancholy, freedom, exhileration, fear, rage, solitude, and even love.

This work was created by another instagram artist who goes by Beeple_crap. He is a digital 3D artist who makes one render every day. His subject matter is commonly focused on technology, politics, the corporate elite and all of the dark metaphorical places they can take the general population. For instance, he has multiple works that depict Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as giant, uncontrollable cyborg creatures that science is doing it’s darndest to understand, while they eat giant pigs or squeal out in cyborg-baby cries. I chose this image out of his account because it a) is not as hard to look at as giant baby politicians ripping open pigs and b) because I enjoy it’s calm but foreboding aesthetic.

This image was created by gy.psy_, an instagram artist that I discovered through a community of artists cultivated by my favorite musician, Bones. His work is usually done in pixels, which draws me in with a nostalgic feeling that comes from playing video games as a kid. I’m also very interested in the subject matter of cyborg technology, and the future possibilities of augmenting our own bodies. There are positive turns one could take that idea in, but there are far more negative, dystopic turns as well. This image does not feel like a positive one.

Katsuhiro Otomo’s illustrations are a huge inspiration to me. When I see his work I’m always in awe of his ability to create an emotionally impactful image with nothing but black and white tones. His commonly used theme of creation and destruction can be applied to many ideas and walks of life, the violence and serenity of life’s events can be effectively reflected in a simple image such as this one, so that any one person that sees it can relate the emotional weight of the image to whatever they’re dealing with in their own life.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.