Making things: interview series — Digital Seams
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Making things: interview series
Jun 15
Written By Bobbie Chen
Today, it has never been easier to create something, anything. But when given the opportunity, most people never do.<br>I feel this. I feel this so much, as a writer who hacks around on this blog; as a coder who has never made anything truly great; as a musician who has played gigs for money, but has never written a song. And I’ve heard friends and acquaintances tell me about it - amazing, interesting, talented, witty people - who don’t feel like they can create.<br>Besides those hard constraints - time, money, health, obligations - there are deeper insecurities at play. It’s not that I don’t have ideas; if anything, the blank page is overwhelming with possibilities. But there’s always a bit of doubt lurking - someone else has already done it, better than I could hope to do, so why start?<br>I interviewed four creators I admire, who make exciting, creative, uniquely-personal things - the kinds of things we need more of - hoping they could tell me how they stay motivated and decide what to work on next.
Amit Patel is the creator of Red Blob Games,<br>where he makes interactive explanations like<br>A* pathfinding<br>and<br>Hexagonal grids,<br>using motivating examples from computer games.
Morry Kolman is an award-winning independent artist who questions the technological and cultural forces around us with works like<br>Traffic Cam Photobooth,<br>First Light Stars,<br>and<br>Mr. Beast Saying Increasingly Large Amounts of Money.
Nolen Royalty , also known as eieio.games, helps strangers interact on the internet through games and experiences like<br>One Million Chessboards and<br>Stranger Video.
Seth Larson is Security Developer-in-Residence at the Python Software Foundation, open source maintainer of<br>urllib3,<br>and blogger of delightful oddities like<br>Hand-drawn QR codes and<br>Post Malone Oreos.
I started each interview with these two questions:<br>When anything is possible, how do you decide what to create?
If someone else can create it, then why should you?
There wasn’t any 12-step formula to success, but certain patterns emerged. Each of these creators figured out how to return to their own interests, make enough things to discover their voice, and resist the distractions of analytics.<br>Start with your own interests, not someone else’s<br>You probably have personal interests [citation needed]. But how does that translate into actual creation? Seth Larson put it simply: “Listen to yourself and what you find wondrous.” Start with what you love to think about, what makes you curious, and what you find fun.<br>Morry Kolman often starts from the fun side, describing his own work as “extremely high-effort shitposting” or “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” But he’s also interested in the invisible flow of data in our lives.<br>Traffic Cam Photobooth was inspired by an art class prompt: “Take a picture without taking it.” But wouldn’t it be funny if anyone could take a selfie using the traffic cameras already installed around New York City? Wouldn’t it be funnier if the Department of Transportation sent you a cease-and-desist letter, and you took a selfie of that too?
Image via Morry Kolman
Learning is a great motivation, too. Everyone I talked to mentioned learning - new tools, new tricks, a topic or technology you’re curious about. When something catches your interest, follow it.<br>Amit Patel creates interactive explainers on topics like A* pathfinding or curved paths; they’ve been invaluable resources for millions of people over the years. But his site started out as a curation of bookmarks about video game development. Even today when he considers new projects, he asks whether the purpose is to learn or to build.<br>For example, Voronoi Percolation was a learning project, to try a new technique for creating maps. Those learnings built the foundations for polished tutorials like Making maps with noise functions. Clearly defining research vs. development helps Amit focus his efforts on the part that matters; you do different things when practicing vs. performing.
Amit Patel’s explainers make it easy to manipulate key variables and see their effects.
Meanwhile, Nolen Royalty creates online experiences, often massively-multiplayer - you might know him from One Million Chessboards or Stranger Video. He told me he wants to connect people, make them laugh, and/or teach them.<br>NR : I sort of grew up on the internet. My family moved around a lot, so a lot of my friends are friends that I originally met and hung out with on the internet (though we eventually met in real life). That was an important part of my life, and I want to promote the idea that the Internet is a silly place to do silly things with other people… About teaching people - my parents are both professors, so I think I’ve always loved explaining and being explained to.<br>From the full interview with Nolen Royalty
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