Workflow

A Practical Guide to the Creative Process

Doron Meir

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351673228
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

A pro isn't just a person who can do it well. It's a person who can do it well every time, on demand and on deadline; which is why the key to being a professional creative is having a great creative process. Whether it's writing a book, animating a shot, designing a game level or composing a soundtrack—ultimately, we're all facing similar challenges. Since we share challenges, we can also share solutions. This book is a practical guide, featuring a universal creative process that can streamline any serious creative work, on any scale.

Key Features

• Universal approach: applies to any process that starts with an idea and ends with a refined product.
• Profound and light: combines conceptual ideas with practical tips and fun anecdotes.
• Caricatures and samples: helps visually clarify ideas and processes.
• Variety of creative fields: draws on examples from writing, animation, game design, 3D modeling, music, sculpting and more
• Printable summaries: provides visual outlines that can be used as cheat-sheets.

This section contains a commentated case study of creative workflow, from start to finish, prepared especially for this book.

We’re going to write together an adaptation of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I chose that as a starting point because we all know the story, and because it’s been adapted so many times before that it makes an interesting challenge for our new workflow: can we use the principles presented in this book to freshen up this very familiar tale, and to make it feel new and exciting?

The reason I chose writing as a medium is that it provides a simple and straightforward way to add comments and thoughts as I go along. It is also the most widely accessible creative medium.

From this point on, you’re reading my work as it happened, with almost no editing involved. I’ve even left some spelling and grammar mistakes untouched so that you can feel the pure stream of thoughts and how they slowly evolve into the finished text.

Formatting note: The text marked yellow is workflow notes added during the process of writing. Everything written in boxes is workflow comments I’ve added after the fact.

Here goes…

24Before We Begin: Analyzing Context

Every creative project (or sub-project) should start with a deep look into the context. What am I aiming for? What is the purpose of this? What are the limitations? Who’s reading this?

First, I need to get my bearings here. Where am I going with this? I’ll start with breaking down the original Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) story to five parts:

1. Mom sends LRRH to grandma (through forest).
2. LRRH meets wolf, tells him about grandma.
3. Wolf eats grandma and waits in bed.
4. LRRH talks to wolf thinking it’s grandma, gets eaten as well.
5. Hunter gets to hut, saves both LRRH and grandma.

Doing the entire thing is out of the scope of this exercise, so I’ll focus just on part 2: “LRRH meets wolf, tells him about grandma.” This part just feels the most interesting to me.

Now I know what I’m doing. Of course, part of analyzing the context of the work is figuring out why I’m doing it and how this is going to affect my work.

Since the whole point is to show how the creative process works, I shouldn’t turn the whole thing into a big joke or completely reinvent the story. I’m thinking of making this a bit of a “Harry Potter” sort of thing—make it less absurd and more lifelike, plus a maybe bit magical. I’d also like to give the characters an interesting personality.

Some other creative constraints I can find in the context are as follows:

• I know that everyone knows the story. I should try and use that; rely on it to some extent, maybe plant some subtle jokes based on that.
• Part 2 is the only part of the story that takes place in the forest. So, part of the fun would be to take the reader into this great fantasy forest, as charming as it gets and also as dangerous and as wild as it gets.

Already at this point, just by looking at the context, I have a clear and quite interesting framework to work within.

Let’s summarize what we have so far:

1. LRRH meets wolf, tells him about grandma.
2. Charming + dangerous forest scenery should be prominent.
3. Interesting personalities for the characters.
4. Add a flavor of a magical fantasy world.

With that framework in mind, we’re off to the Concept stage.

25Stage I: Concept

Step 1: Raw Materials

As we know, the first step in coming up with a concept is to pour out many raw ideas. They don’t have to be good or anything, just raw materials we can build a concept with.

I start with asking myself why LRRH would leave the safe path and go wandering off into the forest. Maybe she chases a butterfly and loses track? This would make her a dreamy, absent-minded kind of girl.

So maybe something like the following:

• LRRH happy in forest
• Chases butterfly, not noticing she’s off path
• Tries to return to path—feels like someone’s following her; panicking
• LRRH realizes she’s completely lost, starts crying
• Wolf reveals himself, talks to her, learns about grandma

Notice the brief writing, with simple grammar and abbreviations. Speed plays a part when it comes to capturing.

Dry capturing allows faster reading. This is important because later we’ll want to review the ideas quickly and see what we can make of them. Long wet-capturing style paragraphs will make that more difficult.

My first idea—LRRH chases a butterfly off the path—quickly grew into a concept, which is actually pretty good, I think. It certainly works within the context. This is, however, just my first idea, so I’ll want to keep on pouring stuff out—I have no intention of falling into the “first concept trap.”

A few more reasons LRRH would go off path can be:

• Maybe she just doesn’t care; she doesn’t even believe in wolves.
• Maybe she’s curious about something and goes checking.
• What if she falls off the path somehow? Maybe it’s hard to climb back?
• Maybe she can’t climb back because she’s hurt; maybe she twisted her ankle.
• There’s a sudden mist and she got lost.
• What if it starts raining and she’s deep in the forest?
• The weather changes and it turns the forest from charming to menacing.

At this point, I find it hard to continue; I hit a bit of a dead end. I’ll try to break my thinking pattern by doing something else and changing my train of thought—how about telling the story from the wolf’s point of view?

• Wolf in forest, hungry and angry.
• Maybe his prey got away at the last moment (up the stakes!).
• Hunter got to it first…
• Maybe wolf is just about to succeed and LRRH ruins it.
• What if he pounces on her and she runs away?
• Maybe he’s about to pounce but hunter saves her at the very last moment?
• How does he learn about grandma? Maybe LRRH talks to herself and he hears her?
• Maybe she called grandma on the cellphone and wolf overhears. << YES it’s a silly idea—Getting silly is a great pattern breaker!

At this point, I already feel how some of my raw ideas naturally connect with each other, and I can see some vague opportunities for concepts. I’ll go for it:

Concept 2 << The first one was the one with LRRH as a dreamy girl

• Wolf in forest, hungry, angry, lost his prey because of hunter.
• Suddenly spots LRRH lost in forest. Follows her.
• Almost attacks, but then suddenly she bumps into hunter. Wolf lost again!
• LRRH tells hunter about grandma, wolf overhears, goes for grandma.

This is a pretty neat version! Here’s another one:

Concept 3

• Wolf hunting.
• LRRH, happy and oblivious, makes prey run away.
• Wolf furious but LRRH doesn’t notice, she’s a talkative air-head; says she’s going to grandma.
• Wolf becomes interested, asks directions, says bye politely, and goes off to “see” grandma.

This makes me think of a new direction: what if the wolf is actually looking for grandma? Like it’s been his life’s ambition to attack this woman? Maybe he realizes this is a great opportunity to get past her defenses (whatever they are) by impersonating LRRH? << Yeah, that’s pretty silly too.

Scanning my ideas, I feel there’s something interesting about LRRH not believing there’s a wolf. This connects to the magical/fantasy/mythical feel I was going for. I’d like to try a few ideas in that direction.

• Is the wolf a mythical creature? A mysterious bigfoot-like creature?
• Maybe there are legends of “the wolf” and all the villagers are afraid of him.
• LRRH is terrified of the wolf; has nightmares.
• But mom says it’s all just ignorant superstition, and that’s why she se...