Lately I’ve been slowly, subtly, faintly feeling the urge to make things outside of work again. Barely. Just a tiny bit. Maybe. Between the rise of AI “art” and parenthood and life stuff and a strong desire to do things (something! anything!) not on any sort of screen in the non-working hours, I haven’t had the energy for it like I once did. Or maybe it all could be summed up more simply by the phrase “getting older.”
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Whatever the case, when the magic stars of impulse, motivation, energy, and time align, I do still try to act on it. That being said, here are some waves.
Another animation sketch. Sometimes when I don’t know what to make (I only know that I do want to make), I start by drawing a few random things. Then I animate transitions to get from one to the next. I try to do this without much forethought or planning — a simple attempt to put my ego on the shelf and not expect anything from the thing… getting out of my way and just participating in the simple act of discovering something. I like taking on the mindset of a curious observer who’s just here to see what might happen, instead of hoping for any given result. Anyway, you can see the initial still “poses” in the last few slides, and some resulting animated experiments in the first few. Thanks for looking.
Another quick animation sketch. It can be fun to bring something into Ae and explore it a few different ways. Almost always results in some nice accidents. Thanks for looking.
This morning I finally did something I’ve been talking about doing for the past three years — dug out my old Canon DSLR and made some real photographs. Imagine!!! Out of practice and definitely need a zoom lens but it sure is fun to shoot my kids and their buds.
Here’s a little animation sketch I made based on an idea my son Asher had (last slide). “This drawing isn’t good. I’m just going really fast to show you the idea, dad.” Hey man, I totally get it. Do it all the time. “The lines mean the raindrops go back up to the cloud and then it all starts over again.” Nice.
This turned out to be a fun exercise, just getting a little nudge of an idea from my son and running with it to make something. Thanks for lookin!
Made a real thing about artificial things. I do get that AI can be (and is very much already / will be increasingly) a tool. And also, I do not think it should be thought of as a replacement for human creativity. I wonder about the world my children will inherit, on many levels. In my naive hopes for the future, I have to believe there will always be a place for real things, made with real intelligence.
Don’t post here much anymore, because, like, why? Even as I went to share this, a box popped up that informed me, “Sharing a post with audio can get more reach,” and it grossed me out. Can we just go back to pre-iPhone days? When even if people led a double life, at least both were real. Ha. Screen life ain’t it, that’s all I know. Said the old guy. Ok. Here’s a drawing. A meandering post for this meandering drawing.
Could make a cool wallpaper — I’ll put in Stories for that.
One of the things I (still) love about this work is getting to work on so many different kinds of things, with all kinds of people, all over the world. It really does keep things interesting. This one was special to me because it came to us via a design and illustration hero that I’ve followed / been amazed by for over a decade now - Don Clark, aka @icreature . I ended up reading the book written by the guy who started the conference we made this intro vid for - WELCOME - and found lots of inspiration in that, too. While it’s written from a perspective rooted in the Food & Bev industry, I highly recommend “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara to anyone who does client work or makes things in the service of other people. It’s a good read and gave me lots to think about with regard to how I relate to other people in my work.
Said more about this over at Iggy Vee (@igor_valentine ) but wanted to share it here too. Thanks for looking.
