Creative Case Study: Ashton Duncan
I'm pleased to share with you the first creative case study in this series, featuring the multi-talented Ashton Duncan. No two creative processes are alike, so I hope that showing you how different creatives find success will be helpful in your creative journey.
About the Creative
Ashton Duncan is a senior producer at Roll20 as well as a freelance writer and editor. She works in content conversion from print to digital primarily in the project management realm now and her previous personal projects have included Kickstarters and DMs Guild work like The Princess Project anthology, Exit Pursued by Owlbear, and Necronomizine.
How long have you been doing creative work?
While I was in undergrad and working on my thesis in English Literature I applied on a whim to be a content conversion specialist (a contract position) at Roll20. [Editor's note: Roll20 is an online platform where people can play tabletop roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons.] I’d published writing, done freelance editing, and worked on website design before, and I’d most recently worked in marketing at a university publisher. I was thrilled to work in the TTRPG [tabletop roleplaying gaming] industry—something that was fairly new to me! I started work with their conversion of Wizards of the Coast’s Curse of Strahd.
After graduation I took a year off to travel and, still working as a contractor, did my MA in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Around this time I started publishing on the DMs Guild with my first adventure, “The Summer Games.” After submitting my dissertation on Dungeons & Dragons called “Material Components: Publishing and Immersive Interaction in Tabletop Role-Playing Games” I was hired full-time at Roll20 as senior producer, and that’s where I am now!
What are your favorite tools for creativity and productivity?
I swear by Google Drive, especially Google Docs and Google Sheets for ease of organization, searching, and sharing functionality, but I also use Dropbox as a cloud-based storage solution. I use the Adobe Creative Suite for anything graphics-related, meaning InDesign for book layout, Illustrator for any graphic design, and Photoshop for anything more drawing-intensive with my Wacom drawing tablet. For organization I keep a strict, color-coded Trello board of all of my projects and life happenings, including editing deadlines, wedding planning, and grocery lists! I also use an adorable daily desk planner as a quasi-bullet journal for my daily tasks at work and in my “side hustles.” I’m typically communicating through email, Discord, and Slack on any given day.
Ashton’s Creative Toolkit
Google Drive
Dropbox
Adobe Creative Suite
Wacom Drawing Tablet
Trello
Discord
Slack
Email
Daily Desk Planner
Bullet Journal
How do you begin a new creative project?
The beginning of a project is absolutely key to that project’s success, and, to me, that all comes down to project management. On a creative project that I’m spearheading, that means that I’ll be creating a project charter with an overview, timeline, resources for creators, outline for contributors and royalty splits, and the creation/submission process for every creator. This is the place to think about ambitions and goals, but also risks and worst case scenarios. The timeline should also be reflected in the progress sheet (more on that later). For any creative work it is essential that you get a contract, even if it is informal and based off of something you found online. You need to know what to expect from your fellow creators and they need to know what to expect from you. This is the phase to set those expectations.
Getting all of this done before bringing on contributors is absolutely essential to me, and only after getting the scope and expectations down will I call for contributors, set up a communication Discord (with pinned documentation in every channel), and get contracts sent out to everyone I bring onboard. Then the work starts!
What does the middle of a creative project look like for you?
In my professional life I live in Sprints and scrum on Jira, but at home I work in the waterfall methodology—as in, each step has to be completed one after the other until we finally release the product. This is reflected in the project charter timeline and progress sheet, which all get initialed by creators as they complete their work and submit in the method outlined on the project charter (I hope it’s starting to become clear how important having a “bible” document for your project is!).
How do you complete a creative project?
I find finishing projects really difficult, and it’s not because of the workload! I have a really, really hard time marketing myself, cold emailing reviewers, and hyping the product I worked so long on. This is where I really key into my fellow contributors’ expectations of me and how I want to do them proud. I want our product to succeed, if we’re on royalty share I want my contributors to get a fair paycheck, and I want people to see how cool the thing we worked on is! That’s hard work and I’m still working on it.
What is a specific project you've completed that uses the process you've outlined above?
The process above was really successful with my recent Princess Project anthology on the DMs Guild, and I’m very proud of how that project proceeded. There are bumps in the road of any process, particularly any that have 25+ contributors, but I posted a retrospective thread on that creative process and I hope it helps others learn, too! https://twitter.com/ashtonnduncan/status/1259188646307147778
Thank you so much for sharing, Ashton! Follow Ashton on Twitter for more insight (and fun Dungeons & Dragons content). I was fortunate to work on The Princess Project as an editor and can personally attest to Ashton's terrific project management process.
Next week, we'll delve into your creative archetype, and how a creative process differs from a workflow.