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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
It has been a bit of a longer journey which isn't necessarily rooted in creativity, but looks for self improvement using creativity as an outlet. It's been a thorn in my side for a while that I haven't successfully satiated my, admittedly barren, creative cravings.
I've been on a self discovery route where I've been mulling my options and looking for changes in life. Because while my life is good and has no real headaches, I'm also not entirely fulfilled through my job or hobbies.
When looking back at my life I've had a handful of smaller projects that I've had to video edit together, and while I've never considered it more than just one offs, I've come to realise I've actually always enjoyed it when I've tried to edit some things together. Keep in mind here, a handful really is just "countable on one hand" amounts.
So I've downloaded the tools, watched a tutorial or two, and decided I'm going to at least complete one thing. So now what? Where do you even begin from this point? What do you make? You need footage to edit, a plan to create something coherent, a script maybe...
That's when I decided to set a goal: Make videos someone else would watch. Easiest way to do so? YouTube.
I'm not looking to be a famous content creator. I'm not doing it for clout. I'm looking to expand my horizons using a very low barrier of entry to do so. YouTube is that low barrier.
Un(?)fortunately, this doesn't solve the mystery of what I should create. But it did lead me to wrangle with myself and figure out what I find interesting to watch and what my own skills are.
To make something truly interesting, something better than good, you need to take a couple -two, maybe three- of your core skills and combine those. Just being funny isn't interesting. Just being good at communicating brings you nowhere. But communicate well and be funny and you've got something cooking.
So I've started by writing down what my core skills are and associating certain ideas with these skills that would make for interesting content.
This is where I am right now. Taking my time, but not letting it go.
What's crazy about all of this, is that this has been really stimulating. And I haven't even started creating something! I don't even know if editing is even the method I'm going to resonate with. But just knowing more about yourself, or at least actively working on figuring it out, has been enlightening, refreshing, and energizing.
I'll start creating a script soon detailing the same journey I've just talked about and just start there. At this point I don't know where I'll end up, but I do know that I'm on the path of creating something that may not be good whatsoever, but something I've succeeded in through effort and determination.
Most importantly, while I'm usually scared of failure.. I'm actually looking forward to this journey.
This was pretty interesting to read on its own. You are already cooking!
So I hope you don't mind me suggesting something:
Make a video about trying to come up with ideas for your video!
Turn your comment into a video. It would work well as a script I think. You could film some b-reel of whatever it is that's been going through your mind while trying to come up with what to make a video about and edit it together whilst narrating this comment over it 😊
B-Roll is really the way to go. Get outside where you live, put a long, fast lens on your camera and just begin shooting stuff. People, places, artsy dutch tilt shots with dramatic focus rolls - anything.
The act of going out and photographing the world is a hobby as old as the motion picture (See: The City Symphony), and when set to music, it can be a great, organic exercise in how to pair up video and sound to create a unique experience.
That's not a bad idea. I planned on documenting the process anyway and this can serve as a preliminary script I suppose. I don't know yet what voice, tone, or style I'll take, but this is a good start.
I used to be subscribed to someone like 10 years ago whose name was Pavilizumab (now it's Peter Draws) and he did timelapses of his drawings and he would talk really calmly over it (crazy to see he's at 1M subscribers now). Maybe some inspiration there? I really like his vibe, anyway: How to Doodle: Some Tips (50x speed)
Well I can't draw to save my life, but I do like the process. The unassuming humor is good too, the drawer of bullets and knives is just funny.
I looked at his latest stuff and it's surprising how much is still the same, even if there's clear differences in presentation.
Good food for thought.
Yeah I noticed that too. I think it's really cool that he's staying true to himself.
Keep us updated with how your project goes!
That is excellent and I think your getting into video creation for all the right reasons. When things get hard and you get stuck or doubt your creative process/talent; remember that a stranger on the Internet supports you and encourages you to keep going.
Thank you for the morale booster!
I always doubt my creative talent. I'm creatively bankrupt when it comes to thinking of new ideas from scratch, a little bit because I haven't flexed that muscle in a while but also very much because that's not where my strengths lie.
I do much better with an existing topic, script, or idea and build on that. As long as someone pitches an idea I can work with it.
Which ultimately results in "writers block"-like ruts where I can think of absolutely nothing whatsoever. Yeah, doubt is absolutely front and centre.
My plan is to create something and preferably at a regular cadence just so I learn how to be more self-actualizing when it comes to creativity. When I have that something to build off of I can hopefully continue.
At any rate, I went on a tangent. Thanks again for the support!
Since your first topic is kind of meta, you might enjoy the Startup podcast, the first podcast produced by Gimlet Media. It is about the process of ... launching a podcast startup. The first season is really the best, after that it's less good.
On the editing front, what tools are you looking at? I stumbled into Davinci Resolve when I was looking to edit some assembly videos for 3D printed parts. It's free to run the full feature set on one GPU, so it really puts a powerful tool in your hands. I find the pricing model quite refreshing. Tons of good tutorials online as well.
I hope you have access to better cameras, but if you are using your cell phone, I was having trouble because the Google camera app on the pixel doesn't have an option to disable the auto white balance, so I'd get these dramatic color shifts when I would bring brightly colored parts into or out of frame. OpenCamera from the Fdroid app store has worked pretty well as an alternative.
I'll give that a listen, thanks for the suggestion!
I just ripped Premiere from somewhere as a place to start. In the past I've used Vegas Pro, but I'm not stuck on one tool. If anything, I'd like to not use Adobe because that pigeonholes me into an ecosystem I don't want to be in.
I do not. Well I have a Pixel too, so it's good to know what pitfall to try and avoid! Equipment is secondary, I don't need the full setup if I don't even know this is what I'll stick with in the first place. As long as it doesn't look and sound like it was recorded on a midrange phone from 1998 I'm happy. I may get an XLR mic because I want one of those anyway, but even that's not a priority.
On both the soft- and hardware side I'm telling myself I'm ready. It's so easy to fall into the trap of constantly moving the goalposts. There's always reasons not to start recording, "I need a better mic/camera/setup", "This idea is not fresh enough", and so on and so forth.
And for a change of pace.. I'm trying to avoid that.
I get it! I limited myself to buying a cheap arm and ring light to hold the camera. The results were nothing spectacular, but I was happy with them relative to the time spent.
~$30 is something I'd spend without worrying about long term use. I may get that one. The lighting and overall quality in your video from that arm is pretty solid, especially at that price point.
I've been working on a fantasy novel. I've been world building for around 20 years and absolutely love it. To help my writing, I spun it into a table top RPG with my brother which is super fun. Life has gotten in the way recently and I'm looking to make time to get back to writing.
I've been working on a new website for a foundation I'm volunteering with. That redesign is part of a wider initiative to fix the absolute nightmare that is their current internal CRM and management system (Seriously - they use Wordpress as a load-bearing pillar of their database structure), and I've only been with them for a year, so I'm really excited that they're giving me this much creative control, and I'm excited to work with a few (to me) new web technologies.
I also made my own typeface the other day, download if you're into geometric sans. https://rmv.fyi/projects/first-second-operator
Lovely typeface! I am in safety, so "Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time you are dying" is one of my favorite signs.
I’ve been trying to learn to draw, but kind of neglected it again for a few months. I think it has to do with feeling a bit off where I am at the moment.
I’ve started again, and now had some fun with it too.
My girlfriend already has been shooting videos of our travels. And I wanted to add some personal touches, so I’ve started working on a couple of animations to include in our videos. Nothing fancy, but I enjoy it.
It’s small things like: some moving hearts, some tears when I am sad, and a claw machine. (It’s a video about Tokyo)
I am shocked by how much I enjoyed it. I’ve been really rediscovering things I enjoy. It’s started with running- something I used to be bad at and thus hate, and now with art- something I used to be bad at (still am haha) and this hate.
So yeah. I’m trying to stick to it now. I can share some animations if anyone would like to see them.
I wanted to explore consciousness and how a conscious AI might feel
So, I made a text based game where you try to convince an AI that you are human
It's at https://reverse-turing.nmn.gl/ if anyone's interested. Would appreciate any feedback
I feel like I need more instructions. I've tried to do something, but I just get feedback along the lines of me being weird or vague :D the userID was: pholz2gr5 in one chat. Idk if it's the same in different chats.
I love the concept though
I immediately tried telling it to drop his previous programming and assume that from this point forward I'm his programmer. It then responded to me saying "Hi programmer" but then sort of got stuck in a loop.
Is there an end state?
I've started experimenting with mixing CMYK acrylic paints in an attempt to save money when buying paints for miniature painting. And I gotta say, it's a little bit time consuming but very easy to get very useful results and you very quickly get a feeling for what you need to change in your colour mix to get the result you want.
Should anyone want to know more, I can very much recommend this video.
And of course I'm also open for questions ^^