We all know that a good person can be a bad artist.
But no one will ever be a genuine artist
unless a great human being and thus also a good one.
Marc Chagall

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Imagination embraces the entire world,
and everything there will be to know and understand.
Imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
Albert Einstein

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
I ♥! Dr. Seuss

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt


Ray Bradbury on Storytelling & Human Nature (1963 Documentary)

“The first year I made nothing, the second year I made nothing, the third year I made 10 dollars, the fourth year I made 40 dollars. I remember these. I got these indelibly stamped in there. The fifth year I made 80. The sixth year I made 200. The seventh year I made 800. Eighth year, 1,200. Ninth year, 2,000. Tenth year, 4,000. Eleventh year, 8,000 … Just get a part-time job! Anything that’s half way decent! An usher in a theater … unless you’re a mad man, you can’t make do in the art fields! You’ve gotta be inspired and mad and excited and love it more than anything else in the world! It has to be this kind of, ‘By God, I’ve gotta do it! I’ve simply gotta do it!’ If you’re not this excited, you can’t win!

I’m a storyteller — that’s all I’ve never tried to be. I guess in ancient times, I would’ve been somewhere in the marketplace, alongside the magician, delighting the people. I’d rather delight and entertain than anything else.”

 

No Wonder We Don’t Have A Space Program

Who wants to go into space if all we’re going to discover is an indestructible endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species?

Rant from Amir, a character in development:
“What’s with these detestable cheerful bright colors??!?! ‘Home’ is Sci-Fi isn’t it?? Listen up: I want lasers, dark dangerous evil, ruthless aliens flying around killing idiots, lasers, people freeze-drying, brutal crazy crap popping out of stomachs, viruses, explosions, wickedness, tentacles obsessed with diving down putzes throats, death: death beams, death stars, death dearth, darth vaders, death despair, death disaster. Did I mention lasers?!? Misery entertains me! If it bleeds it leads! Outer space’s lethal man. Give me deathliness. Instantly. Immediately please not now right now. I shouldn’t have to say please because what I want is what science fiction is. Everyone knows our universe was created by malevolent obscene councils of sadistic evil demons flying around in vicious conflict with each other. We’re finished. No one wants Future-is-Great crap. It highly aggravates pisses me off as a member of The Lost Generation – a Zero without a Hero, me – to tell you, this. It hurts. For your information I grew up watching Babylon 5 Battlestar Galactica Star Wars Star Trek Starwhatever SyFy Alien Prometheus Avatar – all of it, the whole thing – I am expert on high-tech corporate body snatching straight up ass butchery. With lasers. Dig it. Get with it. Butchery à la badass. Carnage à la punkass. That’s la programmé. Pull it together: Zombies. Space. Lasers. Pirates. Make it happen. Insane aliens. Aliens angels fear. Aliens god is afraid of. Lasers. Mucho lasers: laser swords, laser guns, laser jails, planet destroying lasers. Everywhere lasers. Be realistic: life sucks. With lasers. On Earth, on Mars. Everywhere. Lasers. Guaranteed. Stop annoying me you offensive optimist.”

Catalyzing Empathy with Factual Fiction: Pinker on the Decline of Violence

“Empathy may be catalyzed by exposure to histories, journalism, memoirs, and realistic fiction, travel, and literacy – which allows us to project ourselves into the lives of other people, who formerly we may have treated as subhuman. And also to realize the accidental contingency of our own station in life – in the sense that “There but for fortune go I.”. It helps us imagine what it is to be someone else. Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else, may increase your moral consideration to that other person.”

Bobette Buster on Factual Fiction Storytelling

Bobette Buster on Bruno Bettleheim’s “The Uses of Enchantment”

“He had observed in the Holocaust that the children who had been taught the true Grimm fairy tales have been prepared for the fact that someday a wolf will come to your door, someday you will be thrown in an oven, and someday you will be lost in a forest. If you keep walking forward you will discover the courage to find your way. And there will come mentors and friends and allies and you will survive, and you will thrive.”

“John Lasseter and Ed Catmull said, ‘We finally understood what Pixar was about. They were willing to go to the dark side of any idea, in order to show the transformation of it to the opposite.”

“Guess what there is an inexorable force in the universe that will help. If you will keep going you will discover the faith, the courage, so that you can move on. And children will be psychologically prepared, ‘Okay, its true, some day we may all experience great rejection. Our children may put us in nursing homes, we will have broken hearts. And then we die.’ Okay? So film can tell you, not to take your value from that, but to love anyway. To take heart and to cherish each day.”

Jonah Lehrer "How Creativity Works"

Predictors of Success (creative or otherwise):
  1. How committed are you to this goal? Is this a goal you take seriously, always wanted to do?
  2. How do you react to the inevitable frustrations and failures along the way – are they interpreted as a sign by you to try something else, or, that you should double down.
“The grittiest win. Creating something new is always going to be hard. If it were easy it would have been done already. It’s always going to involve lots of frustration, lots of failure, lots of edits, lots of drafts, iterations, and that’s why it takes grit. That’s why grit is such an essential component of creative success. Woody Allen has this great quote, ‘Creative success if eighty percent about showing up.’ Well grit is what allows you to show up, again, and again.”
“Everyone says, ‘Make the company bigger, grow the bottom line.” So they get an expensive bureaucracy, lots of fixed costs, but they’re no longer able to innovate at the same rate so they become more reliant upon their old ideas, for their new ideas they’ve got to invest in expensive acquisitions, but eventually those old ideas no longer work. They’re no longer useful. And those acquisitions don’t pan out. And that’s when companies go belly up.”
“Because cities don’t try to maximize creativity they end up doing exactly that. Companies on the other hand they try to micro manage the process. These well paid CEOs say, “I know how to do this, I know how to get the most out of my employees.” So they tell you which problems to work on, and they tell you who you can talk to, they tell you were you can go, they tell you not to drink a beer in the afternoon – they tell you to focus, focus, focus. Stay in your cubicle all day. Tell you to brainstorm when brainstorming absolutely doesn’t work. And all these things – many of which are done with the best of intentions – they actually get in the way.”
“Imagination has always seemed like a magic trick, but, the good news is, by finally understanding where new ideas come from, we can hopefully have more of them. The science of creativity can make us just a little bit more creative.”

"Let’s Draw Endangered Species" Pinterespiration

Lets Draw Endangered Species, pre-previz by the best artists in animation collected to inspire your own stories and character designs. If working with animal-based characters consider using your talents to make endangered species known and lovable.  
This Pinterest Gallery compliments an otherwise long-term project: 

Eric Machmer: Saludar a la Chihuahuita! (Previz for ‘Friday and Sunshine’)

She’s the most feared, fearsome, loathed, lonesomest, dejected and rejected animal in the zoo. Lives beneath the Snack Shack near the kids petting park (yes, that’s a bullet in her head). “Chihuahuita” is a term of endearment for Chihuahuas.
Friday, a numbat in the foreground above, is an endangered Australian anteater…super cute, nearly a national mascot (originally she was a different animal with longer ears…).