creative phases
all of the ways I've been excited about making things this year
It only feels right, as I begin this blog about the phases of my creativity, to give you an overview of where I’m currently at.
A “creative phase” is a term I’m using to describe my own interest and relationship to creativity and making. As long as I’ve been making art, I’ve always experienced creativity in a flow that goes like this:
I discover a new way of creating something.
I throw myself headfirst into it, rabidly learning and mass producing as much as I can, for 2-8 weeks.
I consider changing my identity and job and becoming a professional [banjo player].
Then, I completely lose interest and pick up something new.
There is a lot of pressure in the world of being an artist on social media to have a “thing”: to develop a style, produce a lot in that style, figure out what the algorithm wants, and focus on what will “sell.” I have decided to completely reject that mentality. I am documenting my art here, not for any other reason than because it excites me and I made it!
So, here are all the crazy creative phases I’ve gone through this year!
Printmaking
In September, right before the Island edition of Idea Camp, I took a printmaking workshop at Slice of Life with Radish Designs in Vancouver. I have been gifted a linocut set three different times in my life (clearly, other people knew I would enjoy this before I did), but it never stuck. In a lot of ways, I think my art style is predisposed to linocut printing - simple shapes and thick lines and youthful, playfulness. After the workshop, my interest and excitement in it flourished.
At Idea Camp, Tala and I led a printmaking animation workshop, where we made stamps by drawing in pencil on foam, and animated them by stamping a bunch of times and sequencing them like a stop motion, digitally.
At home after Idea Camp, I started playing with more linocut carving - carving out simple stamps in rubber. I also began to experiment with the process of reduction print making, where you continually carve away one block of rubber and print different ink colors as you go.
I spent one lovely afternoon with my mom printing a small rubber block I carved in a bunch of different color combinations and making it into greeting cards.
I spent a solo Saturday making my first multi color reduction print I’m truly proud of, a process that tested my patience and made me learn a lot. I also watched Love is Blind as I carved and inked all of this, and now the dramatic music and tense vibes fill my mind every time I see it (an unfortunate side effect of the process but oh well).
I spent an evening carving and printing bandanas with my dear creative friend Dorothy Wang, and felt SO inspired by the process of stamping one block multiple times into radial symmetry.
I’m looking forward to printing and exploring more things in this medium - I’m putting on a small pop up holiday market in a few weeks and am planning on printing a lot of goods for that.
Blender
In December of 2023, I started learning the 3D program Blender. To be honest, I don’t really remember why my interest was piqued. I’ve always loved creating little worlds in my art, and I think I was drawn the possibility of really building out worlds in 3D.
I have tried to learn 3D modeling multiple times before, and have been stopped by the sheer difficulty of the program. This time around, I set up a custom GPT to be my Blender Buddy. I let it know that I am a graphic designer learning Blender, I gave it the details of my machine, told it what I wanted to use Blender for, and my experience with other programs. This led to me having a buddy to ask questions at any time. When I got stuck in the Donut tutorial, I could send screenshots to the GPT or ask specific questions. And it truly unlocked the program for me.
I fell in love with creating little worlds and lighting them, and with playing around with adding 2D elements into the worlds.
This phase dwindled as winter 23/24 dwindled (something about the weather getting warmer makes me want to spend way less time on the screen) but I feel my interest in this way of creating reigniting right now. Maybe it’s just getting colder. :)
Video Games
In the depth of my learning-how-to-create-3D-art phase, I became aware of the world of building video games, specifically with the Unity engine. It started as a way to explore some my 3D creations - without much effort I was able to “walk” around trees I had created and explore worlds I had modeled.
But as I played with Blender/Unity more and more, I realized how this unlocked a deep desire within me: I was acquiring the ability to make games. Anything I wanted. And in some ways, making games is my deepest interest and passion. It was my senior thesis (a board game I produced and funded via Kickstarter) and is part of why I love what Tala and I are doing at Idea Camp.
So I began to play around with building all kinds of games on Unity - 3D and 2D alike. I made another custom GPT that helped me learn Unity, and that actually coded every script for me. I learned a lot about coding, fast, thanks to the ability to ask both broad and specific questions to AI.
I made a 2D platform game about a Pika who needed to collect wildflowers for winter. I never shared it and the code got all tangled and it’s unplayable. But cute.
Then, I discovered the community of indie game developers on itch, and game jams. Game jams are online events put on by people who want to make a game in a short period of time. They usually have a theme and a limitation, an active message board, and a place to share your work at the end. I love this concept - it aligns so deeply with what Tala and I talk about at Idea Camp. It’s an incredible thing to make art with other people, and having both constraints and accountability of others allows magic to happen.
I did my first game jam in February 2024. I spent one manic weekend building Birds of Othala, a seek and find storybook fantasy world. Andrew made me an incredible soundtrack, and I learned so much about coding and building games and I’d do nearly all of it differently if I were to start it today. The game itself is so simple and altogether unimpressive, but the community really rallied around the art and spirit behind it. It felt so good to finish something and share it, even if I didn’t share it broadly.
In July, I made the Night Circus with Tala in one night. We wanted to make something, and this is what came out. We agree it’s one of the best things we’ve ever made together, and I’m grateful to Unity/AI for giving me the tools to make something that so fully captured our spirit and absurdity and a way we like to play.
Just a few weeks ago, I built MISBREW for another game jam. I’m planning on writing a full post about the creation of this project, but it felt really good to built another game and to finish something.
Songwriting
Songwriting perhaps transcends phases for me - it’s been a part of me my whole life but most consistently since 2017. It does however, ebb and flow immensely, and is something I don’t really share externally.
Last year, I started taking banjo lessons from my grandmother who we all affectionately call Banjo. Learning this instrument from her was an immense honor, made in a sad and beautiful way more special by the fact that as I was picking up proficiency with the instrument she was losing the ability to use her hands due to ALS. These lessons relit a deep passion for music in me, and reminded me that it’s something I want to prioritize in my life.
October by Kika MacFarlane & Andrew McKean
I’ve made a lot of songs this year and will share lots of them on here in time, but for now I want to share this song I recorded with Andrew, in October. It felt like the deepest expression of my music and our connection, and was created in an explosively creative and silly evening. I am very proud of it.
I do not consider this overview to be comprehensive in anyway, but hopefully it brings you up to date with where my current creative interests outside of work lie. It’s a funny thing, to be a creative for a job, and also navigate creativity and learning and expression outside of making money. I suppose that’s a big part of why I am starting this Substack. I need play, this kind of play, to be a full creative and a full human. And I’ve needed this space to document it and honor it.
Thanks for being here, and being along for the ride! I hope it helps you honor and document and notice the phases in your life, and I hope it reminds you to play. I promise to keep it less long-winded from here on out!
xo, kika
The song!!!!! 💕