kartooner

After 4 years of writ­ing, off and on, about a vari­ety of things such as odd thoughts, close calls, suc­cess (and fail­ure) and other things now rel­e­gated to the archives, it’s time to switch direc­tions and start anew.

From the get go I’ve always envi­sioned this site as an out­let for exper­i­men­tal cre­ativ­ity and to share the results of such with whomever was interested.

This site’s focus was never meant to be excluded to just a blog, but due to my inter­ests in cre­ative writ­ing it just remained. Like Anton, I’ve been ready for quite some time to move away from just being a blog and realign (not that kind of realign­ment) my inter­ests and the inten­tions of this site.

For his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion, I’ve decided to select the best arti­cles from the archives and com­pile them into a book because I’d hate to see those dis­ap­pear. Besides, I’d like to do some self-publishing and Lulu has me more than intrigued.

A Fresh Restart

What this means is that I’ll be tran­si­tion­ing the blog, or what you’re read­ing now, into a small, but impor­tant por­tion of the site. If you can think of it as the con­ver­sa­tion that takes place after you’ve con­sumed a three-course meal, then you’ll under­stand what its pur­pose will be.

The main course of the meal will be the illus­tra­tion and design, wrapped together in a fresh and fun lay­out that’ll hope­fully immerse you in what I’ll have to offer. (Speak­ing of which, have you seen the new Squidfin­gers design?)

As corny as this might sound, I do appre­ci­ate each and every one of you who con­tin­ues to sub­scribe to, read and inter­act with kar­tooner. There are plenty of you who should be proud of your design prowess and mea­sure of intel­lect. With­out you, I’d just be a guy with one of them-there blog thin­gies here in New York. In other words, chan­nel­ing the mantra of Chris J. Davis, “You rawk!”.

Catch­ing up with Goals

Part of the rea­son I’m so adamant about chang­ing some things is because I need to finally meet my goal of fin­ish­ing my comic. Yes, that comic, the one I’ve been talk­ing about for a lit­tle over 2 years! After mix­ing it up with my friends at SXSW this year and absorb­ing the enthu­si­asm, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that I need to not just pur­sue, but chase after and tackle my goals.

I could just keep mak­ing excuses or con­tinue play­ing trash bas­ket­ball to bide the time, but that wasn’t why I chose this career in the first place. This is a jour­ney of explo­ration and fas­ci­na­tion that we’re all on, and I’m mov­ing up a cou­ple seats to see the full view.

Process and Innovation

On my panel at SXSWi this year I men­tioned doing con­cep­tual sketches for Sidev­ille, using the movie Pirates of the Car­ribean as one of my source mate­ri­als. I fore­see using the blog to post my work in progress, kind of like Car­son System’s Bare Naked App but with­out the app and the bare naked­ness. It seems like peo­ple are inter­ested in the process and craft of devel­op­ing a project and appre­ci­ate that mis­takes are made along the way.

As per­fect as the end result might be, suc­cess needs to be con­stantly fine-tuned and rec­og­niz­ing trail and error is part of that process. Every bril­liant and suc­cess­ful busi­ness or idea has to be built from the ground up and the vision­ary at the fore­front of things needs to keep inno­vat­ing and mov­ing forward.

Sure, a lot of what suc­cess can be might seem serendip­i­tous, but it’s the cru­cial ele­ment of keep­ing one’s eye on their goals that makes it both chal­leng­ing and rewarding.

To sum it all up, I’ve got an idea and it’s time to take that from con­cept to real­ity. Join me.