I’m not sure if you heard, but Utopian now has a 3 GIF limit for the Utopian GIF contest. You are free to post them in separate posts, or all together, it’s your choice. But limit it to 3.

I’d like to talk about the creative process for a second. I didn’t write this post to make anyone feel bad. I am writing this post to remind non-artists that the creative process is important and must be used a lot in daily life. Getting distance from your creative works is essential too. So, far, the turnout has been pretty decent, and I've enjoyed what's been created so far. I have my favorites, of course.....I know I just said only 3 GIFs are allowed, and you'll notice there are four in this post, but remember, I'm not participating in the contest! These are not official entries. This is just to motivate others....

I created a bunch of really crappy Utopian GIFs one night because it was fun. Most of them are total fails. Here’s a few of those:

The reason this one sucks: it’s too random, lacks a central story and is completely unrelated to Utopian’s mission.

This Gif sucks for the same reasons as the one above.

Now, to a GIF I made which is funny (at least to me):

It’s still not good as far as telling the story of Utopian, but for me it’s funny because of the laser eyes mixed with the coding in the background.

So, creating something half decent takes me many attempts. And I feel that it wasn’t until my 14th attempt that I felt I came up with something inspired. I think this GIF actually tells the story in the right tone.

And yeah, I did it in the middle of last night, waking up, seized with an image in my mind:

Some of the work involved making around 45 different images using the open source Gimp program:

As you can see, drawing in his eye to make it blink is not a perfect thing, but you can't tell these details in the finished GIF.

Art is nothing but bringing to light the internal stories that stir up our imaginations in a skillful way.

Part of being an experimental artist is being able to recognize when you’re experiments are just utter crap. This takes years of practice though. For people who are not used to exercising their creative side, this skill can take a while. For compulsive creators like me, I kind of know when i get something right (which is actually only about 5% of the time). I can usually tell when I create shit and when i create something that sparks. I often rely on others to tell me what is good. But what helped me the most: I’m emotionally detached from most things I create.

This next thing might sound a bit weird, but I really thought deeply about the meaning of open source when I created that GIF. I imagined the story of Diego Pucci creating this project, not to help his own pockets grow, but to help open source become the revolutionary step towards greater human progress. I had the feeling of inspiration in me before I went searching for NASA photos for the background. The mission of Utopian is huge and very expansive, so I realized the tone of the GIF needed to be equally expansive. But I also wanted something fun, so him blinking (which was suggested by the mods) seemed to fit the bill.

The true skill lies in being able to accurately capture the essence of a compelling story. Good artists tell stories, and they use images to do that. But they practice more than the average person, so they know what works and what doesn’t. But even good artists make crappy art……and then put it on Giphy. See all the Utopian GIFs so far, including all my fails (the first GIFs): https://giphy.com/channel/utopian_io

Hey, on a side note, did anyone get any surprise SP delegations?

Cheers,
Stella