Creativity Base

Since moving our business, danimations, into the Tomorrow Studio in Adelaide back in June, Emma Sterling and I have been more committed than ever to turning our skills into a sustainable business in the digital media sector. Designed to assist emerging practitioners with a complementary peer group, business advice, workshops, shared facilities, inner-city location, Government-subsidized rent and more, Tomorrow Studio tenancy really does sell itself.

Tomorrow Studio, 193 Wakefield St, Adelaide

While we have been busily developing sample products of our video and animation services and planning the imminent relaunch of our website, several of our more established neighbours have been forging new partnerships under the Studio roof, like the one between web-designers Digital Lamb (Steve Ready and Bec Harper-Wells) and 3D visualisation team Extra Artists (Dan Cormick and Sonia Tynedale). Taking a different course, game and simulation developers Holopoint have already outgrown the space, and moved on to more suitable premises.

In their wake, Holopoint left eight vacant spaces behind in the studio, most of which are now filled. Among the new tenants are three energetic lads who work as Awesome Fighter Animation (Tim Cannan, Levi George & Jonny). From what we’ve seen of their previous projects, they’re a talented and energetic team, and we are already planning a collaborative animation project involving them and the team from fellow first-wave tenants I Love Biscuits (Kyle Leffers and Hannah Murdoch).

The other new tenants represent a spread covering web design, web development and video production. The incumbent video producer is Miles Rowland from Closer Media, whose work demonstrates solid craft and much promise. New tenants whose work I’m less familiar with include web-developer Michael Russel from whois.com.au and Melissa Bagnara, the latest early-career designer to join our ranks.

While Em and I had been eagerly anticipating the new tenants’ announcement for some time, we also felt that the vacancies could have been more broadly advertised. A waiting exists for prospective tenants to join, but finding this list in the first place relies largely on the would-be applicant’s social networks and detective skills. All current tenants could benefit more from a greater diversity of business practise under the Studio roof (we now have five businesses whose practise overlaps in web-development areas for example) and the best way to stimulate this would be to increase public awareness of the Studio and encourage more applicants to apply.

Another studio tenant, Holly Owen (Champagne for the Ladies) also recently vacated her office to move overseas, and as I understand it, current waiting list members will be considered and short-listers interviewed for this opening very soon. To join the waiting list, and to read more about the Department of Trade & Economic Development’s Creative Industries campaign, visit http://www.creativesa.org.

Every now and again I get an email from custom merchandise webstore Zazzle letting me know that someone online has bought one of my custom designs. Through our danimations Zazzle store we sell the occasional Supermarket T-shirt or Lateral Movement merch (an experimental screen cultural event Emma Sterling and I started this year). Moreover, we used the service to make one-off promotional objects for ourselves, to avoid the unattractive upfront costs of bulk ordering custom designs from a traditional printing business. I recently decided to make a concerted effort in getting another Zazzle store off the ground, with pixel art as the unifying theme.

Since I’ve been busy producing pixel art for a range of applications this year (gig flyers, a Merge Magazine editorial spread, animations for theatre and favicons for websites) I thought I’d create a store specifically to host my lo-fi wares. The result? Dead Pixel Designs. Combining a love for cartoons, animation, retro computing and pure colour, the store will be a growing source of lively pixel-based designs. The designs currently feature on apparel, mousemats and binders… and Zazzle provides every end-user/designer with an ever-growing range of products to treat as custom canvases. Some of the wackier ones include skateboard decks, aprons and even pet clothing. Each product can feature either printed or embroidered artwork, depending on the item. Designs can be prepared to templates offline and uploaded, or individual elements can be arranged live on the website, making the experience enjoyable. The designer’s desired royalty is then set, and the item described, tagged, categorised and listed publicly or privately in the Zazzle marketplace. The store owner can then draw upon a range of powerful tools to promote his wares, like the embedded widget below.

More advanced Zazzle features include easy integration of stores with Google Analytics, allowing the gathering of statistics following each visit your store receives. Zazzle also publishes a Site Builder application, and provides further support for web developers to hack, adapt or build from scratch entirely new applications or webpages through which to sell their goodies. If you or someone you know is sitting on some creative merchandising ideas but doesn’t want to commit big money to buying a bulk order (and having to fulfill orders yourself) I strongly recommend you give Zazzle a shot.

Dan Monceaux

A friend and current artistic collaborator sent me the link to this video after a conversation we after working on a mulitmeida scuptural work together. We were talking about the difficulties we all face as creative adults, economically and socially, as we watch the numbers of creatively active peers thin out progressively through school, high school, university and finally, entering the ‘work force’. The video Diwani shared with us is an entertaining and enlightened keynote speech made by Sir Ken Robinson, former university professor and current lobbyist for a reformed education system with improved balance. Ken’s call to action demands the value of creativity to be placed an even keel with the traditional academic pillars of language and mathematics. His rationale? To better prepare humanity for an uncertain future, and stop society from educating individuals away from (rather than fostering and nurturing) their unique talents. Anyone who cares about the future of humanity should watch this clip and ponder its sentiments… as fully commited creative beings, Ken’s words struck a chord with Emma Sterling and I, and we hope it does the same for you.

Dan Monceaux