"When asked to think of something, we usually can't think of anything. If you're told that you're trapped in a room with haunted, spiked wraithwalls closing in on you, you'd MacGuyver the situation faster with a pincushion, a ream of paper, two 9mm bullets, and a hairbrush. . ."
OK, we withheld posting strip over Thanksgiving because it was just way too fucking dark for the occasion. Five days have come and gone, and the joke's been hanging in the smokehouse, letting flavor microbes affix themselves to it's aging hull. Mmmm. . . delicious, smokey dark comedy.
(Tangentially, why don't we have foods that contain vapor or smoke or something? Bite into a tangerine scone, inhale, shoot some flavored smoke out of your nose. It'd be a one-shot thing -- how hard could it be?)
Yes, there was Thanksgiving travel, and massive turkey / stuffing / gravy / sweet potato sandwich on Friday. We recommend it. Microwave the stuff that goes into the sandwich but toast the bread, it'll make you believe in God. It requires some creativity, forcing you to work within the confines of Thanksgiving leftovers, and it yields stunning results.
Working within constraints is important when it comes to creativity. You need limits to keep you sane. When asked to think of something, we usually can't think of anything. If you're told that you're trapped in a room with haunted, spiked wraithwalls closing in on you, you'd MacGuyver the situation faster with a pincushion, a ream of paper, two 9mm bullets, and a hairbrush than you would with "anything you can imagine. . . before the walls drain your immortal lifeforce and encrushen your corporeal body."
Constraints are what separate Neil Blomkamp and George Lucas. Living inside your imagination gradually kills you. Your narrative suffers, you get what you want, not what you need. Outsmarting yourself shouldn't bring much satisfaction, and that's all you're doing if you continue to CGI characters into "existence." Real walls confining a limitless imagination provides tangible obstacles and WD-40 for the clockwork cognition apparatus between your ears. If it does the same thing ad nausea, it will forget it's not a machine. It's a mind, and a human mind at that. Work around obstacles, don't attack them with brute force.
For example, we suck at drawing. We haven't done it very much. So hide it as best as you can until it improves. Do things in black and white. Do it as an homage to old school daily comic strips. Sharpen your abilities. Lean on the written word, but not too heavily, because you're working within a frozen, but still visual, medium. You don't get to decide how long a person looks at something. Or can you? Can you? Give it a shot.
(click to embiggen)
-- Doberman
on Twitter | @GhostLittle_WTF
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