note-taking experiment: procreate timelapse II
what is this?: a timelapse of notes that i created in procreate, experimenting with formatting & some thoughts behind it.
desired outcome/why share this?:
- share the note creation process so that it might inspire someone else to take notes and share them (regardless of how they look or the process one takes to produce them).
- share the general idea so someone can apply it/ remix it to their context
- meta experiment with Medium & this.post: trying to get gifs to work
step-zero: on the hunt for the source file 🕵️
when i first looked at the procreate upload in notion, i did another quick search for ‘procreate’ and saw procreate 4... it was just a glance, but in my head i see that i assumed there would be a procreate 2 & procreate 3 notion page.
if i would have finished reading, i would have seen it read 4 august 2022 with a video file that was pretty long, and seemed to contain distinct pages (a reset/clearing of the canvas).
i went to find the procreate file, and quickly remembered that organizing && creating better file hygiene habits in procreate is still on my backlog.
luckily the preview file of the video & the display image were the same & i was able to find the source file.
chapters / containers
i was wondering what might be interesting to capture along the creation process & how might you ‘chunk’ it?
instead of rounds these could be chapters or sections (whatever grouping makes sense for the context).
each file can have a timelapse for it.
with that in mind, you can start to plan out how you might want to structure things, but don’t pre-optimize.
if you were to capture a journaling process, you could have each
- stack = month
- files = dayOfMonth.
with each file being a dedicated day, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about your layers, you could just createInFile + export timelapse for that day.
if you were doing a book it might make sense to have
- stack = bookTitle
- files = chapter
- grouping = sections / chapter-topics
after completing a chapter, you could export the entire timelapse for that file and then edit the creation sections for each exported artifact.
you’d have the complete chapter, and the creation of each section.
below i experiment with a process gif that shows the entire process (like seeing the entire chapter), followed by the exported sections.
the process is still a little fuzzy, but i think it would be interesting to see how people process information && generate artifacts (whether they are text-based, visual ~ anything && everything in between!).
below shows what it might look like to have the section + creation of that specific section.
️🖥️ experiment on desktop
as i was writing this, i wanted to see a side-by-side of the layer & specific timelapse. i feel like this side-by-side is ~closer to what i was imagining.
left [ timelapse ]
right [ finished layer of the timelapse ]
the notes themselves are just some rough ideas i was exploring around this.process.
abstract what you’re seeing / change the fidelity
if you can, try to abstract what you’re seeing into:
[ artifact ] + [ making-of-that-artifact ]
(i wrote ‘image’ because i assumed the content would be static, but maybe a video.mp4 + the making-of-video.gif should be explored)
i mention to try and ‘abstract’, because i’m asking you to look beyond what you’re seeing in front of you.
if you don’t like the way that i drew the notes or the fact that i didn’t put color in the examples, etc., etc., just imagine that there was an image + process-capture that resonated with you.
- is there someone that you look up to, whether designer, writer, chef, friend, anyone, that produces something that you like to stare at?
- would it be cool to have a quick gif of their process video beside the finished product?
that was the general idea i was trying to prototype.
why the square?
i’m thinking about the process while capturing it, and visually trying to figure out if a square format works (4000x4000px) + how much canvas to explore.
i’d always picked a landscape or portrait format before, but wanted to mix it up with a new format.
i can zoom-in enough on procreate to where there isn’t a bunch of empty space, so i don’t really notice the format while taking notes (the 4000px let’s me have a comfortable zoom while filling up the screen).
show your work, human 🤖
with the rise in ai-tools & ability to generate instant-content, i’m going to be more interested in understanding people’s processes.
i think finding ways to ‘capture-the-capture’ process is a shortcut to generating a lot of value while taking notes.
the first ‘capture’ refers to when you have an idea. that idea needs to get stored somewhere outside of your head or you’ll likely forget it, so you ‘capture’ it. the second capture is a way of recording that process of idea-capture. capturing early thoughts in a way that people don’t notice is very interesting to me.
capturing my early idea process was what i tried to do here, using a tool that was closer to pen+paper / analog-thinking.
with procreate’s timelapse feature running in the background i could add an extra layer of context to the static exports.
that ‘extra’ layer is also what i’m most interested in.
i wish you knew what it took to make this
sometimes i’ll explore all over a page, iterate & iterate, only to delete it all because the idea i was searching for started to take shape.
when i’m looking at the end-result, it might be what i wanted, but it doesn’t show the path i took to get there.
instead of trying to explain your process with words and stills (if you remember to take them in a way that doesn’t break your flow), imagine having a video showing how you arrived.
what i experimented with is a lot of things jammed into one, and is a look at some of my early notes / ideas.
i’m trying to explain my thought process as i’m looking back through this idea that’s been lurking for 1year+.
i would have normally tried to iterate through this idea alone and then think about releasing something, but would probably shelf-it.
side-goal is to break that cycle().
if you’re taking notes or anything really, it might be interesting to capture some of your process (this could also be physical with your phone on a tripod + timelapse of you {doingyourthing}. it might be interesting to have an over-the-shoulder view of someone designing and that was used as the process vid).
quick figma experiment
the embeds of gifs don’t seem to work as i want, especially on mobile (iOS app on my iPad + iPhone). i made a quick prototype of the concept, hopefully it can be viewed.
there’s an infinite amount of ways that this idea could be expressed, but the idea is to ‘see’ the creation process.
whether that’s a timelapse, realtime walkthrough, or some creative combo that people haven’t seen before — just something that gives a little more context into creating the ‘thing’.
i believe the earlier you show in your process (i.e., the messy gnar stuff), the greater the chance that it will resonate with someone.
departure
i hope to see a lot of early ideas & explorations captured.
as tools start to strip away the process and boil it down into a few prompts that you’re tweaking, i hope that people will continue to think about their workflows & capture how they work.
it’s easy to imagine a near-future where people don’t know how to do some of the more traditionally creative aspects of thinking like ‘brainstorming’ and ‘outlining’, let alone skipping that early-process entirely and just going to the final-results.
remembering the way people worked before ai, and pre-covid, i think are going to be interesting pieces of context to hold onto for reference.
i hope that you take the time to start getting a little meta on your processes and take pause to note the early, delicate stages of your thought-patterns.
even if you don’t share your process with others, you’ll be able to refer to it in the future && not only have an artifact but a glimpse at the time & energy it took to create that artifact.
i worry that the fun & sometimes gnarly parts of the idea generation+synthesis process are getting stripped out & replaced with generated-items that are deemed immediately ‘presentable.’
take some time to document your workflow, especially the gnarly parts, before it becomes a faded memory.
best,
Kelsy
