You’re a Time-Travelling Duck, Now Go Make a Thing

This is, of course, a thinly veiled attempt to put Reducks, a choose your own adventure about YOU, a time-travelling duck with existential issues on a mission to stop a bomb going off on the other side of the lake, in front of your eyes before the Kickstarter closes on Friday BUT! it’s also a call to creation, to make go make a thing — a physical, in the real world, thing — to make bad art, to revel in the joy of the doing and appreciate the thing itself. 

Reducks is not a game about art, it’s about a duck, a duck whose mission takes it past a large number of watercolour and ink illustrations. I’m illustrating. I am not necessarily a good illustrator. Ask me again in 80 illustrations time. I hope to improve. There's a page where you can draw too.

You’re a creative type of person, I would guess — you play games and imagine things, you probably already make things so now, go, go make a thing, I heartily recommend it. There, that’s about it. Think that's everything covered. Go do. I give you my permission. Go!

If you haven’t gone, you may suspect Reducks is not a particularly serious game. It asks you to thread string through holes in each page and eat bread (or an alternative duck-friendly, gluten free substitute) to go back in time along your timeline (the aforementioned string) potentially leaving you with a knotted mess if you're not careful. Also you’re wearing a hat. You’ll need to draw your hat.

Oh, the making thing. Here's some excellent reasons why you should go make something now. Like, now-now. Those reasons include (but are not limited to):

1. The therapeutic benefits in the art of creation is something that has been proved by scientists. Probably. I don’t know, go look it up. Someone said it to me last week which is basically a citation, right?
2. Afterwards you will have something that is utterly unique to you that you can hold in your hands. All the years of your life will have brought you that point to have completed whatever is in front of your seeing receptors.
3. If that thing does not look like the thing that you intended the thing to look like, you can be assured that it looks exactly as it needs to be. Enjoy it’s shape, it’s feel, how it smells. If you want to try again, do so! It might take a while to get something closer to what you’re aiming at but the only thing that’s really stopping you is time.
4. A YouTuber once said one of the things that very talented dancers like is to appear to be very talented and so they put a lot of work into making sure they can dance as if they are very talented. Or something to that effect. Talent is not an innate quality — everyone has to learn, some discover the shortcuts quicker than others.
5. When you’re stuck or avoiding making the thing that you want to be Good, make something Bad. Make it ugly, make it fast, make it small, make it easy to destroy. Then destroy it. Or don’t. There’s no judgement.
6. Make something silly then leave it in a sillier place so you find it later and laugh. Leave it in someone else’s pocket so they can find it and laugh. Don’t leave something weird in someone’s pocket though unless they like weird things being left in their pockets.
7. Focus only on the thing you are creating. Give it the attention it deserves, even if it’s just a twisted up sweet wrapper. Pay attention to each crease and tear, the play of shadow and light, it’s sound.
8. Breathe. Just breathe. Watch the particles of air spiral and shape around you. Contemplate the scant five miles between yourself and where our oxygen runs out. Breathe.

What I’m trying to say is to enjoy yourself. Play, learn, make things. Consider your place in the Universe. Be human. Or a duck.

Oh, and if you like silly choose your own adventures with an undercurrent of an emotional exploration into the ever-percolating unease at our existence, you might want to look at Reducks, the fish of dubious intentions wills it.

Go! Make a thing.