Why We Over Complicate

Just listened to a great podcast on the Accidental Creative, and have a few notes from the podcast to share. So I'll just start with that we struggle to avoid whats on the surface as too simple or too obvious. We try to prove how accomplished we are by adding unnecessary complication into our work confusing the relationship of value and complexity. As an animator/modeler/VFX artist our main goal is to get to the heart of it - the very simple, reducing everything to its most simple elements. This approach will give us the most elegant and appropriate solution. The obvious to us signifies inherent lack of value, so it's natural to dismiss quick insights, this is our paranoid self saying get ride of this cliche! cynicism pokes its ugly head up and knows exactly what to say if we saw this execution by someone else - seen it before lacks any creative genius, yada yada... We worry about everything except about the value we are creating to our audience. For me as a budding animator I know that value is established through story and the way it is executed. Keeping it simple(keep it simple stupid K.I.S.S- my mantra) clear dynamic posing, following the forces of Acting and Action, thinking leads to emotions, emotions lead to actions and actions lead to objectives all the while paying as close attention to the principles of animation through these processes. What I strive to accomplish with the audience is for them to ultimately relate with my characters - empathy, empathy creates big value. Now it's good to question our quick insights, because often they are cliche and not the best solution BUT they are there for a reason. It's our mind telling us something our Ego doesn't want to hear. Hardheaded, yup that's what we are we aren't going to do something that a ton of others have already executed. We are unique, creative genius', searching for the "needle in the creative haystack". We thrive for recognition, that we are valuable - to our team, our clients our peers! We are trying to get "Above The Noise" by over complicating our work. The narrator of the podcast says, "creativity requires humble curiosity and this requires that on occasion the best solutions are the most obvious - those hunches. It's not what we know, it's what we do about what we know." Our goal is to simplify, simplify to get to the very heart of a problem until we have a solution that best fits our audiences/clients expectations.

Just want to give a shout out again to the Accidental Creative for offering a great insight to why we do what we do. Thanks.