playing with mechs.

"Make sure you fail occasionally. If you don't, you're probably not fully exploring your options."

I heard this quote in an interview with Gabe Newell of Valve Software and I was thinking about what it actually means. In the interview he was talking sort of specifically about game design but I was thinking more about how that could be applied to art making. I think the best way to think about it might be to say, make a piece, concept, whatever, with the expectation or even intention of it failing, and allow yourself the freedom to fail.

While this might be a small risk, I tried something different, in 30 min, I did this little mech in grayscale, first doing a silhouette on a layer and then setting the layer to preserve transparency so I would be working only within the bounds of  my silhouette, keeping everything really sharp and contained. I branched out from this a little bit as I continued but it was an interesting experiment in ways to create, especially since you don't lose the spontaneity of the thumbnail. I feel like it would it would be a little restricting for organic things, but for inorganic, it works well. 

It could be neat to perform really specific experiments with technique and record the results here for everyone to learn from.

 

eth.