Pushing the Limits Using Constraints

Dan Behrens aka Danimal Cannon is a musician that I’ve been familiar with for a rather long time due to his frequent participation in the Dwelling of Duel contests (something I never worked up the courage to participate in myself). I was catching up on recent gaming news today, and came across a recent talk that he did for for TedX where he discusses the benefits that working with new and limited tools has had on his development as an artist.

I’ve always found it impossible to work with strict guidelines. We’re not forcing ourselves to work with any hard constraints as far as color depth, or sound channel limits, memory limits or file size. While it would be neat to explore what we can do with masochistic self-placed demands, we also really just want to have a fun time doing what we’re doing. Nonetheless, I found the talk to be good. I think that forcing yourself to work in new ways and new tools to be a beneficial experience that can certainly impact the approach you take when you revisit the familiar tools that you were once acquainted with. Workflows should always be evolutionary.