1. Running a flash arcade
2. Running a tutorial site
3. Running a funny links/pictures/etc. site
4. Developing a few other sites that are just as diverse
5. Trying to learn how to cleanly make WordPress themes, with the idea of perhaps making money with it
6. Developing a flash game to promote the aforementioned arcade, and also bring some money in on its own.
7. Trying to write fiction
8. Right in the middle of being an English student at the University of Amsterdam

My problem is that I’m not an expert or professional at anything. I’m just starting out, and I’m still figuring out what I can and want to do. I know I don’t want to be employed. I know I’m smart enough to make it on my own and run a business that’ll at least feed me. But I’m so far.

I guess it’d be nice if I had some connections… Sure, I have people I engage with every now and then on Twitter and forums, but nobody I really know well or could collaborate with.

But enough whining, I’m getting back to work.

One of these endeavours is trying to make a little more money online, and I figured setting up a little Flash arcade of my own, dedicated to one of my favorite technologies of the century: accurate physics simulation for browser games.

So here it is, a website dedicated to physics games!

I was able to realize the site exactly as I had wanted to, which is a wholly new experience, and I’m really proud of it.

So, give it a visit, if you’re interested, maybe in the future I’ll even be able to upload some games I’ve created myself if they’re good enough.

Just giving you guys another heads up. I’m not dead. I have not deserted Superluminal. I just shoot my mouth off sometimes and suck at planning. I actually have some big plans for this site, but I guess I should keep those to myself until I’m actually close to realizing them.

Physics-GamesDotNet took up about a week of my life, and things are a little calmer now, so you’ll probably be hearing more of my insights and complaints about common perceptions of digital art soon again. Also advice and stuff.

And also that animation I promised, and the creative dissection that will come along with it. I keep my promises, so don’t worry.

Again, http://physics-games.net . Go there and have fun. It’s my favorite place to play physics games now, but I might be a liiittle biased.

I can tell from personal experience and observation that amateur digital artists tend to experiment with different media. They like to play around with all the software they can get their hands on to see what works best for them. So even if we only settle for one particular medium, whether it’s illustration, animation, 3d modeling, or anything else, we tend to have at least some experience with other forms of digital art. Sometimes we get lucky and/or smart and meet or seek other people to combine powers, and go all multidisciplinary on everyone’s asses. This means making music for someone’s video, video for someone’s music, assets for a game, and all other kinds of combinations. Sometimes we like to make that mix ourselves, which is ok too. But there’s one combo that I find to be the ultimate combo, can you guess which one?

Interactively Active

I like interactive arts not just because they pretty much require at least some knowledge of a variety of media, but mostly because, while a good painting or film might speak to you, interactive artworks give you the ability to talk back. The idea of really engaging with a piece of art, the notion of being a part of the artwork just really appeals to me. Combining your potential powers of illustration, animation, sound, storytelling and whatever other skills you might have with the magic of interactivity can really create some interesting results. What is also great is that interactivity in art in this form is fairly young, so there is a lot more for you to discover and reveal to the world, and there are many cool things to be done that haven’t been done before. Because it also combines a multitude of disciplines, there’s a lot more room for real originality.

One thing that does make interactive art seem a bit intimidating is that it adds quite a bit of complexity to the equation. A lot of times some knowledge of coding is required, or desired to achieve the results you want. Visual artists don’t tend to be fans of programming, but there’s always solutions to that, as usual. I’ve met artists who just combine their powers with someone with technical knowledge. I find collaboration an excellent way to achieve projects you can’t achieve by yourself. Besides that, you can always just toughen up and learn to code a little, it isn’t always that hard, and there are ways to make it easier on yourself. Even a simple amount of interactivity can be really cool. From games to weird experiments, interactivity can really broaden your creative horizons.

So how can you actively hop on the interactive bandwagon?

With some of the ways I’m going to list now, in no particular order.

Because I believe action should come before inspiration from similar or related works, I am going to show you all these possibilities first, in the hopes that you will experiment. I will show you some awesome examples of interactive arts in a later post.

Ways You Can Make Interactive Artworks and Stuff

• Flash.Ever heard of it? I hear some people make games and websites with this. Apparently you can animate with it and it has some kind of script full of action, but it’s the third script. They also have a second script. What? Oh yeah, the Flash plugin is installed on pretty much every computer built since 1972, so you’ve got quite audience there. ActionScript is pretty easy to use, and fairly powerful if applied well. One potential problem is the price, which is probably a buttload more than you can afford if you really are an amateur, and as you may have heard, I’m not really a fan of piracy.

• Game making software and game SDKs. Games are probably the most prolific and awesome form of interactive art that currently exists, and it’s pretty fun to make them too. Software such as Game Maker (originally developed at my university ) and Multimedia Fusion allow you to do quite a lot of playing around with your game making dreams. Besides that, game engines, game engine SDKs and game mod tools can let you do a lot more than just create levels. I’ve attempted to make somewhat interactive machinima with Valve’s Source SDK before, and while it wasn’t all easy, the results were quite awesome. Always remember that anything you can use to make games you can also use to create other kinds of interactive experiences.

• Blender. The 3d software package of choice for all amateurs, and not just because it’s free. Blender has had it’s own game development possibilities for a while now, and a little knowledge of Python can get you a long way.

• Max and/or Pure Data. The software of choice for many interactive performances. These are basically graphical programming languages that allow you to let many different sources of input interact with each other by linking objects together. Combined with an Arduino board you can extend your interactivity way beyond the screen/speakers. Pure Data is totally free, Max is far from it.

• Processing. Processing is a programming language you non-coders will love. It is specifically designed for the electronic arts and visual design communities, and makes learning fun by rewarding you with some of that precious instant visual gratification. Processing also allows you to take advantage of that Arduino magic.

• Go old school and make an interesting narrative experience with plain ol’ HTML. There’s actually quite a lot of stuff on hypertext fiction out there, so go do some research if this speaks to you. Some consider it a dead medium, but those people are idiots. There’s no such thing as a dead medium. I bet you could come up with some interesting new things if you like the idea of interactive fiction.

• Go even older school and get your electronics groove on. Making simple robots isn’t all that complex these days, you can even use Lego.  If this appeals to you, do some research, there has been some amazing work done with robotic arts, and there is a lot more to be done, perhaps by you. Just don’t make robots that play the guitar or the drums… I’ve already seen too many of those.

That’s about all I can think of now. Don’t hesitate to let me know if I’ve missed anything, that’s what the comment form is for.

Also, if you have already played around with interactive arts, or would like to know a little bit more, I’d really like to hear from you. The contact form on my about page is open during regular office hours, and every other hour of every day.

When I was planning the creation of Superluminal, I had thought that I would use it partly to promote quality free digital art resources, and had even created at least one post on this topic. However, while doing more research, I soon realized that this whole internet thing is totally inundated with sites offering free resources of all types, and the idea of being a part of that started to worry me a bit. Besides the fact that I want this blog to be different, I don’t want you to drown in the flood of free resources on the internets. Trust me on this one, I’m Dutch, we know about floods.

And drowning is generally not considered a good thing.

It’s all about the awareness

The main reason I promote the “just make everything yourself” attitude is because I truly think it is the best approach to get the most out of your creativity, and to really make something that comes from you. This not always being practical, free resources are a good (and free!) alternative. The other one is collaboration, but I’ll get into that another day. Free resources make it a lot easier, for us beginners in particular, to really get to work on some of that digital art we keep hearing about. But there are things you need to keep in mind when you decide to use free resources of any kind in your work.

You will learn the arts of implementation and assimilation, not creation

This can be useful if all you are doing is design-related or commercial work, and you’re on a deadline, and are otherwise not interested in digitally expressing your creativity. But if that’s all you’re doing or want to do, then this is not the blog for you anyway. Even if you are not an amateur, I’m sure you are aware that no matter how talented you may be, no matter how much recognition you get for your work, you are on an eternal quest of learning. Having parts of your artworks be made by other people, unless a conscious and deliberate choice, means you are missing out on quality learning you know you need no matter how advanced your skills might be. You are never done. Don’t hold yourself back just because it’s easier.

Are you ready to lose control?

All these free resources are not made especially for you. They are made for the masses, sometimes out of the kindness of the creator’s heart, sometimes out of a desperate need for attention and recognition (which I can totally relate to) and other times as free advertising for whatever they might be trying to sell you. They don’t put it online so you specifically can integrate it into whatever you might be working on at the time. This means that these resources are not specifically tailored to you. In fact, a lot of these websites offering free resources are big. Very big. They get tons of visitors because we humans are whores for freebies. You can be sure to know that you are not the only one using those vectors or textures or sound effects. There goes your uniqueness, right out of the window. Notice how you hear the same ‘creaky metal door’ and ‘car crashing’ sound effects in countless movies, tv shows and games? Also notice how lame that is? It’s almost as if all these companies that have budgets ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions still get their sound effects from one cd that they pass around amongst each other. That really sucks, and you know it’ll be worse if it’s free.

Get time on your side

So, if you want to use something that has been downloaded seven hundred million times by others, you will at least have to change and adapt it to fit into your project. This will take time. If you do it right, it will take a lot of time. Time you could’ve spent learning how to draw that figure yourself, or at least trace it from a picture that has the right perspective, rather than trying to use the warp tool to somehow bend that leg at the right angle. It may seem hard to believe, but investing a little more time into making it yourself, even if you are using some tricks to make it easier, will often create results that are not nearly as half assed as trying to somehow fit that free image into your work. Besides that, all these freebies aren’t the focal point of your work anyway. And don’t you dare try to make that freebie the focal point of the work because you find it easier to just adapt everything else around it. You might as well give up if you do that.

Numbers don’t mean anything when they’re out of context

This is something that irks me, and it relates to the title of my post that you surely felt intrinsically attracted to. This is about the way that free resources are presented, on blogs in particular, with post titles like:

• 75 Free Fonts
• 100 Essential Free Patterns
• 56+5 Totally Free Grunge Brushes You Can’t Do Without
• 16,2342 Free Textures You Will Definitely Need Or Else You Will Die Like Those Guys In The Klopeks’ Furnace

You get the picture.

Numbered lists are a blog favorite, they bring in the traffic, I’ve done my research. But those numbers can be blinding. Do you really need that many grunge brushes? Do you even need anything listed in any of those posts? A lot of times, the freebies can be of high quality, sure, especially on the bigger blogs, but are they really relevant? Before you’re blinded by the numbers, ask yourself if you really need anything in that list. Very often these lists aren’t even categorized, but are just a large collection links to the sources. No explanation of what the resources are, how they came to be, how you could best integrate them into your project, or why they are of whatever quality they are. Again, the important thing is to be aware.

Rules, Guidelines… Whatever

Here’s some more of that advice stuff for you, you’ll appreciate it, I promise.

• Before you decide to use freebies/free resources (and make it a conscious decision please), consider the alternatives: Learning to do things yourself, and collaborating with or seeking help from others.
• If you do use free resources, do not make them the centerpiece of your work. However free they may be, they are not yours, you did not make them. They can add to what you already have, nothing more
• Consider using the freebies only as reference material. This way you still learn new things, but can speed up the process significantly
• Try to find freebies that are more obscure and less widely used. Blogs with tens of thousands of RSS subscribers are great and all, and I’m really jealous, but everyone else and their pet ferret are going to be using those freebies too.

An Apology

To those of you who actually expected 81.5 trillion anything, I’m sorry. It was just a cheap but still pretty awesome gimmick to get you interested. It was all a lie…

Except for the jelly beans!

Being a member becomes more important than creating.

This is something I have noticed in daily life, but I think especially applies to us amateurs, enthusiasts and beginners. Because we are weak and vulnerable. We have aspirations and goals, and we are little pieces of non-toxic clay ready to be shaped by our environments. See, while the benefits of being part of a group can be great, it also comes with social obligations. And when those social obligations get in the way of you making what you want to make, you’re in trouble. Anytime anything gets in the way of you making what you want to make you are in trouble. Remember this. What can get in the way? Well, I’m going to be blunt here and say you crave attention. Most likely the good kind of attention. There are some freaks out there who love negative attention, but let’s ignore Amy Winehouse for now. Especially if you’re an up-and-coming digital artist, attention is your friend. So, what if one of your works becomes popular in a particular community, what if it’s a hit? Most likely you will be more inclined to make those kinds of works. What if that particular work is not your favorite? What if it’s a medium you don’t really enjoy working in? You got yourself quite a conflict.

Besides your weak psyche, another problem is that these kinds of places usually only offer two kinds of criticism: Unending praise, or utter condemnation and personal attacks.. The condemnation is usually just trolling, and you should ignore it. It’s useless, but unless your confidence is incredibly low, not a real problem. No, the real issue is the unending praise. The sense of community means people like you, and when they like you they don’t want to hurt you or say anything bad about you or your work. What happens next? You get an unrealistic view of the quality of your work. When you get criticism from another source that is not as positive you get scared and retreat back to the safety of the almighty bubble that is your community, or your group of friends within that community.  You will be stuck there. You will not grow, you will stagnate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your work started to resemble the work of the other people in the bubble more and more.

And that sucks. You don’t want that. You want to be original, you want to make things the way you want to make them.

It doesn’t have to be like that, be aware of what being part of the community can do to you. Reap the benefits without succumbing to the dark side. Don’t get caught up in groupthink, go your own way.

image by Chaparral [Kendra]

Well, to be realistic, everyone has the power of imagination, it’s pretty essential to the human experience. But you, you know how to harness that imagination to create things, new things, great things. The problem is that imagination does not come from nothing. You need to be inspired. Inspiration is the coal you need to burn to power the steam engine of imagination. Wait, it’s 2009… Inspiration is the wind that turns blades of the windmill of imagination! Yes!

1. Get Inspired.

Well this one’s obvious. Probably too obvious. Even if you have your own little sources that have worked for you in the past, consider expanding your horizons. Go to museums, not just art museums, but also natural history museums, aircraft museums, tobacco and pipe museums, medical freak show museums, anything interesting. Go to amateur theater performances or experimental art festivals. If you usually stay outdoors, go outside and see what the world has to offer, from nature to architecture. If you’re out all the time, stay inside and analyze your own environment. Just go explore.

2. Try Something Different.

This is about getting a different perspective on things. Don’t actively search for inspiration, just keep your eyes open and let the inspiration happen to you. Take a break, do something completely unrelated, and let your mind soak up its surroundings. Better yet, do something outside of your interests, maybe even something you’ve never done before, to get the ultimate freshness perspective. I’m not saying you should go BASE Jumping, but… Wait, no, BASE Jumping would be totally awesome and I’m sure it could inspire a ton of creativity. So now you know what I’m talking about, yeah? Different perspective = more new stuff. And imagination is all about thinking up new stuff.

3. Do Some Research.

It’s important to increase your knowledge. And there is so much knowledge to increase! Learn a bit more about the theory of whatever medium you prefer. I know that, as an amateur, you are probably lacking some basic theory required for your discipline of choice. There’s a ton of info both online and in books. Look up some color theory, or some of the musical basics. Don’t let you imagination be hindered by ignorance. Use some tutorials, but not too much, increase your technical abilities, by taking some courses for example. I recently got the chance to take part in a Blender animation workshop at a discount price, and for what I learned it was worth the full price. Get your hands on some reference material. My girlfriend was kind enough to give me a book full of pictures of interesting materials that has not only been useful for accuracy, but has been an invaluable tool to pump some of that inspiration juice. Besides that, you can also get some insights into the minds of other digital artists, both pro and amateur, figure out how they work, what they do to turn inspiration into imagination (and eventually into creations.) Don’t be afraid to go far outside your domain either, remember that digital arts are in many ways themselves inspired by traditional arts.

4. Don’t Drown.

Knowing when to stop is pretty important. Actually, it’s very important. Don’t let yourself get too deep into trying to get inspired. If for some reason you just can’t get yourself to be inspired, try a different technique. If nothing works, just stop, take a break. The more time you spend trying to find inspiration, the less time you actually spend making anything. You also run the risk of getting a bit too inspired and you might end up emulating your inspiration a bit too much. That’s a bad thing, my friend.

5. Make Something.

Just make something. Sketch something down on paper, make a few notes with your instrument (or software) of choice, record some video, open up whatever software package you prefer and just get to work. You don’t have to have starting idea, you don’t have to have a plan, you don’t even need an end result. One thing can lead to another, and this can mean that the process of just trying to make something can generate enough inspiration to finish the project, or at least bring you one step closer. Sometimes you just don’t know what something is going to look, sound, feel or even taste like until you start making it. Besides that, sketching, through whatever medium you like, puts your thoughts down on paper. I have about 4 notebooks filled end to end, each with at least a year’s worth of sketches, doodles, ideas and, dare I say it, prose. Because they’re on paper, I don’t have to rely on my feeble human brain to remember them, I always have a reference to my own creative thoughts. Get inspired by your own inspiration, and turn that windmill into a jet engine of creativity!

Does that make sense? Oh, whatever, it doesn’t matter, you know exactly what I mean.

My experience with this certainly doesn’t count for everyone, but I do have experience, and I’d like to share it with you, so let me tell you a little story.

The year was 2004. I was going to graduate high school the next summer (even though technically it was always summer where I was living at the time), and head off to further my education in the Netherlands, as most students graduating there do. Even though the courses I took in high school reflected a scientific interest, I wanted to do something more creative with my career. I was particularly interested in game design because I knew it was an industry that (even with fancy graphics and what appear to be blue rays) was still in its infancy. I really liked the interactive aspect of games. Choosing a school and program to follow was not entirely easy, as I couldn’t just take a bus to go check out the school. So I had to make do with what I had: brochures and the internet. A particular program called Design for Virtual Theatre and Games at the Utrecht School of the Arts really grabbed my attention.

The program promised to not just teach me about making games, but about new ways to apply interactivity for artistic purposes, particularly for the theater. It was experimental and weird and different. Just like me. The school also had a more standard game design program that would train you to fit right into a game development team at a real company. Not for me. So ‘DVTG’ it was.

It was the year 2005. September. The academic year began. I was very excited, to say the least. The first few months were eye opening: I met new people, learned of digital art forms I didn’t even know existed, and got into seriously using my creativity. This seemed to be exactly what I wanted, I had found my future.

But then the trouble started.

It dawned on me that the whole program was a little vague, lacking direction. Now of course, that’s the whole point of such an experimental process, but it just didn’t sit well with me. As the first year ended, I realized that we didn’t actually spend any time creating anything interactive. Yes, I learned a lot of things about animation, 3d modeling, video editing, writing and even dramaturgy, but that didn’t feel like it was enough for me. The second year brought a lot more interactivity into the equation. I got to actually work on making games with Director and Virtools (which is an awful, awful program, so you know) and at the end of the year I experimented with using the Source Engine to create a kind of weird interactive machinima hybrid. That was fun and very educational, but again, I felt I could have done so much more more. This was just my personal opinion for myself, as it was clear that the program fit perfectly with some of my other classmates.

This time I started blaming the organization of the school itself. Not that the organization was objectively bad, it just didn’t mesh with what I expected and desired from my advanced education. I started doubting and wondering whether I should continue or not, as I had already decided that I would go to the university after I was done with this program. I decided to push on, I only had two more years to go, and a degree is better than no degree, right? The third year came, and the first month consisted of an awesome interactive theater project for the Dutch Film Festival that was a lot of fun. That month passed, and it was time to search for an internship. This was my own responsibility, of course, but I received zero guidance and help in my search from the school. The last drop fell. My bucket was full. I was done.

I didn’t see how I could be happy with a career that I could get with this degree anyway. My technical skills were hardly built up, (I had to use Flash for a Photoshop course, for example, without having ever touched Flash before), and without technical skills I couldn’t apply the natural talent I had before attending the school anyway. My career paths were split between doing really weird, really artsy stuff (which can be fun, but doesn’t really work if you want to have money to pay for food and such), and doing basic design work, as I watch less talented people with better technical educations zoom past me, requiring me to learn things pretty much all over again, meaning I had wasted my time.

I was done. I still looked for an internship, for myself. I did find one, and am now an official OG of Dropstuff, a project you can read more about on my, uhh, Projects page. It was awesome, I learned a lot, even got pretty familiar with Flash. The monetary compensation was minimal, but the time investment was more than worth it. The creativity I was and still am exposed to (as I’m still a part of the project) and was allowed to wield myself made me feel a lot better. I did this all by myself, I didn’t need the school. Even though the program I was following was experimental and allowed a lot of freedom, it was also vague and unfocused. I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going, and my creative output suffered for it. I had to quit.

So I quit.

With one year to go, I quit.

And I’ve never felt more creatively free.

I still wanted to get myself some of that education stuff my parents urged me to get, so I enrolled in the Information Sciences program at Utrecht University. It’s stable, it’s academic (I’m totally a smart dude, dude), it’s scientific, it’s focused, and it’s not too difficult. It takes up just enough of my time for me to stay disciplined, while still having plenty of time left for my creative enterprises (including this blog.) I have been more active in creating artworks since quitting than I had in all my time at the school, and I certainly feel better and more proud about them.

I don’t know if I’m going to make a career out of information sciences, I don’t know if I’ll make a career out of digital art. I’ve always been capable of a large variety of different things, as shown by all the different kinds of software I’ve used to create my digital art. I think my destiny in life is to do a lot of different things, but always what I want to do. Who knows, maybe I’ll even make some money from the internet in the future. One thing I will always do is be creative, it is my greatest passion. I love to create.

There’s no doubt that my time at the Utrecht School of the Arts increased my technical abilities and my theoretical knowledge, but not nearly enough for the time and money I invested in it to be worth it. It also boxed me into a world I didn’t enjoy. Quitting gave me the freedom I craved, and has allowed me to focus my creativity to create what I want to create. This, of course, does not mean that any art related education is inherently bad. This was my personal experience, and was the right choice for me. You don’t learn everything at art school. You may not even really learn anything, depending on your already present skills and the quality of the school.

Just remember that any artistic education you would like to follow, from the lowly tutorial to freaking Carnegie Mellon are merely supplemental to your creativity. Sometimes they can help a lot, sometimes it’s just fluff.

Stay focused, stay in control, and don’t let anything get in the way of you making what you want to make.

image by CATR

Twitter seems to be the ideal solution. If you don’t know what Twitter is, you should know to have a Wikipedia tab open at all times. Now you can stay up to date on everything me, even some personal stuff if you’re a little freak like that! So be a dear and follow me on twitter, will you? I’ll totally appreciate it. I just started and having 2 followers makes me feel sad, so do your duty and cheer me up. If you don’t like using Twitter yourself but still want to stay updated, you can also subscribe to my Twitter RSS feed, and of course my regular feed. I’ll also see if I can find a nice Twitter widget to put in the sidebar.

What’s next, this Facebook thing I keep hearing about?

This post brought down my average wordcount, so I’ll just stop whoring myself out for now and tell you you can expect a real post, one of those lengthy ones, later in the day.

image by gomattolson

You are, judging by the target audience of this blog, ‘just’ an enthusiast. You have little or no formal training in the digital arts, and you make little or no money from it. You do it because you enjoy making things with the computer, you do it because you feel the need to create and have chosen the computer as your medium. Making art does not come without a certain amount of judgment, both from yourself, and if you’re not afraid to show off your work from others. I will talk about what art really means and all that crap in future posts, but for now let us just assume that art can be criticized, and therefore has a measure of quality to it.

The quality of your work can be influenced by multiple things, natural talent being one of them. There are some artists, both amateur and pro, out there who just seem naturally talented, this being a good recent example. They just get it. It comes easy to them. They are the lucky ones. By what is most likely just the crazy mysterious voodoo magic of genetics, they were born with one or more of the various abilities that can aid with creative work. You might be one of those. You might.

You might also not be one of those.

Does it make a difference?
Of course it makes a difference!

Remember the stuff  I mentioned up there. If you have some natural talent, certain things will just be easier for you. There. That’s it. That’s the difference. You might be lacking in other things, in which case it all averages out, or you might have an extraordinary large amount of talent and you just do not have to work as hard as the rest of us untalented plebs.

Most likely though, you won’t have that much comparative talent to be an ultimate super artist to the max.

Does a lack of talent make you useless?
Of course it doesn’t make you useless!

First off, talent isn’t the only part of the equation, because that would make for a pretty boring equation. There are plenty of very talented artists out there whose work sucks ass because they’re too arrogant to learn some technical skills. So us untalented folks can make up for it by working hard, learning techniques, increasing the other variables in the equation. There are many ways to add a little magic touch to your work to make it extra special. It might take some hard work, it might take quite some time, but it’s always worth it.

Besides that,  does it matter if you’re talented? Right now you are at a stage where you are not working for money or attention, you are creating for your own amusement, or for a your own education, or whatever. You are certainly not going to let some vague, poorly defined concept you can’t measure stand in the way of creating what you want to create, are you?

You might not be talented. So what? Just use the skills you do have to make whatever you want to make.

So here’s a small recap of the long, weathered existence of my little interweblog, starting all the way on December 9th, 2008… It seems like so long ago…

• Being Amateur Digital Artists – A manifesto of sorts for both myself, and all (or some) of you.

• You There, Stop Stealing! – Where I accuse you of thievery, and you don’t deny it.

• 6 Tips to Turn Ideas into Actual Creations – Where I start helping you, and you think I don’t expect anything in return.

• Motivational Factor Number One: Pride – Me telling you that you should tell yourself how awesome you really are.

• You There, Stop Stealing! Software Edition – Where I accuse you of theft once more, and you quietly close your torrent client.

• Now Showing: Street Cred – Where I tell you “Don’t worry, I’m not that good either.”

• 5 Steps to Make Sure You Don’t Aim Too High – Where my wise words start ringing louder, and my white beard starts growing longer.

• Awesome Free Resources Part One – Where that long white beard becomes very fitting as I start handing out gifts.

• Motivational Factor Number Two: You Suck – Where I tell you not to let that pride get to your head.

• Tutorials Don’t Teach You Everything – Where I tell you that tutorials don’t teach you everything.

Not bad for the first three weeks. Writing and all that is getting easier, and I would assume better and better, so I think 2009 will bring some awesome things for you, me, and Superluminal.

Happy New Year!