Open Source Creative

Happy New Year! Short introduction this week, folks. This episode is all about goals for the coming year. What are your creative goals for the year? What do you want to get done?

Part of my goals include continuing to do creative work each day and [try to] post it on the Daily Creative group we’ve created on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, come on by and join in. It’s a great little collection of artists that we’ve got there.

Most importantly, I also mention in the show [spoiler alert] that I’ll be moving this podcast to its own site some time this year. That site, of course, will require a domain name. Problem is, I can’t decide on which one. So I made a little survey of the possible choices I have in mind. In the show, I give a bit more detail about the thought process I’ve got behind each of the choices. In any case, if you wouldn’t mind answering this little poll for me, I’d be most appreciative.

Thanks!

Light BWK, Jan 8 2017

Creative goal: Finish the base design for my game, get it playable before December 31th 2017.

This week’s show is all about making the time you need to produce your creative works. Well… it’s mostly about that. I get to that point by briefly talking about how I read an article on The Digital Reader about a super-cool eink device called the reMarkable. I’m extremely excited about seeing how this device fares when it comes out at the end of the summer next year (2017, if you’re reading this in the future). I’ll be talking a bit more about the reMarkable and my forays into putting Arch Linux on a Surface Pro 3 later this week on the Linux Lugcast show (you can listen or participate live this Friday evening).

Oh, and Krita 3.1 has been released, go update!

After that digression, though, my main focus this episode has been on productivity… making the time to work on your projects. I break it down thusly:

Of course, even though I’ve listed out the rough basis here, you should still listen to the show because I go into each bit with more detail (and digressions, of course. Wouldn’t be me otherwise, right?)

My question for you this week: what kind of things have you done to make time for creating? I’m always looking for new things to try out.

And as a small second, what do you think about these show notes? Do you prefer the list-style that I’ve used on previous shows, or is this in-line format more to your taste?

See you next week!

dave hingley, Dec 15, 2016

I started thinking about finding time back in uni. at the time my university day was 7.30am to 6pm with an hour for lunch. I worked out if i worked on extra projects durring my lucnhbreak, I could spend 5 hours a week on somehting else.

when i got home at 6pm, I would be tired, I would sleep for an hour, then eat, then from 8pm till midnight my time was pretty much my own. I could prep work for the next day

in a week (monday to friday) I would get a days work for free

these days I do something similar- I sacrifice my lunch times to give me 5 h ours a week to spend on various art projects. I used to draw the line at not working in the eveneing to spend time with my fiance, but recently I have gotten a tablet to work on, so we can both be watching TV and i can be drawing/animating on the tablet.

Every other weekend My Fiance works, So i am able to do either DIY jobs around the house or work on projects.

eventually, though, the number of extra hours I will be able to commit to personal projects if/when I become a parent will reduce rapidly, but I think then its time to really start smaller short projects, make a drawing, do a comic strip etc I wont be ablet to keep the pace forever, maybe we should think about working in bursts? would that make for a better work/life balance?

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

That’s a good approach… really big on squeezing out those moments when you can find them. Do you have trouble getting yourself “into the zone” on your work? Some folks take a half hour to an hour to warm up before they can really put their nose down and get it done. Are you in that camp, or have you found a way to simply sit down and get right to work?

And yes, the addition of having kids has certainly forced me to think harder about how I manage my time for creative projects. Fortunately, as kids get older (and if they have an interest), they can start doing their own creative stuff when you do your own. It’s a great feeling.

Light BWK, Dec 15, 2016

I’m not always productive. If I’m experimenting with new stuff I am mostly certain that I will stumble for days.

As for making time for creating, I cut off a lot of time wasting activity. 2 years ago, I stopped watching TV, unsubscribed to a lot of Youtube channels, don’t listen to not important podcasts (this means your codpass is important XD ). Only read the 1st or 2nd paragraph to a news article or post, if interesting and important then I read further. Plus I have been using text to speech (reason why I’m on windows most of the time, TTS in Linux sucks) to consume more important articles while I do my things.

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

Ooooh… the text to speech thing is something I hadn’t thought of (probably because I’m exclusively on Linux ;)). That sounds like a really helpful way to go. I think that the Mycroft project was doing some stuff on that front. Maybe I should devote a little bit of time to investigate that a little further and see if I can make it useful.

(Also, thank you for the kind words about my codpast. It means quite a lot and I really appreciate that you consider this show valuable to listen to.)

Light BWK, Dec 17, 2016

Ohh so it is codpast and not codpass. I will remember that. :D

Hi there! In this episode I talk at length about another little distraction that I’ve had over the last year… a little feature request site for Blender called Right-Click Select. But, that’s just the launch point. What this episode is really about is the best way to make feature requests in an open source software community (like the Blender community). I also make a few flubs, but hey… that’s pretty much on-brand for me now, right?

Here’s a few links to things I reference in the show:

caetano, Dec 13, 2016

Do you have some examples of features that were added thanks to rightclickselect.com ? (I say “thanks to” to exclude any happy coincidence of a feature that was added and also happened to have had a rightclickselect proposal)

Much more importantly : have you really had all these beards and haircuts at some point in time ?

Jason, Dec 13, 2016

Good question! I would need to look into that (the Right-Click Select thing). Part of the vision for the site is to have tighter integration with developer.blender.org, specifically so people can see when an idea on RCS migrates to a design issue on developer.blender.org. I just need to make the time (and perhaps get a bit better at web development… or find someone who already has those skills) to add that feature in.

As for the hair/beards question… yes. I’ve worn all of those… plus a few additional ones. I should probably update that GIF. The whole history of them can actually be seen on my Facebook page. I tend to update the drawing when I make a change. :)

caetano, Dec 13, 2016

That’s a great plan. I wish you to become a badass web developer and considering how active you are on the web, I feel like it would be the best solution in the long term, although I don’t know your plans for the future.

Too bad I can’t access the photos since I don’t have a facebook account, I’ll have to use my visual imagination.

Jason, Dec 13, 2016

Ha! It’s unfortunate that, although I’m interested in web development in general, it’s not a core focus of mine. I tend to hack on things until they work. In the long run, I’ll probably need some help to give that site all of the love that it deserves.

Huh… I thought those images were publicly visible. Guess I’ll have to make a page/gallery here that’s dedicated to them.

*caetano**, Dec 13, 2016

yeah, facebook won’t let you see some things anyway when you don’t have an account.

This week’s episode is a barrel of questions and curiosity. I spin myself in a circle when I realize that I might not actually have a single medium that I can call “home”. Is that a problem or is that a requirement of being a creative person in the modern era? Or has it always been like this and folks just get known for one of the many kinds of things that they do?

I think I have an answer to this… at least for myself. However, I’m really interested in you. Do you have a medium that you think of as your medium, or do you split your focus across more than one creative outlet? How do you keep focus? How do you maintain balance? Do you actively do any of that at all, or do you just let the chips fall where they may?

dave hingley, Nov 30, 2016

Hey Jason,

I think of my self as an artist. I trained as an animator and we were encouraged to think of ourselves as such but the idea that an artist is married to a specific media is not really valid. Some painters also made sculpture ( degas carved ballerinas. Dali made one of his elephants, magrite had his readymades, Warhol made sculptures and films) musicians like David Bowie also painted as well as actors like Sylvester Stalone who have also written screen plays and directed. I think as artists we should be open to opportunity to try new ways of making things, in many ways we love the process of creating, rather than the product that’s created

If I only animated, and made animation the way I should make animation either with flash or toonboom or 3d in maya, I don’t think I would be able to make that much work, maybe a short film every year?

My Fiance is heavily into amateur theatre and as a result I have been asked to help on a number of projects. This has resulted in me being in demand by other groups

that has in turn lead to some paid illustration work. In the past year I did animation work for a production of ‘signing’ in the rain’, a series of backdrops and posters for a Pantothat sold out at the Edinburgh Festival, a 10 page comic and half a dozen illustrations for a book of folk takes for children, logo design for a production of ‘Steel Magnolias’, a poster for a play about King Knut, the illustrations for a book about Saxons and Viking Kings ( will probably be out next year), a set of promotional Top trump cards for a story telling event, designed the poster for this years Panto, produced a little webcomic and I have also written my own Panto which I hope will be put on next year. Some of these projects were fun and challenging and some where tedious slog fest where deadlines where ridiculously short and as a result, I didn’t sleep much.

All those projects where done in my spare time so on top of it all I was still doing a day job. These extra projects came about because I was happy to say yes to the opportunities offered they gave me an insight into other ways of working,I created all these things and I think as a result, my initial definition of myself as an artist still stands

If I had defined my self as an animator, and only judged my worth on what I had animated this last year then my output would be terrible a couple of 15 second clips and a few bits and bobs here and there, hardly seem worthy.

It could be that in 1017, I may decide to concentrate more on making animation, and so there will be less graphic design work, and then I could justify calling myself an animator, but really, I would still be an artist, just favouring animation, and my output of work would be different, as well, I might make just a minute or so of animation the whole year – as an animator would that be good? Or bad?

Its like Albert Einstein said:

everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.’

I think anyone can be an artist, but if as an artist that favours painting, you judge your output on the number of sculptures you create then you’re going to be disappointed, but if as an artist, you judge yourself on the total artwork you create then I think you will be surprised at the sheer amount of art you can actually create.

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

Wise words, Dave. Thanks for sharing them.

Klaatu, Nov 30, 2016

Totally off the cuff here, and not well thought-out: but what if an ‘artist’ inherently has different media while a ‘craftsman’ inherently has only the media required for the craft.

I don’t think of myself as either of those two labels, probably because those terms have such weight now, and when I think of “an artist”, I think of all those flakes I knew in NYC and LA, and when I think of “craftsman” I think of somebody who gets paid to make chairs. These are not accurate or fair, but they are my own special linguistic biases, and I cherish them.

I just Do What I Do, and the medium I use depends on how adventurous I’m feeling on any given day. Mostly I think of myself as somebody whose media is digital.

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

Heh… personal linguistic biases are fantastic. Those terms actually conjure similar images for me as well. I’m not sure if it shows in the podcast, but I have real difficulty using the term artist, especially in a self-referential way. It’s why I end up using the gratingly nebulous term “creative” as a noun as much as I do.

Either my vocabulary is failing me or there simply isn’t a term for “person who makes stuff for self-amusement”… correction: there’s not a non-pejorative term for that as far as I know. There should be.

Light BWK, Nov 30, 2016

My medium is storytelling, which is a huge area. It can be written stories, still images like comic, moving pictures like a movie or interactive like games. I can be designing the location, tweaking lighting mood as well as giving context to why the location is as such in the form of narrative and plots. Day one I can 3D model, another day I can paint the scene, another day I can make the characters move. Since I am an engineer, all these can come from either my logical or artistic brain. Plus I have developed methods to engineer stories beat to beat that works in any medium. It might sound crazy but storytelling is the ultimate medium, without it you will lack inspiration or motivation to 3D model, paint a landscape, device tools and set processes. If I were to pick 1 thing to do the rest of my life, I will and am confidently say “Storytelling.”

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

That’s fantastic. I feel like I used to have that level of assured mindset in defining “my medium.” Somewhere along the line, though, it feels like either my interests fractured or (more kindly put) diversified. I’m still not sure if the result is more desirable than having the sureness of resolve that you do. From my perspective, you’re in a pretty enviable position… but then again, the grass is always greener.

You’ve given me more to think on. Thank you.

Light BWK, Dec 1, 2016

“interests fractured or (more kindly put) diversified”

We all have that problem, just how much one can handle it.

Fractured interest is easy to solve though. Motivation, interest and inspiration can be stored. It does sound like a load of BS at first encounter. The key is to capture those tiny sparks of brilliance when they happen. Store them in any media you like, sometimes chat streams or FB post can store those catalyst . When you are lost, go back and seek them. It’s like counting your blessings but this time you are counting stuff you have done that you love. They will realign you and often times provide new insights and direction.

Doing new things will also help you not feel demotivated. Start small, very small goals, those you can finish under few hour or a day. This is me talking to myself: “I’m going to rise this pole and make it the best pole I have ever done in my life.” Sounds like a tall order (forgive me for the pun), but if you think about it more, it is just one thing done with perfect score. :D

Short episode this week! And good thing, too, because this one is all about the stuff I’ve been up to recently. Here’s a quick run-down of the stuff I cover:

The Daily Creative group that got launched on Facebook as a result of my attempt to do a “Creative TriMonthalon”. As an extra bonus, here are some links to some of the work I made during that TriMonthalon:

Jungle Book, my little coding distraction to analyze book covers on Amazon

Word Pacer, another coding distraction where I wrote a little web app for visualizing the pacing of a chunk of text

Opensource.com, where I’ve been writing articles on open source and creativity

Book Widget, I forgot to mention this one, but this was another little coding distraction… it’s a WordPress widget that adds a book to your sidebar with links to the retailers where it’s available. I’m actually using it on this site. There’s kind of a fun story about that. Maybe I’ll talk about it a bit in the next episode.

And, most importantly, I asked what you’ve been up to in the last year or so. Let me know. Share links. It’ll be a hoot!

Iain McGregor, Nov 24, 2016

Hi Jason

Thanks for the podcast. It’s good to hear what others have been doing. I’ve produced two animations using Blender during the last year. Here are the links:

https://youtu.be/2PSjARmmL7M

https://youtu.be/zJs27xNdKOM

When we met at the Blender conference a few weeks ago I explained that I learned Blender by studying your “Blender for Dummies” book. That was in Blender 2.49 so it was your first edition. The book gave me a great foundation to build on.

Regards

Iain McGregor

I told you I’d be making it a point to keep up with this show again. Well, here’s another episode. This one is a bit of an archive one. I actually recorded it a year and a half ago before the podcast went dormant. I just never got around to editing it and making it fit for sharing with you. Now I have, so here you go!

The gist of the episode revolves around online advertising, otherwise known as paid traffic. A lot of creatives, both in the open source community and outside of it, are interested in getting their work in front of an audience that would appreciate it. Advertising online, particularly on social media (specifically Facebook), seems like it might be the best avenue for getting that kind of proper exposure. However, as someone with a high interest in privacy, security, and non-douchy ethics, I have a few misgivings about how some parts of online advertising are handled. That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about in this episode.

There’s a question in there for you, too. Even though the recording is over a year and a half old, I’m still curious about this topic and interested in your thoughts on the matter. So please do share.

Klaatu, Nov 16, 2016

Ads are a clunky and lazy mimicry of human interaction. I love an ad when it leads me to something cool, but that mostly happens when that “ad” is a friend who mentions something to me because they think I might like it. The more human an ad, the better, and try as Facebook and Google might, they cannot divine my interests by scanning my web history or emails, nor anticipate when I’m in the mood to be sold to. Internet advertising is a numbers ame, and that’s de-humanizing.

Your advice to be genuine is the correct answer, and opt-in is the correct model.

Jason, Nov 16, 2016

Agreed. The anticipating mood thing is a big factor in this. And yeah, ads have always been a numbers game… a thing where single digit ROI is actually good because you’re throwing your mess out there in front of an audience of millions. That changed a little bit for a while there with better analytics and niche marketing… but the big data thing seems to be dragging that industry back in the direction of giant numbers again.

Thing is, I’m predisposed trust your opinion over that of a thousand people I don’t know… and I think (I hope) most other people are of a similar mindset. Granted, the cynic in me knows that can also be gamed and manipulated, but the optimist in me thinks that most people have pretty adequately-tuned bullshit detectors. I’m rooting for the optimist.

Finally! At long last, after way, way too much time off, the podcast is back in action. Huzzah! This one is a little bit different from previous episodes. It’s a walking commute rather than a driving one. In this show, I talk about this year’s Blender Conference and all of the development going on with Blender there. It’s really an exciting time to be a Blender user. And the best part is that the lecture/presentation side of the conference is freely available for everyone to see on the Blender Foundation YouTube channel. Here are a couple choice pieces worth watching:

And that will about do it. In the next episode, I’ll record from my car again. Perhaps I’ll even bring you up to speed with all the crazy things I’ve been up to in the last year and a half.

On a general note, I’m really interested to hear what you think about the walking format for the show. It’s not likely that walking shows will be the norm, but if you like it, perhaps it’s something I’ll throw into the rotation periodically. In any case, I’d love feedback on that.

Also, for those of you unfamiliar with this podcast, I have a tendency to casually curse throughout it. If that’s something that bothers you, you have been warned.

Wheeeeee!

quollism, Nov 9, 2016

Great to have you back!

Jason, Nov 9, 2016

Thanks! Let’s see how well I can keep this up. I’ll need constant pestering. :)

Yay! Another Open Source Creative Podcast episode. In this one, I have a long conversation with myself about the nature of art and open source software as it pertains to selfishness. Is art inherently selfish? Is it not? Is that a bad thing? And likewise for Free Software. Yeah… it’s an interesting thing and it was stuck in my head because of a handful of tweets with Chris Oatley, Stephen Brooks, and Amanda Carbine (and that’s the beauty of Twitter, by the way… I don’t know any of these people, but it was cool to have a conversation with them). Anyhow, have a listen and let me know your thoughts.

But first… a few personal news linkage bits:

And… in open source creative software news:

Open source creative software releases:

And one last thing that I forgot to mention… I’m speaking SELF, the SouthEast LinuxFest, in Charlotte, North Carolina. SELF is in June, from the 12th to the 14th. I’ll be talking about producing cool creative things with open source software. I’ve never been to a Linux conference before so it should be a lot of fun. If you’re going to be there, come track me down.

And that’s about it. See you next episode.

Dave Hingley, May 20, 2015

Hi Jason,

sorry this episode was a little too rambley and the point didnt really make a lot of sense

but if I understand you correctly, the intent to create is selfish and the relase of the creation of selfless. so not a slong a post this time- sorry.

first up, lets abandon those terms, they are too culturally loaded. it doesn’t matter if you try and contextuallise it, selfishness still registers as a negative concept.

so instead let’s redefine the first concept that intent to create is self gratifying:

only that doesn’t work, for example, yesterday I had to solve a small problem in the office, in order to fix it i wrote a small program in processing. Do I like writing code in Processing? no. I don’t like writing it, buts its fast and gives quick feedback and i could write it quickly. so there was nothing in the process of creating it that was self gratifying. I neede a piece of software to solve a problem.

you could argue that the need for the software was self gratifying. Indeed, I could have lived without the software tool, but things would have taken longer. is it self gratifying to want to work more efficiently? or to reduce unnecesary work?

when I get home, I cook dinner for my partner and me. the intent to create dinner is driven by the nescesity to eat. otherwise we starve to death. yes we enjoy the food, you could argue that is self gratifying, although I used a different brand of tuna and it was shredded instead of flaked, and I didnt like it. I still are the whole thing, because it was a choice between that or nothing. is that still self gratifying?

so maybe we should simply say that the intent to create is driven by nescesity – after all, necesity is the mother of invention.

ok, so thats the first concept looked at lets look at sharing.

sharing is selfless.

only it isn’t, in your episode you mention that selling is a form of sharing (it isn’t, selling is selling, sharing is sharing- its part of the reason why Hollywood is so pissed with people sharing fiilms) After all, you arent giving away any of your books right? so you do gain from every copy sold. thsi can be seen to be not selfless.

In my spare time, over the last couple of years, I have been working on a pece of short animation. I am using open source software, as part of this, I have written some software tools to help me make th animation. It is my desire, when the film is finsihed to release the software tools and the source models into the creative commons.In this example, my act of sharing the source files can probably be thought of as selfless

so maybe the act of of sharing could be considered as selflessly neutral, you can share exclusively – using a shop or money to limit who can actually consume your work, or you can share inclusively, by throwing it open to the community und Creative Commons

your analogy of mugging a guy for his watch, is kind of a different discussion between intent and result, any that might be worth talking about on a nother episode

cheers

At long last, another Open Source Creative Podcast episode is here! Sorry for the long gap between episodes, folks… it’s been a crazy month. In any cast, this episode was recorded back in March and in it I talk about doing spec work (that is, speculative work) as a creative producer of things. Episode 15 really helped me nail down where I think my position is on this, so in a way, it’s an extension of that. It’s a bit of a contrast to the folks at nospec.com.

Of course, when there’s a month gap between episodes, there’s a lot of news that transpires. First (because, well, it’s my podcast), the me-related news:

Yeah… but enough about me. There was also a bunch of real news in the open source creative world:

Calls for content:

Talkatcha next week!

Regus Martin, Apr 23, 2015

One great example in defense of Spec work is Andrew Kramer and his work with J. J. Abrams. He did his first project for him without any expected pay. (he did get paid for it awhile later, but that’s beside the point) That let to him working on many more paid projects such as Star Trek and lots of other major productions.

Jason, Apr 23, 2015

Good point. And a lot of [lesser known] people get their start similarly, with strategically considered spec work. Of course, the counter argument is these individuals are outliers and don’t represent what typically happens among the majority of creatives. There’s some truth there; good fortune does play its role. However, it’s not the only role; you’ll get no where without developing your skill and continued dedication to your craft. I would also say that being the outlier is, in part, an implicit goal when you choose to do creative work. How many creatives want to make work that’s just like everyone else?

TL;DR: Some people might think you’ve made an unfair example. I’m not one of those people. :P

Bassam, May 13, 2015

Finally listened to your podcast while grooming some hair (cg not real). Great delivery, fun way to make your commute more useful!

I’d argue a little that you are against spec work – since a lot of the stuff you describe: Marketing work, fun work that could later pay, Free/Open work, work for contract are not spec.

Spec is more driven by the client, and comes with no guarantees – i.e. if you do a ‘fan’ video for a project and post it online, and later the company hires you, I’d say that’s not quite the traditional definition of spec work. On the otherhand, if an agency or client asks you to make some small part of their project in order to bid on it, that is more like traditional spec work.

Jason, May 15, 2015

I see where you’re coming from, but spec work can be artist-driven. There are spec scripts and spec commercials that people produce on the hope that someone will purchase/distribute it from them. It does bear the name. But maybe that’s part of the issue… perhaps the term has been overloaded with a few multiple meanings and I’m unintentionally conflating them.

Dave Hingley, May 14, 2015

Hi Jason,

Finally got round to listening to your podcast – you got my surname spot on – well done sir! Again I have spent a couple of days cogitating your general gist of the podcast and I think we should try break up spec work into a number of different categories:

portfolio / promotion pieces

These are pieces you have made for yourself to demonstrate your artistic range. You can’t really call them speculative as you didn’t pitch them to anyone -If you sell them later, that’s an added bonus. But wasn’t the original intention of the artwork

Competitions/promotions:

here’s a more calculated risk. You are banking on your work being judged by a competition and winning the prize. An example of this would be the current conception over on Doug walker’s site – this actually looks like a fun competition with a decent cash prize. Here, I guess the challenge is to produce something of decent quality in the shortest period of time, that adheres to the rules of the contest.

True Spec work:

thie is either you sending off art to potential clients or anticipating a clients needs and getting off a piece of art to them before they realise they need it or pitching a piece from them. Here the challenge is to get your art used so you could be paid for it.

There is really no problem with portfolio pieces, its your art, your IP, you can do what the hell you like with it. Things start getting murky when we move into the territory of competitions. I remember a few years ago seeing posts on various animation message boards asking for animators to make a low budget music video – there’s the usual things in the request

“We can’t pay much but it will give you great exposure”

the band was actually a very well known band who had a number of hits in the 70’s. Needless to say the forums I was on let them know in no uncertain terms what they could do with their offer.

Here’s some things things to consider about contests:

if you enter the contest and you dont win. who owns the IP? If part of the conditions of the contest is that the contest organiser owns the IP, and you dont win, and later they decide to use your art in a different way – what recourse do you have?

what does great exposure actually mean? say you make this music video for a band and it gets viewed 10 Billion times ( congratulations! you beat Gangnam style!) How many of those views will result in new commisions? seriously ask your self, next time you get a commision, ask them how they heard about you. was it your online portfolio? your facebook page? the music video? I think it would be intersting to see exactly how much extra work ‘exposure’ gets you.

do the rules of the competinion, not constitute a contract? should you be protected if competition organisers try and do something counter to the rules?

Things get even more tricky for true spec work. as it can be potentially dangerous. I work in games and most companies will not accept any kind of speculative pitch for a game or character because if we are already working on something that they pitch they could argue the company stole their design. so with that information, I would think it’s safe to assume that any company asking for spec work or putting feelers out for spec work do not have in house departments they are commisioning for. So if they want a logo, they probably dont have an Art Director, graphic designer, or artists in the place. The Person who will be evaluating your logo design, has no idea about composition, colour theory or general design principles, has no idea how long it takes to produce the logo, or the best format to have the file in and no idea how much it is worth. should your design be deemed good enough, then you submit an invoice, they then decide if its worth the price you invoiced them. they will either pay it ( well done!) or they will try and negotiate it down. if you prove too beligerant, then they will just decide to not have a logo, no one gets paid – except another designer commisioned a few days later to make a logo that looks like your design but significantly different.

I disagree that all work is spec work. if you are contracted with a regular salary then how can that be speculative? By definition, speculative is a gamble you submit the work on the hope that you get something out of it. your point that if you have a contract and the client reneges means that they have breached their contract- you could therefore have grounds to pursue them through your countries legal system.

the examples of the game engines is a little different. as commercial piece of software, the licence fees will have generated enough income for the company op open them out to consumers, this will have 2 outcomes:

the home user makes some kickass games and distributes them free (as in beer)

the home user makes the next flappy bird. suddenly it becomes popular and a vialble commercial proposition, Engine company now says to user ‘Well done your game is a hit, plase licence your copy of the engine’ yes theres a fee but as the game is making money it should pay for itself.

two final thoughts:

Spec work is a gamble, you are competing against an unknown number of competitors to match a brief that may or may not exist for a client who is only concerned with final product. they don’t care about process they wont see the hours spent on the design or the drafts that weren’t finalised.

finally, I think commisioners need to understand that creating art is difficult, we make it look easy because we have spent our entire lives doing it. You wouldn’t ask a plumber to fix your central heating by telling them ‘ it will be great exposure’ or to do it ‘for the love’. You recognise he has specialist skills that you dont have and pay the rate set down by the plumber. I used to be quite offended by this sort of reasoning, like we are easily distracted mororns. Tell us how good you think our art is, pat is on the head and we’ll draw all your logos .

I have a strange feeling that this episode is going to get me into a bit of trouble. Maybe. We’ll see. I get into details and backstory in the actual episode, but it all started with a question (or, better, replies to a question) regarding the resale of “used” digital content—specifically ebooks—in an episode of the Sell More Books Show, a podcast that’s pretty prevalent in the indie publishing scene. This episode is a bit of a rant launched from that premise. To sum up, the way I look at it is as follows:

So yeah… that’s my piece. I’m looking forward to see what everyone else thinks.

In me-related news, here are a couple links:

And links related to open source creative news stuff:

New software releases:

Whew… that’s a lot of stuff.

**Dave Hingley, Mar 4, 2015

Hi Jason.

listened to your latest podcast. and initially, I thought we were going to have disagreements, but I totally see where you are coming from. Originators don’t get a cut in profits from second hand/nearly new/preloved content. and if they did, Our society would become radically different.

Our consumer culture would become even more pronounced and things would be thrown away with being reused,recycled or repurposed, because if you are going to get into legal trouble using that old hair straightener to iron collars or turn it into some kind of DIY laminator, then ingenuity and creativity would suffer. indeed pcs would only ever be mac or Windows. the concept of open source would just not be there

however the rest of your points prompted a series of questions- not necessarily disagreeing with you but here’s some ‘what -ifs’ :

the main problem with selling pre owned digital content is that it doesn’t degrade. thats true to a certain extent but on my blog I have examined a couple of cases where digital data had to be carefully restored in this case 30 year old amiga drawings by Andy Warhol (http://titaniumbunker.com/?p=3508) (about half way through the post)

if you buy a licence to run a piece of software then does the provider of the software have any obligations? I have a copy of flash 4 i bought years ago ( i use inkscape these days), but as someone who still has a licence to use this software, should adobe have an obligation to port my copy of flash4 to my current platform (linux)? if an operating system is updated, should they provide me with an update for free? after all while companies release newer versions of their software you dont have to upgrade to it, and when i have bought software before no one has ever told me when the licence expires . indeed If companies are moving over to a subscription type model, then shouldn’t the software be available to me on any platform i want? so If i am signing up to Adobe Creative cloud, I should be able to run after effects from linux. because otherwise the licence is actually quite restrictive, not only do you have to make sure you have a machine that meets their requirements but you also have to use th eoperating system they decide to release on – seems like the user is doing all the work, and paying to use the software…

There is a line of demarcation between selling pre used digital content and piracy, if you make a copy then sell it on , it’s piracy, pure and simple. If you are selling it on,then like you say, you are charging for a transfer of the licence to own the content. And I do think its important to recognise the difference between the two

Working for free:

Finally, thanks for a great podcast I look forward to the next episode

Regards

Dave Hingley

Jason, Mar 4, 2015

Wow… what an incredibly thorough and well thought-out comment. Thank you, Dave.

Let’s see if I can adequately address some of your points/questions:

Degrading digital content over time: I can see the appeal that this may have (at first) for a digital distributor. However, it kind of undermines the benefits of digital media for that distributor as well. Remember that there’s negligible cost to distribute a digital file… forever. If the file degrades for consumers, it would also degrade for the distributor.

Obligating software vendors: While this certainly sounds nice from a customer perspective, I think it’s pretty untenable from a business perspective. Of course, it’s also part of the reason why I prefer to exclusively use free and open source software.

Distinguishing between used sales and piracy: Legally and ethically, I agree with you. There is a difference. Of course, it could also be argued that the digital copying used in piracy is a closer match to the natural use of digital media. Regardless, the point I was making here is that a lot of indies use free distribution of some of their content as an exposure play in marketing. Used digital sales (ludicrous though they are) are also free (as in zero money to the artist) distribution channels that provide exposure. My opinion is that if an artist is using free releases as part of a marketing strategy, but disparaging used sales and piracy, that’s a bit hypocritical.

Working for free: What you’re talking about here is spec work… and it’s a big topic that I don’t think I can give adequate justice to in a blog comment. That said, I think that my rant in this episode has helped me solidify my thoughts on where I stand regarding spec work… and I think I’ll make that discussion the topic of my next episode. :)

Again, thanks so much for the in-depth comment and a huge thank you for listening to the show. I’m glad you enjoy it. I look forward to reading your thoughts on the next one.