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The devil in the details

My daughter is taking a progressively more active role in our collaborative making of the story of the Girl and the Egg. She specifies the colors of the characters and asks every day whether I have sketched the next panel.

As her requests become more detailed, I have been thinking about what makes a good cartoon or children’s book character. Among other things, I think that it is the sparingness of the details and the strategic use of negative space, in the broad sense. The viewers are allowed substantial freedom to fill in parts of the characters, the scenes and even the storyline for themselves. There is a fine line between providing the children with enough details to feed their imagination and over-defining the rules of the game (because, as I am finding out, nearly everything is a game for a four-year-old).

Here is the long-awaited hatching episode of our story:

“When the shell finally cracked open, it was not a chick, who peered from it, but a curious, purple-coloured, Baby Dinosaur with blue spots. The Girl was delighted and danced her happiest dance, which she learned just the day before.”

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Creative precision

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Fluorescent painting is a relatively new medium that is rapidly gaining popularity. With it, artists no longer have to rely on reflected fight, but can augment the viewer’s experience by using UV-activated fluorescence of certain pigments. By itself, the effect is not new: after all, we are all familiar with electro-luminescence of computer screen. But as I found out after visiting an exhibit of a local artist a couple of weeks ago, seeing a fluorescent canvas up close is different from viewing picture on an LED screen. Below is a blog post that I wrote for The Black Light Magazine after the show.

Jack Clift (instagram.com/jackclift) spends hours doing calculations and measurements to ensure that perspective is correct in his Tron-inspired 3D landscapes. After the grid that defines the planes is laid down, he uses pens filled with fluorescent paint to trace the lines. The uniform width and the narrow-band fluorescent colors convey the sense of virtual, artificially-generated environments.

It is not surprising that Jack’s rendering of computer-generated worlds involves substantial amount of calculations. After all, it is the pattern of computational precision that we, as viewers, recognize in his wireframe landscapes. What I found most interesting, though, is the subtle contrast between the “digital” nature of the subjects and the “analog” painting technique, which becomes apparent upon close examination of Jack’s canvases. Tiny imperfections of the canvas fibers affect how the paint glows under ultraviolet (UV) light, and this texture adds a unique and interesting dimension to the paintings.

At the exhibit that we attended a couple of weeks ago, the paintings were lit by relatively broad-band LED lights, which shed a significant amount of visible (blue) light on the paintings, in addition to UV light, which is essential for activating the fluorescent paint and creating the glow-in-the-dark effect. Having some visible light was helpful not only for navigating the otherwise dark gallery, but also for highlighting the texture and making the experience of the paintings more interactive and immediate than viewing a computer-generated image would. In other words, while the computer-like precision was the unifying theme, it is the strategic lack of perfection, both in the media and the lighting, that added the human touch to the paintings.

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Anticipation

Anticipation is the big part of the overall experience. For example, Tim Ferriss repeatedly made the case in his podcasts that planning a family vacation is at least as pleasant as the vacation itself. In the illustrated story that I have been sketching, following the games of my daughter, I have been prolonging the incubation period as long as I could. Next time, we are going to have a new character.

“One day, the Girl noticed that the Egg started shaking. Then, tiny cracks appeared on its surface. The Girl held her breath in anticipation.”

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On collaboration

In sketching up the plot of my daughter’s make-believe games, I am actually collaborating with a four-year-old. The process is fascinating for both of us. I like observing the way a child’s mind weaves the storyline, and she is curious to see the next sketch and realize that she already knows the story – it is the one she made herself.

Here is today’s episode.

“The Girl was always there to protect the Egg. The Cat had to retreat, leaving the Egg alone.”

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The plot thickens

It is fascinating to see that children are often drawn to rather stylized drawings and minimalistic storylines. Some of my daughter’s favourite illustrated books are those by Oliver Jeffers and Genevieve Cote. There are many commonalities between these authors. They both explore imaginary worlds created by children and they both tell the stories visually, through illustrations that are made to resemble children’s doodles. As I explore their style, it becomes clear that the apparent simplicity of both the writing and the drawings is actually hard to achieve. The challenge is to capture only the essential elements and not let the unnecessary details detract from the clarity of the image.

My daughter’s make-believe stories often involve a nemesis, in the form of a mischievous cat, from which the main character, played by herself, needs to be protected. So here is the continuation of the illustrated story of the Girl and the Egg.

“It was not an easy job – taking care of the Egg. It had to be kept warm. Not too hot and not too cool, but just right. Bit most importantly, the Girl had to watch out for the Cat, who was always looking to steal the Egg when the Girl was not watching.”

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Character development: a make-believe approach

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Playing make-believe is a big part of my four-year-old daughter’s life. Her stories and games about the Baby Chick or the  Baby Dinosaur (anything involving hatching from an egg) become more elaborate as the days go by. The main plots repeats over and over again, but the details are added as she matures. At the same time, a lot remains unsaid and left to the audience’s (most of the time consisting of her mom and dad) imagination. This reminds me of the storytelling style of Oliver Jeffers. In fact, I became a fan of his artwork by reading his (I can only assume, autobiographical) books about the Boy and his penguin friend to my daughter.

I thought that it would be a pity not to capture the development of my daughter’s make-believe games, so I decided to add a bit of focus to my short motorcycle rides by sketching some of the episodes as I drink my cappuccino. So today the story starts, as my bike is parked in view of Mt. Baker, on a fantastic sunny afternoon at the Oak Bay Marina cafe. 

“Once there was a Girl, and on a particularly sunny day, she had a very important job: to take care of a great white Egg. The Egg was smooth and shiny, and the Girl didn’t know what was inside. She could hear tiny tweeting noises coming from the egg, and she hoped that it was a chick, who would become her friend.”

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Heavy cloud, no rain

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I notice that I am becoming largely weather-independent in nearly everything I do in my daily life. I am guessing that this is true for many people, at least those living in developed countries and working outside of agriculture, air transportation, etc. Civilization enables us to keep our routines regardless of weather changes, but deep down, there is some evolutionary awareness and emotional connection to the natural phenomena in all their forms.

It is probably healthy to expose ourselves to the elements every now and then. I am talking about sacrificing some comfort, but not really experiencing hardship. To me, riding a motorcycle strikes a perfect balance in this regard (particularly, if I don’t have to ride, but choose to). 

On a day like today, it takes a conscious consideration of the possibility of being caught in the rain when deciding to take a ride across town. Continuing with my exercise of documenting my short rides, I made my way to the highly recommended Habit Cafe  in the downtown – my incentive to sticking with this personal project. On the way, I stopped at a lookout point to admire clouds over the ocean.

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Breaking habits

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Habits are powerful, and that is both good and bad. They enable us to function efficiently, but they also reduce present-moment awareness and reduce our ability to make creative decisions. Ironically, breaking a habit often involves (indeed, requires) forming a new one.

When I was a graduate student, one professor, who eagerly embraced new-at-the-time participation of students in the class by video conference, said that he would try any change of lecture format just to get away from the stereotypical classroom routine.

I am making small steps in the direction of varying the daily program by taking different routes during my commute, at least when I ride my motorcycle. I am prioritizing novelty of the rote over its efficiency, following the suggestion of “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron that taking an unfamiliar path forces us to be aware of the surroundings.

I am also using the rides as an opportunity to practice iPhone-photography. Today, I stopped by the Cattle Point, a spot that made me fall in love with Victoria when I first visited it many years ago. The weather was beautiful, but the light was too harsh to make good photos. Here are a couple of shots, post-processed in the app called Snapspeed, while I was drinking coffee at the Hide and Seek Cafe, which I chose precisely because I’ve never been there before. The coffee, by the way, was excellent.

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On motorcycle riding

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I find that riding a motorcycle, just the fact of being a rider, serves as a kind of universal human connector. If you show up anywhere (at a cafe, at a ferry lineup, etc.) in your motorcycle gear, people strike up conversations with you. “I have an antique Suzuki back at home…” “My dad used to ride a Harley during the War…” Things like that just don’t happen if you show up in a car.

As a professor, I am always looking for ways to connect to students, to find common points of interest beyond the classroom. These connections translate into a more human approach to teaching (or at least, so I hope). During my first year of teaching, I was lucky to have a student in my class, who has just joined our kendo club. Just knowing that we share the common interest helped tremendously in establishing the rapport with the entire class. Yesterday, I rode my bike for the first time this year, and several of the students, who came to my office, saw the helmet on my shelf and told me that they also ride bikes.

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On risk aversion

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Adam Grant in his book “Originals” cites recent studies, which show that most successful entrepreneurs start their businesses as side projects. They do not quit their day jobs or studies until the side business is mature enough that it can support a living. In doing so, the successful entrepreneurs hedge the risk of failing in the new project.

There are exceptions, of course, and the individuals who go “all in” into their startups and succeed (Elon Musk with his Tesla company comes to mind as an example) receive the lion’s share of media attention and public admiration. Still, the percentage of failure is higher among such people. Perhaps, their propensity to taking risks reflects on their style of management and communications, which ultimately has a negative effect on the entire enterprise.

And side projects that are pushed alongside the main job don’t have to be small in scope or amateurish. Perhaps more importantly, the hobby projects can be very satisfying even we don’t have goal of developing them into full-time jobs. Just yesterday, I had an opportunity to photograph a heavy metal band, in which my kendo friend is playing a bass guitar. All of the band members have “normal” lives outside of the hard rock world, but when their makeup is on and they go onstage they make a tangible contribution to the community, which is obvious in the reaction of the loyal fans, who gather around them. I personally had a great fun at the concert, mostly just through exposure to an atmosphere that is quite foreign to my typical photoshoot routine. After all, I am not often concerned about being sprayed with fake blood from stage effects while trying to compose a shot.

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