The first Mascot of Madness is “Strrrach”. Each mascot has its own name and none will be easy to pronounce. After all these are creatures of madness. Strrach is the mascot of peeping, looking, running after and grabbing. He is all eyes on stalks and narrow limbs.

Strrach is narrow, pipe-cleaner styled and a little bit hairy. To achieve this I used a large curved brush for much of his body. To say the brush was curved is an understatement. It was a series of curves – enough to give the outline of his body a little structure and his hairs a little kink. Another similar brush was also used – sparingly to add some extra fuzziness.

Strrachs eyes needed a kind of blankness.  I thought of a realistic eye, and then thought that a real eye would be a little out of place amongst the fantasy of Strrrach, I also wanted his body to reflect his soul and not his eyes. His eyes are simple gradient fills with a red centre. I hope its not too simple and still fitting for the image.

The body needed to be odd. Not a true torso. Just something for pipe-cleaners to fit around. So a simple generated interface fill with some brush spots over it would suffice.

Strrach was made with some simple tools, that were carefully picked. The rule all the way through was simplicity leading to a basic form. Creating Strrach was about setting some principles and working them through to an outcome. That is the creative principle behind the first Mascot of Madness.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve recently been working on a photo of a Japanese temple guardian that was taken at Narita. Quick travel tip – if you do to Japan don’t just use Narita as an airport. It is a charming town with a wonderful complex of temples.

Now back to the point.

What I wanted to do was make the Guardian become unnaturally in your face without looking .. well wrong.  After my first run at the editing I wasn’t convinced by the picture. There areas that were too bright and blown out, and possibly evidence of over sharpening.

At this point I put down the picture and saved it for future reference. There comes a point in editing, be it an image or an article that you no longer see what you have done. Everything sort of blurs together and it kind of feels just good or bad. When this happens I always recommend walking away and coming back afresh sometime later.

However this time when I came back and wasn’t quite so sure about the picture. The technical questions were still there and now I wondered if this was a worthwhile endeavour. Normally  when i create something I do it for myself in the hope that someone else likes it. This is I believe artistically wise. Not so sure if its commercially a great idea as my tastes may not be that commercial. Normally I live with this and things go ok. This I started to worry if what I was doing was mightily disconnected from what people want. After all if people have no chance of liking what I produce why produce. It was a moment of self doubt.

Then I remembered this – its the reason why many people do not progress artistically. It is the self doubt that prevents action.

What do I do?

Work on something I feel better about and go back to the temple guardian at some point in the future. I might even post it on Facebook and see if a discussion ensues. You mustn’t let self doubt stop you. You must just keep on at it.

Image by Chesi – Fotos CC via Flickr

A few days ago I experimented with importing my RSS feed from Flickr. The good side to this was that is easy to pull in recent photographs using this service directly to Findingviews. The part of my that loves automation likes this idea. I update Flickr and the blog updates automatically. It reduces my work and Findingviews gains an update.

Oddly I’m now wondering how good an idea that is.

The reason isn’t particularly technical. Its all revolves around presentation. My general photographs and some basic notes are shared via Flickr. I also sell selected work on Red Bubble. Findingviews isn’t really about repetition of what I already release publically. Its about my thoughts and the images themselves. In other words I don’t want to repeat, repeat and then repeat more. The posts on Findingviews need to have their own intrinsic value, they have to be about something. This means that I will still import photographs from Flickr, but I will write something about these and add some value to the pictures.

I’ve decided not to use the power of RSS to bore you.

I’ve decided to try and entertain you.

Its a question of using the power of the feed in an appropriate manner.

Just because we can, doesn’t always mean we should.