1st Creative Mind Interview Continued

9) What is your favorite piece of work you created, and why? 

I think you'll begin to realize that it's hard for me to distill things in absolutes and singularities. So, I'll simply respond by saying that there are lots and lots of things that I've worked on that I've loved for different reasons. How is that for a vague answer?

10)What is your inspiration? How much of that comes from personal experience and imagination? 

Inspiration, literally, comes from everywhere! We've had ideas fly in from all over the place; the media, personal experiences, something we've seen, something we may have heard (or mis-heard), a piece of paper, the gum on my shoe that's shaped like Abraham Lincoln, a guy on the ladder, etc... Anything and everything is fair game when it comes to inspirations for ideas. But the spark of the idea is just one part of the formula. Actually threading that loose idea together into a coherent and understandable story is also part of the challenge. We've had many great ideas that have never seen the light of day because they're sometimes too amorphous or too ambiguous to clump together into a cohesive way. 

Since my business is to tell you a story (hopefully, a funny one) then the idea has to be able to be lined up in a linear way so I can build a narrative to then express and deliver that idea to another person. Only then does it truly become an inspiration since it's actually executed upon rather than just being a lose and unrealized idea.

 

11)Have you ever been faced with negative feedback, and how has it affected your work, if at all? 

We get negative feedback all the time! To me, getting negative feedback is when I know I'm doing the right thing. I've come to the conclusion that there is no way to please everybody all the time and that you can only please some of the people some (hopefully, most) of the time. To try anything else is folly! In trying to please everybody one ends up with a piece of work that is bland, uninspired and by it's very definition, ordinary. There's nothing exciting or new there. No spark of interest. So, the only way to really make something new and interesting is to chose a direction and march towards it. Hopefully, it's the road less traveled.

 12) If you had to be any of these things, which would you be?
    a) Opposite sex, b) clock, c) shoes, d) duck 

 Clocks don't go anywhere. They just hang on the wall so that's kinda boring. Shoes do get to travel but you're always being stepped on and who knows what you'll be stepping into. Yuck! A duck would be good but I'm really attached (pun intended) to my opposable thumbs for grasping and holding onto stuff so, by de facto, I'd chose the a) opposite sex. Besides, it would mean I'd have a much better wardrobe and hair!