Renaming "Indiana-Jonas' Newsletter" to Indie Notebook
And some thoughts about AI art
Hey friends!
I don’t like calling this newsletter “the newsletter”. think it deserves a proper name…
So from now on this newsletter will be going by the name of Indie Notebook!
Here’s the actual list of names I wrote to figure out the final name:
Snail-mail
Indie-letter
Mailbert
The Hum
Art-verk
The Thinksplorer
Crexp
Creative + Explorer = creadventure/
GOOZIES
Us with ideas in our heads
Shit in my head
Headventures
Mindventures
Creadventure
Made Snippets
#%#!? Snippets
Createfulness
Muse Snippets
No Harang
Anti-Harang(ue : french version??)
OK-Harang
Secret Harangue
Minimi Harang
Minimi Mail
Simple Harangue
Notebook
Indie Notebook
The newsletter is like a public version of all my notes. I want you to feel like you’re coming over to my house and flipping through my notes and sketches once a week as I explain myself.
Maybe I give you a cup of coffee or something while you read.
The “indie” part is nice because it was my nickname in high-school, and because I make indie-games.
Next part!
Smarter tools won’t replace artists
There’s been a lot of fuzz about AI art recently, at least in my circles on twitter.
It was impossible to resist giving it a try! “Stop motion astronaut…” turned out pretty consistent results, so I put some of them together as a comic strip.
The conversations I’ve seen lean way too much in the direction of “this is taking the soul out of art”. I think that’s crap! We’re still in the infancy of AI generated art. People prescribe things as soulless just because they know it’s generated. If I showed you some of the panels from that strip and told you that I made them with stop motion puppets and a camera, you probably couldn’t tell the difference.
A bunch of people who couldn’t create images before can now, just by saying or writing some words. That’s pretty dope.
I wrote a lengthier thing about this subject over on my blog. There’s one particular use of AI art in there, which I might try out someday. You might find it fun to read even if you don’t think you care about all this. (but then, why would you have read this far into this section?)
Recent Finds
🧠 Quote - Alan Watts talking about mountain springs and singing birds
I heard somebody talk about this quote recently. Since I started blogging, I worry that I come across as a preacher, as if I’m telling you how to live your life. That’s not my aim, but I’m afraid to be interpreted that way.
Instead, imagine you’re a mountain climber on a huge mountain. On your journey you find a hot spring, it’s just bubbling and doing it’s thing. You can stop there and freshen up if you want. I’m like that hot spring, I’m just bubbling and doing my thing. Because that’s what hot springs do.
📝 Article - The Creation of Hohokum
Hohokum is one of the purest game experiences there is. In this interview Richard and Ricky (the creators) say a lot of things I think I will use as starting points for some future articles.
They mention that they wanted to steer away from having the game feeling too gamey. Which is something I’ve heard from a lot from the more indie or artistic game developers I know. It seems like the general direction we’re trying to take game design nowadays.
📝 Youtube Video - Get Small & Tell The Truth
Out of all the doom-watching I do on Youtube this one really stood out to me. It doesn’t qualify as doom-watching at all. I want to live and create by this motto. It might be cheesy, but only cowards are afraid of being cheesy.
Thank you for reading! Would love to hear your thoughts on the new name!
Have a nice weekend!