You need a product not a project – Jake Parker

Today I discovered this video by Jake Parker – You Need a Product not a Project e041.

He talks about not making a personal project but making a product something you can hold or see in a digital form. It must be an actual finished thing made.

Why have an end point?

Benefits of turning your Project into a Product:

1. It gives you purpose to go do the thing and reasons to finish it. It is not playtime or make it as a hobby.
2. Products with end points will force you to finish, it will get you to organise.
3. It will train you to finish things. Not worry about Perfection.
4. Build true self esteem that you have something out in the world, that you have made, don’t worry about perfection.
5. It will help define you as the guy or gal that made the ‘Product’. (It can be good and bad but it attached finished things / products to the creator)
6. Its a personal benchmark you are only good as your last project. It can help you improve from the last project. When you can hold it you will know where you are at. You can see your progress.

Notes from the Stream:

Projects/Products open you up to other opportunities.

Start a project you can finish longer than 1 month but less than a year.

Choose a medium that you can control eg. comics need only 1 persons

Do 1 min of animation.

Some things I learn:

Personal projects are key for art or any new endeavour you want to do.

Projects are overused that sometimes it caused me to just fantasise of doing the project without any real outcomes like make a product.

Thinking of a long project but need baby steps to work on stuff.

Would love to attempt to make a toy someday, but right now I am getting started with making my own self hosted wordpress website.

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Free Animation software Toonz Fork – Opentoonz Morevna edition

If you are looking for a free 2D animation platform similar to TVPaint there is a fork of a project of Studio Ghibli Toonz software called OpenToonz. It seems that they have added some brush engine from Kirta and it looks more capable than the Open source version OpenToonz.

The group also develops their own animations in tandem with the software.Opentoonz Morevna edition

Check out some of the videos:

https://alternativeto.net/software/opentoonz-morevna-edition-/

Morevna YouTube Channel ttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNGfSMqyeefFfI5Xa6HRGUg

 

Imagi Animation Cancelled projects Zelda, T28, Gatchaman and Cat’s Tale

Recently I have been looking at cenceled projects to see if I can learn anything from the ideas and how it got generated. Imagi Animation a HK Based studio had quite a few cool projects that were under development that got shutdown.

When I think about cancelled projects it makes me want to be like George Lucas who could not get the license for Flash Gordon so he created Star Wars.

http://www.moongadget.com/origins/flash.html

In the end everything is a remix.

Gatcha man cancelled trailer looks like big hero 6 style.

http://collider.com/first-movie-footage-from-gatchaman/

T28 Teaser and animation tests and trailer

https://toysrevil.blogspot.sg/2009/01/t28-test-animation-teaser-by-imagi.html

Cancelled project Cat’s Tale. This one seems to be an original show by Imagi though not much is developed it looks like it could have potential to appeal to the children’s market.

Blogging lessons Andrew Chen

Building up content is hard and requires consistent work. A great read from Andrew Chen who writes about Tech. Though it’s a different field there are some good lessons to learn and you can apply it to your art/design or any other endeavors.

I find it fascinating to learn from other successes in different fields and reapply it back to my own design journey.

“A great read from the class act that is Andrew Chan. I especially found this interesting: “For a professional audience, at least, email is the only KPI I care about. Nothing has more engagement

Focus on writing freq over anything else. Schedule it. Don’t worry about building an immediate audience. Focus on the intrinsic.

http://andrewchen.co/professional-blogging/

An Artistic Eye

https://www.gettyimages.com/license/82214615

Today I learn that it’s important to have an Artistic Eye when you are creating your visual media. Its not just enough to be a technical software wrangler (Although that is important). But we need to give something more than just another pretty picture. Technical skill is not enough.

This brings me to a quote I read from J.J. Abrams.

“It’s more important you learn what to make movies about than how to make movies.” – J.J. Abrams

https://quotefancy.com/quote/1059368/J-J-Abrams-It-s-more-important-you-learn-what-to-make-movies-about-than-how-to-make

 https://youtu.be/bN-On2CusDM?t=351

For J.J. Abram’s to him he needs to know what to speak to the audience through the medium of movies. What it means is there needs to be more than just technical skills and be able to Art Direct. What is the current ideas of this age that can be distilled into a 2hour movie life lesson and to make something visually appealing and resonate to an audience. And not just hitting the check marks of your software list.

Now with technology it is so easy to learn software quickly to get results. But how can it may you stand out and be better? Who knows what we will be using in the future to make digital media? Today it’s Maya, Houdini, or maybe occulus, Unity or something else? Technology is always improving.

It also means are we able to see something different and interesting enough so that when we share it with an audience it will resonate with them. It builds down to the creativity and ideas.

Lorne Lanning in an interview also received this from Jack Goldstein to have an Artistic Eye.

I was an illustration student at School of Visual Arts—I had seen his paintings at the Whitney Biennial, and at various museums, and I was just blown away. I showed him my work and I was making all these comments, you know, “I aim to improve this way and that way,” and he goes, “You paint just fine, you just have no ideas.” And that’s Jack in a nutshell.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/may/21/jack-goldstein-glitch-artist/

Building up that Eye

It requires time and experience. I don’t think art school is enough. Many blogs from other artists and even entrepreneurs have said to get out of looking at your Phone or Laptop and go expereince life.

If you can’t there is reading widely such as literature you can live through other lives through books.

This is how we can gather new ideas and information to be reapplied to the medium we work with.

Applying an ‘Artistic Eye’ elsewhere

What is Your medium and who is your audience? You may be in a startup or health care or something else. But we can apply that artistic eye idea to see more than something purely technical. Yes we need to have the tech nailed down but that is just the interface to the needs and wants of others.

Using our artistic eye we can use the methods to one serve and make a painting to see new problems and creative solutions to be applied. Entrepreneurs are already doing this seeing gaps in a market and applying creative solutions.

So the bottoms line is to develop that artistic eye to see what the world needs and will resonate with them through the medium you are practicing.