Out Loud
Subtlety is overrated. I find I have less patience these days for slow burns and coy insinuations, for quiet stories that never quite go anywhere or actually say anything. When I was first studying writing and art, I resisted the…
Tag Art
Writers Blocking
An idea which many artists at first rebel against, but are generally forced to accede to, is that of constraints breeding creativity. It can be galling, to one who considers themselves creative, to admit to all the confusion and terror…
Making Things Right
I think a lot about what’s right. Not necessarily what is moral, just, factual, or ethical – though frequently those as well – but what fits, what makes sense, what’s appropriate, what’s useful. I think as much about what I…
Connections
When I can stand to, I think about the future. Seldom the future of the world at large – that’s entirely too complicated and distressing right now, although I do try to stay aware of opportunities to do what I…
The Bounds of the Obvious
As I’ve written about extensively for the last few months, I’m currently in the process of creating a tool to go on the Unity Asset Store. Every tool carries within it a set of standards and expectations. Sure, everyone knows…
The Chicken and the Egg
While as an artist I am generally fascinated with the study of technique, and the methods of self-improvement necessary to attain it, I find myself less and less interested in art which exists solely or primarily to be a showcase…
The Water and the Well
There’s two desires that motivate creativity: There’s the desire to create, to pour a part of yourself into crafting art by some sort of cathartic action; and there’s the desire to have created, to have generated some idea, given it…
Overlooking Us All
I was sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office when I happened to glance upwards. There was a cutout between the first floor, which I was on, and the walkways of the second. This rectangle was lined by…
The Pattern of the Woven World
I was thinking about the line “beauty is truth, truth beauty” – which, it turns out, is from the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, but I first heard on The Simpsons and had not until now…
Power/Fantasy
I don’t think game designers talk quite as much about player empowerment now as they used to, and that’s probably a good thing. Power, from the player’s perspective, could be said to be that which lets them affect intentional change…