📙 #081 - PEN & PAPER | DRAWING MACHINE 101
Unable to pinpoint exactly where the “joke” is.
‘Daniel never opens with a formal introduction, thesis statement, or polished hook. Instead, he drops you into the middle of whatever he’s thinking about.’
I asked AI to analyse my writing style from the first 80 newsletters;
‘Grammatical correctness is sacrificed for rhythm and voice.’
‘Humour is structural, not decorative - The reader should feel amused throughout without being able to pinpoint exactly where the “joke” was.’
‘Daniel’s comedy comes from perspective and timing, not cleverness with language.’
I feel regret!
# PEN & PAPER | DRAWING MACHINE 101
Finally got my shit together and hit publish on video #3 in the Drawing Machine 101 series; we’re still in the introduction and setup stage, the coding happens in a few videos’ time.
One of my favourite things, is to watch videos where people are making or doing something fairly niche, but which is new to them. The person is competent and I learn from watching them, but then diving into the comments gives you even more hints & tips as people made suggestions on how to do things better (or even sometimes “properly”).
Katherine’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Nelferch is a) wonderful and b) a good example of people always giving advice on whatever she’s doing.
And I’m not even being snarky (honest); I’m not yet painting the walls of a barn, or restoring a Land Rover, or building a greenhouse, but there’s always some top tips down in the comments if I were ever going to do some of those things.
So I’m very pleased to see the comments on my video are already filling up with better pen & ink suggestions than I made, and pretty sure will continue to do so for years to come 😁
As we’re in YouTube land LB ALLIX has posted this, which packs more into 1m 37s than I ever could.
And here’s Olivier (your Berlin based interdisciplinary IT & 3d freelancer) with his fantastic wallplotter.
# ROXY RISO & VIRTUOUS CIRCLES
Way back in newsletter #051 I introduced “80s Pop: Roxy 🍿” - I won’t rehash it here ‘cause it’s all in there…
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One of the ideas behind the Patreon; where people can support the making of the Drawing Machines 101 videos (I want them to be free & they take a bunch of time and resources to make, I’m fine with taking that on, but people supporting takes the edge of that a bit), is that I send out artwork each month.
To keep myself sane and not burning out, the things I post out each month are supposed to be created in the process of making the videos.
However, while we’re still in the introduction videos phase I’m not actually making plots, so for the first few months I’ve been doing fun extra things. This month has been Riso prints based a custom code variant of the “80s Pop Roxy 🍿” project, which in turn is based on the “70s Pop” pen plots.
While I’m looking forwards to everything coming together in virtuous cycles: making videos supports the patreon, the patreon supports making videos; I’m enjoying a second feedback loop of trying to learn how to use the Riso machine while setting up the Riso studio, and getting to send off the results.
One day the Venn Diagram of all the things I’m doing will hopefully become nearly a fully overlapping circle.
# BOOKS
“Daniel Savage invites us into a world where geometric abstraction meets machine-assisted animation. Blurring the boundaries between analogue and digital, Savage uses a pen plotter to bring his layered, colour-rich frames to life”
Go grab Something Savage from Vetro Editions, and see more of Daniel’s work on his websi… oh “New site coming soon.” - classic! Here and Instagram.
While you’re over at Vetro, there’s a handful of Tracing the Line books left from the first edition, I’m in it so it must be good!
# THE END
Now I’ve got the Pen & Paper video out of the way, which I was weirdly blocked on for various reasons, I’ve moved onto happily recording the next much shorter one, and preparing the couple after that too. Hopefully I can get back to a mainly weekly-ish schedule!
We’ll see how well that works out in the next newsletter that should be hitting your inboxes on Thursday the 5th of March.
I hope you’re all doing very well, and if not, that things get better soon!
Love you all
Dan
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