This morning has been odd. Last night I stayed up later than I’d intended, due to my picking up my new copy of Flash to the Core by Joshua Davis for a little reading before bedtime. The book is awesome – in much the same way as Jeffrey Zeldman deftly handled introducing web design to print designers in his book Taking Your Talent to the Web, Davis introduces basic Flash principles as one artist talking to other artists. There’s that same sense of, “Yes, this is the way the geeks think of this, but to guys like you and me, this is why all this stuff rocks…” Classic.
Some people have mixed opinions of the good Mr. Davis. For my part, the two times I’ve seen him do presentations at SXSW were some of my favorite experiences at the conference. I love the way he kind of bubbles over with little-kid giddiness when he gets excited. It’s contagious. He has this way of looking at the audience with this goggle-eyed stare and going, “Isn’t this cool?!” And even if you don’t get it, you want to, because, well, dangit, the guy’s having so much fun.
Reading his book is kind of like getting to sit down with him for a while, just one-on-one, and listen to him spell stuff out. I’m loving it. It makes me want to play more.
Maybe that’s why, when I woke up this morning, I read a little more of the book and then picked up my sketchbook and started to scribble. The girlfriend Kate, my girlfriend*, has been chiding me to write for five minutes everyday, to get back in the habit. Some days I do, some days I don’t. The days I don’t, it’s usually because of what happens on the days I do: I start scribbling and wind up spending not five minutes but an hour and a half making sketches of characters, plotlines, or flat-out chapters or short stories. Which is fine when I have the time do spend on that. When I don’t, I look up at the clock afterwards, utter some things that would make Denis Leary blush, and rush off to catch up with the stuff I’m supposed to be doing.
Stupid time anyway. Oh, well. At least I’m coming away with a nifty synopsis for what could eventually become a graphic novel or a really cheesy Sci-Fi Original Movie. See, this is why I have so many projects going on at once: it’s the intellectual cross-pollination that keeps me going.
Something like that, yeah.