When to Walk Away

There's a funny effect when animating stop-motion (above) where you'll be in the middle of a shot, take the weekend off, and then return on Monday morning to find that you despise all of the work you did on Friday afternoon (and then redo it).

"Fresh eyes" it's called, and it's often overlooked in the creative process.

Walking away is something that I typically build into my workflow these days. A lot of my visual effects editing needs to appear 'invisible', and I find it's often more productive to walk away and then return to judge my work. It's with fresh eyes that I can better spot mistakes or areas that need more attention.

Stepping away can also be extremely useful for brainstorming. I'm currently launching on a new, hired campaign and the first half of this week required that I come up with creative ideas. Rather than sit at my computer and force them, I instead did some yard work and let it all stew. Again, usually more productive! Those are the times when the best ideas magically pop into my brain.

So my tip this week is that when you hit creative friction, try walking away rather than wrestling it into submission. It's personally one of my best tools.