Luke's Creative Podcast

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The final podcast of season 1. I talk about some of the creative things I’ve been doing over the last three months, the highs and the lows, what I’ve learned along the way, and what I plan to do differently in the coming months.

Random notes:

Attempts at live standup comedy.
Live music.
Hiding behind juggling.
Comedic songwriting.
Continually improving at juggling.
Dropless shows.
Failing at the Berlin FotoMarathon.
Other photography.
Writing 215,000 words in my diary over the past 12 months.
Leaving enough brain energy for writing fiction.
Back To Work with Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann.
First Care.
Having to schedule work means I’m not passionate about it.
Future plans.

Thanks for listening to the podcast! Email any feedback or comments to luke@juggler.net and I’ll get back to you.

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In this episode I talk to a fellow juggler and entertainer John Nations. We touch on street shows, but concentrate mostly on our ideas about comedy and juggling, and our comedic influences, and we rant quite a bit about the things we hate about other professional comedians.

Random notes:
Escaping the juggling wasteland of South Carolina.
The class clown.
You’re not the best juggler in the world… rely on jokes instead?
New material for street shows.
Developing comedy without talking.
Mime with talking and sound effects. Hypnosis shows without hypnosis.
Surround yourself with funny.
The comedy mind is a muscle.
Tell jokes because YOU want to, even if the audience doesn’t understand.
The audience is more important than your ego.
Giving variety to the audience is more important than showing your juggling wang.
The permission to be funny AND do technical juggling, not instead of.
Magicians describing what they do is redundant.
Magicians and jugglers use their skill as growing up as a substitute for social skills.
Tributes to other comedians… or just ripping off their jokes?
Ten hours of new material in ten years… can it be all A-grade?
Sometimes you want to see the greatest hits!
Admiring comedians for doing clean material about well-trod topics.
Challenge: be funny with no props!
No comedy subject should be out of bounds.
Inspiration from bad examples.
Luke rants about dishonest, stale comedians.
I want to be compared to the best, and I want to be the worst person on stage!

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Gregg Margarite is creative in many different fields, and so am I. We didn’t get into the specifics of any creative field, but had a great discussion about being someone trying to make their way in a world that likes to put people in boxes.

Links:
vitroglyph.com – glass art by Henner Schroder, with help from Gregg.
Gregg’s audiobook recordings – the only other project he does under his own name.

As he said in the podcast, Gregg is the one with the beard:

More random notes:

Only one thing, but manifests in many different aspects.
What “making glass” entails.
Three dimensional canvas.
Making the glass is almost a performance art, because so many people come to watch.
How did you get into this? Well, there was this girl…
Glass turning from a craft into an art.
A hobby has a whole subculture, and within it superstars.
Gregg’s father was all about security.
Not wanting to bring in money from creative endeavors.
Not trying to accumulate laurels any more. You have to have laurels to rest upon them.
When I’m finished with something, I’m not interested in it anymore.
Everything springs from itself… everything’s connected.
I want to be as good on my best day as the best are on their worst day.
Doing something under your own name versus using a pseudonym.
Sometimes the audience doesn’t understand.
If something ends up as a “product” that’s great, but I create as a bodily function.
Gregg: I don’t want to look like the guy who thinks he’s a genius.
Luke: Hmmm, maybe I sometimes come across as that guy.
Generalists.
Is there a box for me?
There are examples of generalists, but few and far between. Like Buckminster Fuller.
Generalists in a specific medium transcend the medium.
Specialist is best for most people, as generalists will probably never have as much knowledge as the specialist in any one area.
Luke uses his generalist attitude to stand out.
Gregg hides his generalist attitude to make cocktail parties easier to bear.
And he always uses another name.
Gregg doesn’t want to be known as the poet/musician who is a really crappy musician and a really crappy poet.
Luke is happy to be pretty average across the board.
Art is when you learn a craft so much you come out the other side.
Musicians seem to think they are being paid by the note.
Has Gregg set Luke a challenge?
Cross pollination of skills and the leverage of audiences.

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In this episode I chat with Brandon Palas, a professional comic book artist. I asked him to draw a self-portrait sketch to include in this blog post (see above).

I’ve not got much to add here, except that Brandon’s dreamed-of web comic project is starting slowly. He said in the podcast “I don’t have the time!” but in a recent email he said “I’m never going to have more time, so I might as well try to work on it now.”

Note’s and links:
Brandon’s Blog
ConceptArt.org
Paul F. Gero photography blog
Marko Djurdjevic’s Character Ideation – trailer (WMV file, 11.4mb)
The expressive stick figure art of XKCD

“It’s not about the best illustration or the greatest art, it’s about telling the story.”

“Faces and heads are the most important part.”

Windows and windows and windows (learning shortcuts):

This is a warmup sketch before he settles down to real work:

“How many pages per day?”

More random notes:
Brandon is a comic book artist.
Luke doesn’t know anything about comics!
Getting into drawing as a kid.
Creative energy can get diverted by other endeavors.
Messing around, just sketching, builds confidence.
Faces and heads are the most important part.
If something’s wrong with an arm, most people won’t notice. Something wrong with the face? Everyone notices!
Working nights… what am I doing with my life?
Near death experience forcing you to move on in life.
“I bet you’re 27… you’re going to wait until you’re 40?”
Working for someone else focuses the mind.
It’s not about the best illustration or the greatest art, it’s about telling the story.
Learning from what you appreciate about other artists.
A photo lacks motion and life?
A series of photos in the same order as a comic doesn’t work.
There’s no point in being a human camera.
Comic book illustration is an art of shortcuts and gestures.
How to make things out of focus in comic book art.
Spotting blacks and line weight.
Warming up to drawing.
Spending money on training. Spending money on your job!
Going professional, and giving up the day (night) job.
How many pages per day?
A two year project, and how much you improve over that time.
Art style evolving all the time.
The expressiveness of stick figures and XKCD.
Luke’s stick figure art story.
Brandon’s next project?

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In this episode I have a long conversation with David Friedman. David is a photographer, blogger, and inventor, with a lot of crossover between these different creative strands.

I was aiming for an hour-long podcast, but on my last question, David took off on an enthusiastic tangent about an almost completely disconnected project, which I decided to leave in.

We talk about:

David Friedman Photography
David’s long term photography project, Inventor Portraits, personal projects in general, the mindset of inventors.

Ironic Sans
The impetus for starting a new blog, early successes, “pre-pixelated” tshirt logos, making money from his blog, sharing ideas, or not sharing ideas, not being able to program computers, how much time to spend on a single project, “keming”, the “Evil Mad Scientist Labs Bulb Dial Clock”, people making your ideas, patents, people stealing ideas without credit, what makes an “idea” into an “invention”, what is the step between having an idea and being creative, the mental process of creativity. (See photo above for folded paper window blind invention.)

The Sunday Magazine
Sharing stories from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from exactly 100 years ago, finding time to work on projects, “if someone else was doing this project, I wouldn’t have to it, and I’d read it myself!”

It begins! This is episode 1 of the podcast, in which I introduce myself, talk about talking about creativity, and explain the concept behind the concept. Enjoy!

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