Creative Journal 15-04-26

“Everything you do, I'm obsessed with you.”

Jazmin Bean

This is the opening lyric in a song by the gloriously horror kitsch musical artist Jazmin Bean. She is a wonderful example of the role of originality in developing a profile as a creative. This is something which plays on my mind a lot lately. Since I stopped storyboarding professionally I have had to examine why. Why I stopped, I mean. The main reason was that I became sick of expending my creative energy on other people's visions. Visions which were, without exception, repulsive to me. The scripts are always bad. Why are the scripts always so bad? Don't even get me started on the advertising storyboards.

There is a big difference between a jobbing creative and an artist and I no longer wished to be the former, apparently. The reason I opened this entry with Jazmin Bean is because bringing an original creative voice to one's creative practice is essential. There are two reasons which spring immediately to mind. First, it drives one to greater heights of creative, technical and artistic excellence. Second, it is the key to popular success of nay kind. No one cares about the imitators. Only the true, original creative voice of an innovative creator is capable of capturing attention and holding it. There are other important standards of creative success and those are valuable, it remains that sustaining a creative career can be difficult. There is always the urge to take the (seemingly) easy route, to do it the way everyone else does it, to sand off the rough edges and sanitise all the uniqueness away until you're left with something palatable to the content industry. But success based on imitating trends is ephemeral. Having a successful profile based on creating daring and challenging work that people actually want to see? That's something you can build a creative practice around.

Work based on your own honest and unique personal vision? That's something that has the potential to last. That's why we do this. For the chance to create great work. Work for the ages, work that speaks to something within the reader and says, you are better for reading this.

Maybe even a masterpiece.