A New Creative Tool

If you know me, you know I have a passion for creative tools. I love to use them, and I love to make them. Even bigger than that is a personal mission to help others be more creative by inspiring them and making tools for them.

Using Creative Tools

The creative tools that I love to use include:

• Visual Journals that I fill in my travels
• Art supplies from pens to paints to glue to stickers to fill those journals
• Small synthesizers like the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators
• Cameras like my FujiFilm XS-10 that give me many creative options on-camera
• A little GoPro to capture my creative process
• Digital tools like Mental Canvas, Adobe Fresco, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Adobe Premiere Rush
• 3D Printers
• Apps like OpenSCAD that I can use to create 3D models with code
• Making visual stories with Sway: Hawaii & Portugal

Mental Canvas let me tell a story with sketches oriented in 3D space

I love to sketch and watercolor and sometimes I try combining that with something else, like making music, but sometimes I need to make something to help me create.

Crafting Creative Tools

The creative tools that I've made follow a distinct pattern: I get an idea to make something myself and make a tool to make the process easier. Then I share it with others because I think that they might find it useful as well. Over the years that has included:

• Creative Apps like Journalist, Rotoscope, Transcoder, Kinetic Typography, and Sketch 360
• A GoPro sketching stand to record my process while I sketch and watercolor that I designed.
• Pen holders for my various drawing implements
• Watercolor kits for my painting supplies
• A site, Galeryst, that generated 3D virtual galleries from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom albums
• An easel that I can take with me to be able watercolor anywhere. I just came back from a quick trip to Portugal where I used this around Lisbon.

You probably see quite a variety here, but you start to notice some themes and get an idea about what drives me. For me, a big aspect of creativity is combining things in new ways. A good example is my video Sync 1 above. In here I combined:

1. A line and wash watercolor
2. While making a song on the Teenage Engineer PO16 Factory
3. Recording it with my sketching stand apparatus that I created
4. Creating a video to post to YouTube to inspire others

A New Creative Combination

Back when I was in architecture school at the University of Arizona, I learned freehand perspective drawing from amazing professors like Kirby Lockard and Chuck Albanese. One way that they taught us was by using a downward facing video camera on stage pointing at the lectern where they demonstrated techniques. This was before Elmo projectors existed that are now ubiquitous in classrooms. That method stuck with me, and I've always sought to recreate that experience.

My latest combination is the synthesis of the GoPro sketching stand concept with the easel where I designed two new 3D-printed components to make a camera stand that attaches to my easel. I just shared my newest creation, the GoPro Easel Clamp on Thingiverse.

In this stand, I used 3D Builder and OpenSCAD, my favorite 3D modeling app where I write code to generate models that I printed with a 3D printer. Combined with a 1/8" square section steel rod, a 1/4" cylindrical magnet, and a hex bolt, I have an apparatus that clips onto my easel securely and can point down to record while I create.

One thing that I've really noticed in the past few years is the abundance of artists and creators online sharing how they make things. In this way there is a simple statement to be made:

Process > Product

In the creator economy for most people, showing people how you create is more valuable than what you create. Let that sink in. Making a tool for urban sketchers like me to better share their craft in video is what this new tool is all about. This tool enables any artist to take their video production studio on site and capture their process to share with their fans.

If you look on my LinkedIn profile, you'll see my personal mission statement and hopefully you can see how making things like this might fit:

I discover and craft connections linking creative processes that delight me with technologies that fascinate me, sharing the results to inspire and motivate others.

What have you created that inspires others to be creative? I'd love to know. Have I inspired you?