Creative Process

These first few weeks of 2013 have been busy, with my friend Dru visiting, an upcoming Heineken show in Phoenix for work, and my body waging an ongoing battle versus the East Coast Plague.

Indian Dinna with Dru

Vû Bar, with a view!

Sleeping hard in a hurricane of flu. 

Hot cider drinks on a roof with Dru;
Attempt #5 at Get-Betta-Soup.

In the midst of it all, I've been lucky to have some unexpected freelance projects come my way from old friends and cohorts.  The former work-thieving Director of Production, Andy, who jumped ship at Indelible, reached out to me for a potential project coming up; and this week I was asked if I'd do the designs for Tiffany's Part Deux (the spring collection) by my old Mantra friends, who are still at what's left of the Indelible enterprise.

First at bat, though, I'm doing a quick webseries title sequence for an NYU grad I worked with a year ago.  Charles is self-financing the endeavor, so it's paying in the realm of nothing, but I couldn't be more excited to knock this one out.  I really want it to turn out fantastically, I just need to buck up to the challenge.  Every project I do makes me more aware of my own creative process, which (at this point) is still frustratingly slow.  Here's about how the mucking through it all goes:

• I start by pulling reference images based on any direction I've been given.  In this case, Charles wants old-timey, grayscale titles that allude to the days of rotary phones.  (His webseries involves prank calls.)  At the same time, he wants there to be an element to the titles that feels a bit modernized and 'hip'.   I had two main looks in mind -- one based on old movie titles, another based on jazz cover art/James Bond-style pop-graphics from the sixties. 

Reference!

Reference!

• Next I start hashing things out in Photoshop and Illustrator, though at this point I have no idea what it all should look like, even in my head.  There are a lot of mental olympics to go through in figuring out what sort of animating device the titles can utilize and how to work that into the design.  I draw sketches, I make storyboards, I basically stall-out to the point of thinking I just can't figure it out -- until, finally -- some little thing falls into place and I get over that hump and arrive at the point where I can actually see the look in my mind, finally, and just have to try my best to get it onscreen.

• Doing all of this will probably take me a serious commitment of time; easily 18 hours or more.  That struggle time is hard for me, because it never feels productive.  It's filled with doubts that creep up when I can't see the project clearly for what it will become.  I've watched other designers who seem to effortlessly conjure multiple inspired looks in a matter of minutes, and wondered why it's never that way for me.  Under tight deadlines I can usually come up with some sort of look, but for something to really feel like it's my vision and the very best I've got in me, the process seems much more elusive.  If I struggle enough, it always clicks - I just haven't figured out what causes the ultimate Ah-Ha moment, or how to help it happen sooner.  So, I'm working on that.  I'm trying to work smarter, not harder, and certainly not longer, as the late nights post-Day Job can be killer (Cue the Flu).

Anyway, process aside: here are the styleframes I mocked up for Charles.  We're going with the much more inspired Sixties Graphical look, which I love.  Fonts are placeholder, and these aren't storyboard sequences, but the mood has been set and I'm ready to animate life back into the retro phone.

MOVIE TITLE LOOK

SIXTIES GRAPHICAL LOOK