Why make this website?

I pen this inaugural blog post from a position of extreme privilege: I’m happily and gainfully employed at ROVE, a true unicorn of a studio, and therefore there’s almost a negative pressure when it comes to marketing myself. At the same time, my old portfolio website had been stagnant since 2018 and it was starting to feel silly to keep up with the fees.

Many months ago, I started asking myself what I needed or wanted from a web presence. Was a grid of case studies and a nice headshot enough? Was there more going on in my life that felt fun to publish? At the same time, I found myself contemplating some scarier questions about the trajectory of my career as an animator. Was I still passionate enough about the work? How much of my identity does my work deserve to occupy? Is pushing keyframes around still joyful, or is there a higher platform in this space to which I ought to climb?

These questions simmered long and quiet, evading concrete solutions with each bubble and snap, but eventually I was thrilled to discover the sweet syrup of a decent idea: to build a place where it’s safe to examine the why of a creative life; where clients can find my reel and case studies without friction; where colleagues and professional peers can find some shop-talk; where friends and family can keep up with some day-to-day stories; and where any old Internet rando who stumbles in can witness the authenticity of another Internet rando.

This website could have been a TikTok

Or a Bluesky, or a YouTube channel, or I think Tumblr is still rockin’ as well. In any of these cases, getting started would have been 100% less expensive and probably 80% more convenient. I could have connected with friends and colleagues already on the platform and grown a following and maybe even monetized. Instead, perhaps in protest of all that, I’ve chosen to maintain a small corner of the World Wide Web and host at least two blogs on it (eventually) for fun on my own dime. It’s not a shot across the bow of today’s digital ecosystem so much as straight up in the air, in the dark, and my reasons are legion.

Social media is ephemeral, at least until you end up running for public office. Generally, social media platforms don’t actively encourage an audience to dig through a creator’s post history for new stuff. YouTube is one notable exception (at least for now), but Facebook, and most of its feed-based peers, would much rather offer up sponsored content ad infinitum than dredge up old posts from your actual friends. History is not optimized for discovery on these platforms, and that runs against my goal to hand visitors “the key to my garage.” Instead, my invitation is to come, poke through my cardboard boxes of stuff from back when I was cool, and then go touch some grass.

Working the Algorithm does not feel like a fun time, either. Quoth Boromir, “One does not simply build an audience on social media.” After coming up with a sick idea to share with the world, you’ve got to move heaven and earth to make it surface. Then you’ve got to make an appeal for engagement. And then you’ve got to keep producing content on a cadence that maintains whatever momentum you manage to create. It’s literally a full-time job you can get a degree for, and with no judgment at all against professional social media managers and strategists, it’s not a job I choose for myself. Certainly not for the purpose of sharing my TTRPG actual plays or off-key theremin recordings.

A question with many answers

Sometimes the answer to Why Make Stuff? is Because A Paying Client Asked Very Nicely, and that’s okay. For those modes of creative expression that I have chosen to trade in professionally, it’s as noble a cause as any. I’m proud when my efforts help my clients meet their goals. Since there is always a certain ego attached to making stuff, I will not shy away from examining the real-world value of the client work I do when such inspiration strikes, but Trading Effort For Food And Rent is not a cynical motivation, and actually I believe that would be a toxic position to take. Stay tuned for a longer discussion on my philosophy of work sometime, maybe.

Other wonderful answers include To Help People; To Teach People; To Strengthen the Team; To Learn How To Make Something New; or To Synthesize New Information. A perennial favorite answer is I Had Some Time To Kill ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Answers like these often overlap with the Paying Client answer (in fact, the best Paying Client situations are those which blend with any of these others!), but they work great on their own, too. Nobody but nobody is asking me to blast my theremin amp out into the neighborhood; that’s just for me, and also something I subject my family to sometimes. Incidentally, often my best theremin answer is I Need More Excuses Not To Sit and I like to think that’s a pretty worthy answer.

The metaquestion

Behind all this is the big one: Why Why Make Stuff? There’s no single answer to that question, either, and that’s what I hope will keep this space feeling dynamic as I get into the groove of updating it.

One answer is that this place is a mindfulness exercise. Similar to taking a moment to search for gratitude in our daily lives, I am betting that taking time to examine the Why behind my creativity will help me both appreciate what I’ve already produced, and firm up the ground beneath me to launch into each next thing with more purpose.

Another answer is that I’m nostalgic for an Internet that invited discovery without the burdens of monetization, algorithm optimization, doomscrolling, fencing users into particular platforms, or any of the other pillars of enshittification that are all so pervasive these days. I choose to trade the implicit motivation of participating in social media to gain followers (inherently narcissistic behavior, in my view) for an exercise in screaming into the void and perhaps not ever knowing if anyone hears it (so, good old-fashioned self indulgence, instead).

In the end, I just think it would be rad if some youths found this place, saw some thirty-year-old drawings of anthropomorphic cats and twenty-year-old Flash animations next to award-winning motion design for some big brand, and decided they had what it takes to get into the industry. And if they think someone they know would think this stuff is cool too, they’ll text them a hyperlink. Then maybe those same youths will start blogs of their own showcasing their unique interests, and they’ll point here on their Links pages, and I can reciprocate, and we’ll have reinvented the webring, and it will be a Good Fuckin’ Day on the Internet once more.