How to Be Creative

[nemorathwald]

Hugh McCloud has an interesting essay on how to be creative. A couple of good excerpts, which I have believed for years:

"If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you SHOULD feel the need to say something."

"The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not. Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly."

"Early 30s is a great time to be alive- you're still young, but you have experience. A powerful combo. The downside is all that weird rockstar shit you believe about yourself is well past its sell-by date, and if you haven't outgrown it by then, it starts to fuck up your life."

Comments

[paranthropus.livejournal.com]

Gold. Solid gold.

Very timely, too. Good reading for one such as I, having just left my job so as to embark on a new career as a self-important pseudo-creative roustabout. In Michigan, of all places. What am I thinking?

Hope to see you soon, and thanks for the post.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Hey, this is astonishing news! Congratulations to you. S.E. Michigan I hope. Do tell more!

[paranthropus.livejournal.com]

I took a job teaching animation at CCS, but that's just a pretense that will allow me time to work on my own stuff and see if I can generate some freelance work. It will also be an opportunity to catch up with family and friends. It's not as if I left CORE (my employer here in Canada) in any sort of dramatic way. The production is winding down, and my contract had come to an end. They offered to extend my time with the company in a different capacity, and that would have enabled me to keep going for a few more months. Time is more important to me than money right now, and I got other things to do (see rule number 9).

LJ spell check is a funny thing. It's tagged "CCS" in the paragraph above and offered "Suggestions: COCKS". Heh.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I've often looked into the animation training at Center for Creative Studies. But it seemed too industrial.

Considering how good your Halloween animation was, I'm very interested in finding out what happens with your Mt. Everest. Let me know how it's working out or if there's any way I can help.

[paranthropus.livejournal.com]

How very true. CCS is quite industrial-technically oriented. If anything it was even moreso when I was a student in the illustration department. It is getting less industrial, but it is a slow process.

I have theories about why this is so, and they run kind of deep. CCS is, of course, reflective of the surrounding community. There is a rust belt tendency to worship industry, even as it flees for greener pastures leaving devastated communities behind. There is something of a mythology about industrial technology that actually stretches back centuries. If anything, rural people are actually more enraptured with industrial technology than are urban people.

Imagine yourself a farmer in Roman Gaul, AD 300 or thereabouts. The local Roman legion orders you to beat your plow into a pike and shield, take up arms, and defend the empire. To a peasant farmer, this is the adventure of a lifetime. After it is over, the farmer returns to his fields and tells tales of his exploits and how his simple technology saved the civilized world. Repeat this scenario over and over until you have tractors and tanks instead of plows and pikes. WWII was a boon to this kind of thinking, and Michigan was a central supplier (Willow Run, etc). Of course this has nothing to do with art or animation or filmmaking but the influence remains. If one is steeped in it, techno-rapture is seen as quite normal. I know this because I have been inside of it and managed to get out. Use technology for what it can offer, sure, but recognize that without creativity it will not save us.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Excellent riff on technology.

My theory about why this was so, was that the Motor City (not being the Animation City) has countless companies that need animations of moving mechanical parts, and very few with a need for character or story animation, and they want their graduates to be able to get jobs. Until now I figured CSS wasn't even supposed to be otherwise.