5. Done Good
What is it?
In June last year I decided it was time to make Good To Hear next product, learning from what I’d discovered while working on Happiness.
I’d been using Happiness and its antecedents for a few years and knew I had something that was capable of preventing depression but wasn’t necessarily capable of making people happy. I wanted to find a way to help people be happy. Through software.
The answer was something I’d arrived at via a number of routes. There are a lot of things we can’t control but the one guaranteed way to make onesself happy is to put other people first. Altruism.
What could I make to encourage people to help each other?
4. Dinosaurs App
What is it?
This was going to be an iPhone app for kids. I started it after I’d made some progress on my “PuppetGraphics” inverse kinematics library for iOS after a friend suggested my drawing style might be suitable for a kids’ book.
3. The Fifth Theory
This is an autobiographical, philosophical comic I started a few years ago. everything is hand drawn on paper in a linear process.
I enjoyed creating something physical after years of doing everything on computers. The lack of undo leads to a very different sort of creative process.
What’s it about?
Some of it, I’d have admit, is me airing some emotional laundry. In some ways my entry into the world could have been easier. The narrative charts my progress from strong religious beliefs, through a faith in science and beyond.
2. Live DJ Concept
What is it?
I wanted to define a new category of live performance between a band and a DJ. This category would be constituted like so:
- usually a single performer
- live construction of music using loops and drum machines in combination with real instruments and singing
- performances would be dance-floor-friendly, minimising interruptions and pauses to keep people dancing
- music would generally be original based on the performer’s repertoire of sounds, lyrics and techniques
I started this video with the idea of establishing this category as a new meme. The music is supposed to show the interesting genre mixing that happens when tempo-locked loops from different sources are layered up together, something I considered would be a recurring theme in my imagined Live DJ scene.
1. The Dubstep Machine
Here is something I started a couple of years ago when dubstep still seemed quite cool.
I was searching for the secret to making those types of musical progressions and came up with this app for interactively toggling and tuning tempo-locked loops. The visual aspect was important to me - I wanted to make sure there was always accurate graphical feedback tightly synchronised to the sound a la Teenage Engineering OP-1. I built this prototype in about a day but then I stalled…