Sculpting/Collaging vs. The Blank Page
Just listened to this great interview with a comics guy. I don’t know this guy or the comics thing, but I loved the way he talked about creativity.
He makes this comic. It’s basically a collage of victorian clipart. He manipulates them, puts them together, zooms in, zooms out, and mashes a story over it like so much mod podge.
He talks about how this kind of creativity is much more inspiring to him than a blank page. Well, yea, no shit.
He also talks of his career as a movie trailer editor. Again, taking this thing, collecting some scraps and bits and rearranging them.
He also talks about how he sometimes just starts with the pictures, puts them together and then gets inspired by something this bear could be saying to this guy.
Rearranging existing things to find some connection that wasn’t there before. Manipulating some existing thing into alternate shapes.
I love this as a model for creativity… or a mode. I love his perspective about this. I also love his easy way of saying, “yes, this is what I do.”
Re-jiggering how I think about what I do more towards this “collaging” or “sculpting” mode takes some of the pressure off.
When I brainstorm a bunch of stuff, put each idea on the whiteboard or notebook or on its own sticky note, and then rearrange them…
When I draw a bunch of boxes in photoshop in different colors and then rearrange them…
When I clip bits of websites I love and rearrange them on the canvas…
Because, let’s be honest, blank pages fk’n suck.
