The urge to create...

It's been bugging me for months.

The urge to make something. Actually, I think that it starter much further back.

Like, a couple of years ago.

At the time I was working in pizza delivery and troddling along happy as a clam. Then I bought a drum kit. It was pretty cool since I bought it out of the tip money that received at work and it was the second big purchase of something that was all mine (the first was a car).

As it turned out, a drum kit was a really dumb idea. It took up a huge amount of space, it had no volume control and was generally impractical. I was reasonably good at it, considering the amount of time that I spent practicing and that I didn't get any proper lessons. Not good enough to make anybody want to sit down and listen, but it was a good outlet.

Once that had sat and collected dust I then bought a bass guitar. I figured that since it had volume control I wouldn't have that as an excuse to not practice. As it turns out, I sucked. Sorry - suck, present tense since I still do. I couldn't get my fingers to respond fast enough to make anything worth listening to.

I probably could have gotten real good if I'd gotten lessons and practiced every day, but I ended up just giving the guitar and amp to my brother (who did practice).

Sometime after that (and still working in pizza delivery) I saw an ad in the paper: "cast and crew wanted for local film production." Seemed good. I already knew that I was bad at acting, but I figured that I might give it a go and apply as crew.

As it turned out, the film was being made by Nextwrold Studios, an independent studio here in Perth. That was an absolute blast! I quit my job and spent five or six months running around the city doing guerrilla film making and meeting loads of interesting people.

As it turned out, the film was never finished but it did teach me a whole load of new skills. I stayed with that studio and made a bunch of video clips with them (some of which are visible on the videos page of the site). I still had to get a day job in order to not live on the streets and eat out of garbage bins, but the road was laid.

After a while, I tried my hand at making my own films. Since I didn't have a camera, I figured that I'd make a brickfilm (a stop motion film made with LEGO for the uninitiated). That turned out ok, but the process was too drawn out and slow. I wanted something with some faster results.

So then I turned to webcomics. I made a couple of different comics (visible on my site), most of which were pretty crap. Some people liked one, but overall I had some trouble with the whole concept of drawing the same thing over and over again.

So lately I decided to try out CGI comics. That would enable me to build the sets and characters once and then use them as much as was needed. I was even set to drop a few thousand on a bunch of computers in order to set up a render farm. Of course, I kinda overlooked the minor detail that I'd need to build everything - and that takes ages! It took me four hours to build a single pawn for a chess board!

*sigh*

Anyway, I had thought about building something physically. Either sculptures or puppets or marionettes or something. I have no idea why I want to create so bad, but it's there and it's driving me nuts!

So far, my main "outlet" has been reading webcomics. But I want to be a producer, not a consumer.

I'll keep you posted (both of you that read this) if I come up with something to actually get passionate about. maybe I'll just join a gym and work out. Or get a girlfriend.

I've heard those can be fun....