The Hidden Archive: Free Creative Tools, Resources and a New Teleprompter App
Over the past few years, I’ve created a slightly ridiculous number of things.
Books. Apps. Courses. Music. Videos. Experiments. Resources. Some useful, some strange, and quite a few that sit somewhere in between.
One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while is create a single place where I can bring more of this work together and make it accessible to people who might find it useful.
That place is The Hidden Archive Skool community.
The idea is to build a growing library of creative tools, resources, courses and experiments for people interested in creativity, technology, storytelling and the changing world of creative work.
And there’s already quite a bit inside.
Introducing Archive Prompter
The newest addition to the Archive is Archive Prompter, a teleprompter app I’ve been developing to solve some of the frustrations I’ve had when recording videos.
As someone who spends a lot of time talking to cameras, recording presentations and trying to remember what I was supposed to say next, I wanted something simple, clean and genuinely useful.
Archive Prompter has grown from that idea into its own little application, with different ways of displaying and controlling scripts depending on how you like to work.
Rather than keeping it tucked away as another personal project, I’ve decided to make Archive Prompter available through The Hidden Archive’s free tier.
But it isn’t the only thing available for free.
Rob Like a Robot | Free eBook
I’ve also added my book Rob Like a Robot to the Archive as a free download.
The book explores creativity, automation and the strange relationship between humans and machines — particularly the idea that as technology becomes increasingly capable of doing repetitive work for us, perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to compete with machines by becoming more machine-like ourselves.
Instead, we should be asking what technology can free us to do.
It was written during an earlier chapter of my own exploration into creativity and technology, but many of the ideas feel even more relevant now as AI rapidly changes the creative landscape.
Creative Archetypes
You’ll also find the Creative Archetypes app available on the free tier.
This was an experiment inspired by the idea that we all approach creativity differently.
Some of us explore.
Some build.
Some challenge.
Some nurture.
Some obsess over understanding how everything works.
Creative Archetypes is designed as a playful way of exploring those different creative instincts and perhaps understanding a little more about how you personally approach the creative process.
Between Archive Prompter, Rob Like a Robot and Creative Archetypes, I wanted the free side of the community to contain things that are genuinely useful in their own right.
You don’t need to subscribe to a paid tier just to find something worthwhile.
Going Deeper Into the Archive
For those who want to explore further, there is also a premium tier that opens up more of the work I’ve created over the years.
Premium members get access to additional resources connected to Field Notes, my series of pocket investigations exploring ideas around culture, psychology, technology and the stranger corners of human experience.
That includes access to the presentation slides I’ve created for the series, allowing you to dig into the research and ideas behind the videos in more detail.
There’s also access to some of my older music and albums, projects from different periods of my creative life that haven’t always had an obvious home online.
And for people interested in learning the practical side of creative production, premium members can access my 2D Character Animation course.
The course explores my process for building and animating 2D characters, taking you through the workflow behind creating characters and bringing them to life through tools such as Photoshop and After Effects.
You can also take the first module for free:
Building a Creative Library
Ultimately, The Hidden Archive isn’t really intended to be a single course or product.
I see it more as a library that can continue growing alongside the things I’m already doing.
When I build a useful tool, it can go into the Archive.
When I create a course, I can add it to the library.
When a Field Notes investigation produces interesting research or resources, I can share them there.
And when I inevitably disappear down another creative rabbit hole and emerge several weeks later with some strange new experiment, there’s now somewhere for that to live too.
I’m also increasingly interested in exploring accessible creative technology, particularly free and open-source tools that can help people create without needing expensive subscriptions or enormous budgets.
So over time, I hope The Hidden Archive becomes a useful collection of tools, ideas and knowledge for anyone trying to make things, learn new skills or simply explore where creativity and technology might be heading next.
There’s plenty more planned.
But for now, the doors to The Hidden Archive are open.
You can join the community for free, download Archive Prompter, read Rob Like a Robot, explore Creative Archetypes, and have a look around.
Join The Hidden Archive:
https://www.skool.com/the-hidden-archive-4393
