Category: Things that inspire
What Others Are Creating #003
Good Friday morning! It’s the end of the week and we have a long three day weekend ahead of us (well, for most people in the states). Before you leave Friday completely in the dust, take a look at some of the stuff these people are creating. Perhaps you’ll find a new favorite or something to inspire you in your own creative work.
Rob Paravonian – http://www.RobPRocks.com – Rob Paravonian is a comedy musician based in New York. He writes hilariously funny songs that prove the point: comedy music can be funny AND catchy! Head over to his Bandcamp page where you can download some free samples to check him out. Not only is he using his music to entertain, he’s using it to educate! He’s got a new series of songs called Tip Songs that actually teach you how to do stuff. Want to learn how to tie a bow tie or eight click on your mouse? Go check out Rob’s instructional videos and he’ll bust some knowledge on you. Finally, if you are a fan of the TV show Mad Men, check out this video that Rob edited together of every tracking shot in the show set to a hilarious song about ending with a tracking shot. Rob is a funny guy and it is well worth your time to check him out.
Space Casey – http://www.SpaceCasey.com – Back around 2008, I was asked by fellow Podcaster, Christiana Ellis, to lend a voice to a project she created called SPace Casey. It’s a science fiction adventure that won a Parsec Award and a Gold Mark Time Award forScience Fiction Audio Drama. Well, Christiana is back with a whole new SPace Casey adventure! Head on over to the Space Casey website at http://www.SpaceCasey.com and subscribe so you don’t miss a moment of the fun. I was honored to be asked to reprise my role in this sequel so I got a sneak peek at the story. It’s great!
Kristina Ruiz – http://www.etsy.com/shop/mAdELmOaRt – Kristina Ruiz is someone I met through the social media service Vine. Well, I guess I met her though my close personal friend Uncle Interloper but, never-the-less, I met her through Vine. She is hilarious, a great mother to her kids and a really amazing painter. The cool thing about Kristina using Vine is that she often posts Vines of the progress on her paintings and they are super cool. She’s got an Etsy shop which I highly recommend you take a minute or so to browse. Lots of fun stuff. I especially like her paintings inspired by Pixar’s UP. Definitely take a look at those ones.
One last thing, Tabitha Grace Smith‘s Sherlock Holmes inspired Kickstarter, that I mentioned last week, launched this week. Give it a look!
That’s it for this week. I’m always on the look out for new projects to feature so if you have something your working on and you’d like me to check it out for inclusion here, please let me know about it in the comments below! Have a good weekend!
What Others Are Creating #002
It’s Friday, that means it’s time to take a look at what some other creative folks are working on. I’m not sure that this will be a regular feature of the blog or a semi-regular feature, but if I have some creative stuff to promote I will.
Tappin’ and Yappin’ – http://orlandofringe.ticketleap.com/tappin-and-yappin/ – My good buddy John B. deHaas has a show opening TONIGHT at the Orlando Fringe Festival. It’s a hilarious, cabaret style show that John wrote and will be playing piano for. If you are in the Orlando area, check it out! With John behind ti, it’s bound to be gut busting funny. Again, the show opens tonight and runs for a total of seven performances! Don’t miss it.
AdvoCat – http://www.advocattv.com – Written and directed by my friend and fellow Puppet Up! Uncensored puppeteer, Michael Oosterom, AdvoCat is a web series about a woman who stands up for animals in the guise of superhero: AdvoCat! Episode 2 just came out, so catch up now over at the AdvoCat website. Not only is this project funny, Michael and crew have partnered with animal rescues to actually get some pets adopted! A worthwhile cause and very funny. Check it out!
The Sherlock Holmes Playing Card Kickstarter – http://www.sherlockholmesdeck.com – Tabitha Grace Smith is a friend of mine who I met via the wonderful world of podcasting. She is a podcaster, a published author and a super fan of all things Sherlock Holmes! In fact, she’s such a fan, she’s spearheading a Kickstarter to produce a set of playing cards with a Sherlock Holmes theme. She’s got some great people working on the project and I cannot wait to support her when the kickstarted goes live next week. If you are a Sherlockian (or even if you are not), be sure to check this one out and consider giving Tabz your support.
Comedy4Cast – http://www.comedy4cast.com – Clinton is another friend I met through podcasting. He’s been around from the start of podcasting and even though we live on opposite ends of the country, we still talk regularly. Since June of 2005, Clinton has been producing the Comedy4Cast podcast. It’s ‘random bits of audio fun’ are something the whole family can enjoy together. It seems every year or so, Clinton completely revamps the show and I believe that, along with Clinton’s clever writing, has made the show one I have never even considered unsubscribing to. Give his current episode a listen and if you enjoy it, consider supporting his Patreon campaign.
Kristin Hogan – https://www.etsy.com/shop/SquidFriends – I mentioned Kristin last week, but she’s at Dallas Comic-Con this weekend. If you’re nearby, go check out here squids at Table A126!
That about wraps it up for this edition of What Others Are Creating. Feel free to check out one or two (or all) of the projects listed above. I’m sure you’ll find one that you can dig a little deeper into. And, who knows, you may find something that really inspires you to create something.
Also, if you have a creative project, I’d love to check it out. Leave a comment below telling me how I can check it out and I’ll investigate further!
What Others Are Creating #001
I want this blog to not just be about my stories and stuff that I’m creating. I want to show off some other great creative work as well.. I truly do enjoy seeing the other creative projects that people are working on. So, the other day, I put out a call on Twitter for links to projects others were working on. Things that they are creating for themselves. Below is a list of those who replied as well as some creative goodies from others that I’ve been impressed with this week.
STV MEDIA STUDIOS – http://www.stvmediastudios.com/home.html – Connor Asher is an aspiring puppeteer whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few times while out on Puppet Up! Uncensored tours. Actually, I shouldn’t say he is an ‘aspiring’ puppeteer. He’s a darn good puppeteer and he is not waiting for anyone to tell him what he can and cannot do. He’s creating a media empire on his own and I fully suspect I’ll be sending him a resume someday for a job on one of his projects.
Randall C. Willis – http://createdbyrcw.com – Randall is another creative type who I was lucky enough to meet in Toronto while performing in Puppet Up! – Uncensored. He’s a great guy and his website is full of short stories, essays and photographs he has taken. Check out his pictures from his walk around Vanderbuilt University or his piece called Music and the soul. Really touching.
Kristin Hogan – https://www.etsy.com/shop/SquidFriends – Kristin Hogan is yet another crdtive dynamo I met while doing Puppet Up!. She is an artist in many mediums but making stuffed squids is her passion and they are pretty amazing. She will be at Dallas Comic-Con next weekend, so if you’re in the area, check it out. Kristin also penned a really great piece about copycats on her tumblr. It has inspired another Creative Mondays post as it’s something I’m dealing with now as well. Give it a read, really great food for thought – http://squidfriends.tumblr.com/post/85026374907/a-word-on-copycats-vs-other-people-inspired-by-the-same
Goon Holler General Store – http://www.goonhollergeneralstore.com – One of the really incredible things that has come out of my use of the social media app Vine is meeting Parker Jacobs. We share a lot of the same creative influences and creative spirit and he, like me, seems intent on creating good quality family fun. If you’ve watched Yo Gabba Gabba! Or The Aquabats! Super show! You’ve seen his art (and possibly his creation Tooba, the sasquatch.) He recently opened up a website to sell some of the items bearing his unique art (and I’m proud to say I was order #27 through his store)! Go peruse what he has to offer. I can highly recommend his book The Goon Holler Guidebook and who wouldn’t want their own Tooba pillow?!
Prednisone By Carla Ulbrich – http://youtu.be/WE1rmToYWyY – My good friend, and incredibly talented singer/songwriter, Carla Ulbrich checks in with this great lyric video of her ‘hit’ Prednisone. Give it a listen. You’ll be singing it all day.
The 33 by J.C. Hutchins – http://jchutchins.net/the-33 – My podcast pal, J.C. Hutchins, is in the middle of telling a great podcast story called The 33. J.C. Calls it ‘TV for your e-reader’ and I would whole heartedly agree. It’s not for kids, but if you like a goos sci-fi, supernatural thriller, you should check it out. You can even get a sample of it for free. It’s good stuff.
So check out one or all of these projects. Who knows, perhaps you’ll find your new piece of inspiration in one of these. And I’d love to make this a regular feature, so if you have a piece of creative work that’s online, tell me about it in the comments below and I’ll check it out!
Have a great weekend!
Creative Mondays #018 – The right people will get this.
“The right people will get this.”
This one one of my all time favorite quotes. It is a quote by Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Cinematic Titanic. If you have followed my blog or Twitter feed or whatever, you have no doubt read it before. Joel was said it in response if someone asked him if he worried that some people may not get all the jokes on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. His response was, “We never ask, ‘Who’s gonna get this?’ We always say, ‘The right people will get this’.”
To me this statement boils down to not trying to create art for a specific audience. Create art that is wholly and truly for you and it will find an audience. This is what I’ve tried to do in the art I create.
When I came up with the idea of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd based on characters that Doug and I had created, I never had an audience in mind outside of the idea pleased me. I don’t even think at the beginning Doug was all to sure why I wanted to create a silly little radio show based on these characters. But once we got going he got on board full force and the show soon became something that in it’s base elements, just made the two of us laugh. This is how we made the show and the show found an audience.
I will say that we did make a small change in how we wrote the show at the very beginning with the audince in mind. In the beginning we were fine with double entendre. In the Wright Brothers episode the joke was that the Wright Brothers wanted to invent the plane because they were secretly peanut farmers and if they invented the plane, they would required peanuts be served on every flight. One of the Brothers had the line, “Someday the world will know the wonders of our nuts.” (A tip of the hat to the line in the Ren & Stimpy Show’s Rubber Nipple Salesmen episode.) We found this funny, but once we began podcasting and we received emails from families saying how much their kids loved the show we thought twice about doing jokes like that. Other than that though, we did a show that made us laugh.
When ‘Hollywood’ stared calling us talking about the possibility of turning it into a TV show, one of the first questions we would be asked is, “What’s the demographic?” This was so hard to answer because we never, ever, thought about it. We would say it’s a kids’ show or a family show, but we’d never have a specific demographic in mind and that’s what Hollywood wants. A specific demographic. We would say, “Our demographic is everybody.” Because we’d get phone calls from people ages 3 to 80. But Hollywood wanted a specific age range. Did THe Muppet Show have a demographic when it was pitched? If so, I’d say that’s the demographic. Everybody.
With Dr. Floyd, the right people ‘got us.’ They got our sense of humor, our references, our jokes and for a little radio show that was recorded, mostly, in the living room of my tiny, one bedroom apartment, we did pretty good.
So create art that excites you and put it out there. The right audience will find you.