Looking up from my feet

and a bit of Space Deer progress

Hallå my pals!

Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.

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It feels like my days have a bit more variety at the moment. They used to be 99% Surmount, now it’s a healthier mix of freelance work, writing, shipping away on Space Deer and also thinking about what game I’m gonna tackle next (not sure when I’m ready to talk about that though).

I also finished the first draft of what will be the introduction strip of Space Deer! I got some useful feedback on it from some folks in the Cartoonist COOP. It’s taken a while to get this strip to this point, partially because it’s 3x the length of a normal strip, but also because it’s in full color. Now I’m excited to get back into the core of the comic, which is the strips. It’s very gratifying to work on this.

Now onto my 5th entry for the weekly writing challenge I’m doing…

Closeup Fixation

When I walk I usually just stare at my feet and the ground right in front of me. I look out for turds and slippery patches of ice, I check the clock to see if I need to increase my pace. If a stranger passes by we will glance at each other discreetly.

During a walk to work a few years ago I was stopped by a temporary yellow sign placed on the middle of the sidewalk. It said, “look up!,” and there was a drawing of something spiky hanging from the edge of a rooftop. I looked up at a huge glossy icicle. Other people took a moment to pause and inspect it too. It was a meter long, maybe more.

I continued past the fenced off area. Now that I was more aware of the death traps suspended above, the buildings around me towered taller and felt more threatening. It made me feel like a bug. Me and everyone else were running around below the icicles together, too fixated on the ground underneath our feet and what was right in front of us to notice what was above. This sign had snapped me out of my fixation with the ground. A refreshing and frightening change of perspective.

The same trick is often used in movies to keep you engaged. Too many closeup shots in a row quickly become suffocating to watch. After a closeup of a hand usually comes a full body view or a landscape. It gives more contrast between each consecutive shot and scene if you use varied perspectives. It makes for more dynamic and interesting movies.

The pace of everyday life however, doesn’t have the luxury of being carefully curated by an award winning storyteller or icicle patrol.

I believe I’ve lived most of my life as a long, continuous closeup. Most days I just stare at my collection of screens and books in my small apartment. There are no signs which tell me to “look up!” So occasionally I get overwhelmed by everything that’s in my face, and by how much there is outside my field of vision which I don’t notice. Then I lean out of my window, wait a second for my blurry vision to sharpen and let my gaze soar and flap freely around the streets and rooftops for a few minutes. I might lose a few minutes of productivity, but it’s easier to clean shit off my shoe than it is to lodge an icicle out of my skull.

We all got a case of Closeup Fixation - we are so focused on what is in plain view, we can easily miss something vital just out of our view.

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I think I just reinvented Tunnel Vision..?

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Mini Notes

🔴 Youtube video - Life as The Last Fire Lookout

A fire lookout tower, on a nice mountain surrounded by forest is my dream location as a home. I’d love to live inside one for a while, working on some project and going on little adventures around it. Just go down to a local town for supplies once a week.

There was also quite a bit of interesting history about American rangers and lookouts in there, I didn’t know. This also makes me want to replay Firewatch.

📙 Book - Cujo

The concept of Cujo is that there’s a crazy dog running around killing people in the countryside somewhere in the US. The pitch itself wasn’t that interesting to me by itself. But after having read The Outsider, which is also a book by Stephen King, I felt like I wanted to check out one of his classic stories too. In some ways it was what I expected, a killer dog. What I didn’t expect going on was for all the characters to have so much life and importance, the dog is very important, but it’s about the people. He can really take a simple, non-spectacular idea and go miles with it.

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Take care and have a creative week.