sequential daze

Friday, December 15, 2006

Nice idea. Needs work.

Some months ago I had a brief dalliance with the idea of a visual travel blog - which I called a 'Trog'; this may or may not have been a clever name, I still haven't decided. My thinking at the time was that since I spent two half hours a day crammed into a train carriage commuting to and from work it was time that could be used to sketch some of the more interesting, annoying and or obnoxious passengers onboard and then posting it online.

What I realised, once I started working on producing Trog, was that most passengers were not all that obnoxious or interesting, and if they were annoying it was usually loud iPods or half heard phone conversations that were the cause of it - pretty dull stuff. Additionally I tried drawing the subjects covertly (really hard in a crowded, swaying train BTW) and the sketch from the day's journey was what went online, no corrections, no embellishments - so the overall quality was, well, sketchy!

In the two weeks or so I tried this little experiment I only had one truly bizarre moment:
Yes, she really said that! From what I could tell (and it wasn't too hard to deduce because she talked loudly and frequently, mostly about herself) was that she was studying to become a pediatrician (parents - do you know who your children are being examined by?). Anyway, no other Trog entries were anywhere near as interesting as this and I soon lost interest myself... another project bites the dust.

It occurs to me though that Trog still has some merit. Probably the following would improve and sustain it:
  • only do worthy subjects (usually those having loud un-self-censored conversations with others)
  • do a sketch, take down some lines of dialogue but do a proper job of it once not on the train (or bus or whatever)
  • accuracy of the subject's appearance isn't that important, go for caricature but ensure the dialogue is spot on
  • don't worry about keeping any kind of update schedule, when gold is there - gold is there!

This was all precipitated after my trip home yesterday. To sum it up here would do it no justice, but maybe a Trog posting at some point in the near future might!

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