“The word design, in its most general sense, means ‘on purpose.’ To do something by design is to do something purposefully. A successful design, then, is a design in which every element works to support the whole composition.

A great teacher of mine used to tell us to “never be afraid to get rid of the best part of your painting.” What she meant was this: you may, for example, have painted the best hand that you ever painted. It’s so good that you want to show everyone in the world what a great hand you painted. However, if the hand does not work to support the general composition, if it doesn’t work within the overall design, then it needs to be eliminated—no matter how good it is.

Every part of your composition has to work to support the whole. This does not mean that you have to have a concrete plan in advance (although you might want to). If you do have a plan, it still doesn’t mean that you are required to stick to it without variation. What it does mean, though, is that by the time you’re done, everything should be there for a reason. Each individual element must work to support the whole composition. How do you know what “works” and what doesn’t? While there are infinite variations in human expression using the elements of visual design, they are all based on some universal constants, often related to our physical environment…”

The above excerpt is from Chapter One of “Digital Art Revolution”. The rest of the chapter is a crash course on the visual language and the principles of design and visual communication.

I reference this particular excerpt because this week I got a chance to experience this principle firsthand. I’m working on a short film about my father’s death, called “Figure/Ground”, featuring veteran actor Allan Kulakow as my father. Allan has been in several movies, including Death by Dawn, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and HBO’s Something the Lord Made. He appeared as the Joint Chief of Staff on West Wing. We shot the film almost two years ago (!) and I’m very impatient to get it finished. New projects and opportunities kept taking precedence, including my book, “Digital Art Revolution”, so I’m not complaining, but this is a personal project that I feel very attached to and I’m anxious to get it finished.

The film is a hybrid of photography and animation and every single frame needs a lot of personal attention. It can sometimes take several days to create a couple seconds of footage. I worked night and day for several weeks to finish about 10% of the movie. (Fortunately, I can use a laptop and still hang out with the family!) Individually, I was very pleased with the images I was creating. When I viewed the completed work as a whole, however, it wasn’t quite there. It didn’t quite work. When I began, I had a plan to make things consistent and purposeful. I reviewed the work as I progressed. It wasn’t until I’d completed a good amount of work that I could see that it didn’t quite work…and I REALLY, REALLY wanted it to work. I’d invested a lot of very tedious effort, and produced nice results. To add to my frustration, it ALMOST worked. It was 85% there, but I could tell (approximately) what needed to be changed to make it a consistent, purposeful work.

I’m not on a deadline. If I’m lucky enough for people to pay attention to the film, no one will care if the film came out a couple months later. They will, however, care if it’s good. So I’ll do what needs doing until I’ve done the best that I can. It’ll go faster this time, because I’ve learned from what I’ve done, but it’ll still be a lot of work…and not the exciting, creative part, but the slow, boring repetitive part needed to finish the job. So, as my teacher said, I’m “getting rid of the best part of my painting” in service of the work as a whole. I’m starting over.

I am taking a couple days off first.