For those about to rock, we salute you

Cool title, huh? While I was writing this post I was listening to some AC/DC which reminded me of this very quote which was actually an album title. I thought it was pretty applicable for this post.

For the longest time I haven’t talked about this. I felt that it wasn’t my place to say it, but as I went on with my life I figured this is something I just have to get out of my system.

When I was 14, some grown-up told me that creativity was something reserved for the talented. Not just for everybody. Not only was this the biggest piece of bullshit a human being ever told me. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
At that point I was a dreamer: I wanted to discover the world and show everybody something they’d never seen before. Like any one of us probably did back then. However when that specific person said those words. I felt like somebody took away my dream. And I actually gave up.

Only years later, I realized how untrue all of that was. I started realizing that creativity is not a noun. Creativity is a verb (don’t you dare to correct my English horror show or I’ll come down there and spank your hairy little ass!)

Creativity is something that evolves  (and teaches you) as you do it. It isn’t so much of a coincidence that creativity contains create. The only way to be creative is to downright just create stuff. Most people tend to think that creativity starts in your head. I beg to differ.

Creativity starts with making mistakes.
Making those mistakes allows you to discover new stuff, which you hadn’t though of before. That is how the coolest ideas come to life: By just trying. Simply creating. Experimenting and discovering. Not just thinking. Leave your educated personality out of the equation and let your subconscious mind be your guide. (It works even better if you actually throw away your sanity. Who needs that anyway?)

There’s this great quote I first read on DeviantART and up to date I just can’t stop thinking of it:

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.

And with that, I salute you.

Unreality

[ Link ] I finally got myself to the point of really experimenting in After Effects. This is my first shot at ’something’.

Image Transition Effect

[ Link ] I saw this cool image transition effect on a site and I wanted to create this myself. Hit the spacebar to slow the animation down

WebcamRelief

[ Link ] I decided to play around with webcam feeds and 2.5D in Flash Player 10. Requires a webcam

I’m on fire!

(Luckily not in the litteral way… Allthough I ran into a few close calls…)
So what do you get when you mix up the following?

• Tennisballs
• A ladle
• Dry cord
• Lots of oil
• Fire
• A digital camera

You get to play fireball!

We had some great fun, and the result was pretty much what I expected from a first shot (yes, this is supposed to be the first of many fire-related experiments) at Fireballs and trails. If you like what you see, check out the complete set in my Flickr stream.