Category: Uncategorized
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For a while in college I would spend my weekends scratch building a robot. I had a large bin of recyclables and broken toys that were great material for this. I’d usually start on Thursday night and then would spend all of Friday-Sunday finishing it. They were great weekend projects and a ton of fun…
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I tend to go for longish periods of time between getting my haircut. Not terribly long, maybe 4 months or so, but long enough for it to become annoying. It’ll be just long enough that it sort of gets in the way or is just unruly enough to be irritating. This might happen at the…
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A new project means something new to learn. A new challenge to overcome. Something to really sink your teeth in to. A deliberate effort should be made in deciding what that new thing should be; be it a tool, a style, a medium, a topic, or even a person that you want to work with.…
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Before you begin, ask yourself: What do you need to do to finish? When is the project done? What are the core elements? At what point will it be good enough?
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It’s amazing how your opinion on your work can change over just a little bit of time. I spent some time yesterday looking over some of my shorts on my Youtube channel, just a couple of weird animations and experiments really, but I found myself really being proud. I liked them. The question of whether…
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Industrial Craftsmanship The story that article relays, the one about the ceramics teacher, that story is put into just about every self-help, productivity, development book on the planet. It is always referenced, though sometimes it’s a photography instructor instead, but it’s all the same. The thing that might need to be looked into is the…
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That project that you’re tinkering away at in your free time? The one that’s fun? That maybe you only get a few minutes to work on everyday, but that you still get a little of work on? Keep it that way. Don’t force it. Don’t make it your “main” project. Don’t block out hours of…
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What are the themes and ideas of the things you like? The stories, writers, films…? Do they line up? Do certain things overlap and connect? Is their common ground? If so, you’ve probably found your through line.
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I’ve been rereading Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love collection. His fiction meant a lot to me in college, but I really only read his stories once. I’ve read Cathedral a few times, I’ve listened to it too, but for the most part it’s been one and done. I notice…
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To get things done there must be a mix of challenge and uncertainty. If there isn’t, then boredom sets in and then nothing gets done at all. Being bored and finding something to do is one thing. A positive thing. But being bored while doing the thing is entirely another. Implementing challenges to creative or…
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The question of when to leave something has been on my mind recently. When does a project end? When does a day’s work end? When have you done enough to feel proud of yourself? I’m figuring out that you cannot decide these finalities once you’ve begun, especially in terms of a day’s work. If I…
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Here’s a quick lesson in drama that’s been prevalent in my current project: Don’t Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. What’s this mean? It means, when two characters have a conflict occurring between them, don’t let either of them take the easy out. There should be no taking the high ground, at least not without immediate consequences.…
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Inspired by people I admire, here are some of the awesome things I found out about this year. Everything is only in the order of when I found it during the year. There is no ranking. Movies Viewings that were particularly meaningful. Some were for the first time, some were rewatches, all were impressive and…
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On the left is the inspiration. On the right is what I came up with. Inspiration is an odd thing, I don’t know if I’ve ever fully understood what to do with it. Obviously it’s usually the thing that spurs me to begin, but how does it shape and mold what I do? I needed…
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I read this post by the TTRPG creator Luke Gearing the other day and it got me thinking about the phases of a project, which is a dangerous, anti-productive thing to do, but in this case I think it was actually helpful. Gearing explains that his newest project was broken up into three phases. Each…
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I just read this blog post by Molly Fairhurst on collage and it got me thinking about spontaneity and longevity. I can’t say that I’ve “completed” any big-picture projects at this point in my life, but I can look back and point at a sprinkling of day and weekend projects that do make up my…
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Last weekend I was involved in a double short film shoot. Two shorts filmed in a period of three days. Seventeen page total. It was a lot of work, but everything was filmed and the post-production phase has begun. I headed one of the scripts as director, while my writing buddy headed the other. I’d…
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Recently I’ve only been looking at my Youtube Subscription feed for stuff to watch rather than browsing through their main page. It helps remove all the dreck from the feed, and then I can choose if I care about any of the things that my subscriptions have posted. It’s been saving me a lot of…
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The creator of the Mothership RPG, Sean McCoy, posted this blog entry last October. It references another blog by Ted Gioia, also called My Favorite Problems, which talks about the scientist Richard Feynman and how he had a dozen or so questions that guided his life’s work. Gioia created a list of his own questions,…
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While I don’t play a ton of video games, I am really interested in the process in which they get made as it seems pretty similar to a film’s production. Obviously there is a significant computer science background for games, but a lot of the creative and business elements overlap and a lot can be…