Art by Elia Murray
SHOW LINKS
WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH IN ART SCHOOL
What roadblocks are stopping you from hammering out your dream project, working on the thing you love and have dedicated your life to, and succeeding in your creative endeavors? And, more importantly, how do you overcome those roadblocks? This week, Jake Parker, Lee White, and Will Terry discuss the common challenges illustrators face, and how to overcome them and power on to finish those dream projects.
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INTRO
Let’s talk about what’s keeping you from finishing that project you always wanted to do!
Sidenote: have you ever done sculpture? Jake would love to make a bronze one time.
GREAT WHITE ZEKE
Jake’s friend Tim Boyle is an architect. They grew up as friends together. They would draw together as kids, and kind of had a healthy artistic camaraderie. This last month, he posted a page that looked like a cover to a children’s book, called Great White Zeke. Jake asked him what it was -- he posted a new spread from his children’s book every day of the week. Zeke is a baby raised by great white sharks -- Jake wondered what the story was going to be, and it was actually really good and quirky and fun. He finished the book and it was really nice. He called Jake and asked how to get it published. Jake told him that a major publisher would probably not be interested but that a smaller publisher would probably be interested, or he could kickstarter it to self publish. Jake told him everything he knew about kickstarters and told him everything that worked and didn’t work. Two days later, he launched a kickstarter and it was funded within two days. He started on book number two shortly after at Jake’s recommendation. It was so impressive to Jake that his friend had zero inhibition. He made a book, kickstarted it, published it, and started a second book.
Tim illustrated the book on Procreate and used watercolor brushes that he downloaded. He used a lot of photo reference to get the shark shapes right, and knocked it out. Really cool stuff!
We get stalled on our creative ideas. Or we come up with ideas and we don’t follow through. What made Tim go from zero to sixty on his project, and how can we do the same?
Do any of you know someone who actually just goes and does what they want to?
What is it that causes most people to hesitate and the few to actually fulfill their goals?
MAJOR ROADBLOCKS
Jake believes that sometimes people struggle to commit to a decision, to a single thing, because you are saying no to so many other things.
There are a lot of factors that happen subconsciously in our brains, that we often hear the little voice in our minds, Resistance, that holds us back. Hopefully the internal voice tells us positive things about ourselves, sometimes we need to practice positivity and to tell ourselves that we are good. But most people are dealing with past failures and have taught themselves that they are unlike other people, who can succeed, but that they are doomed to fail. This is false -- every single person can do great things. It’s so easy to procrastinate and watch a movie or play a game as opposed to working on our dream.
Will really thought about this for himself and he has been wanting to write a business book for about a decade. He kept telling himself he would be finally ready sometime in the future. He has just finished kickstarting it. It was such a big project that his thoughts were: “I’ll just give myself a pass for now, it’ll happen eventually in my life but it’s too big to start right now.” It took the death of Will’s wife to bring him back. For months, he couldn’t draw anything. Nothing would come out when he set pen to paper. But he could write. So he started writing 3 pages per day, regardless of if he was going to publish it. He just wanted to start. It was the conscious project to get him back into productivity. He needed a tragedy to get him to wake up and work on his dream project. If you are just bumping along in life sometimes you need this sort of thing to get you going.
Lee suggests that there is plenty of motivation at the start -- there is a point where it turns and it stops being fun and becomes work, and it becomes confusing and difficult. How much do you really believe in it, and do you believe enough to sustain it? That early discomfort makes it really easy for people to switch projects to something else new and exciting, creating a vicious circle. Lee has led many concept design teams, and the first two weeks are really fun but then everyone loses their mojo after that. Knowing that this uncomfortable phase will come and being able to mentally prepare yourself for it is a good remedy. Will was probably able to plow through his book because he had a solid goal and bite sized temporary goals. Giving yourself a combination of a large set goal and then a daily quota is extremely powerful.
How do we remove these roadblocks?
Push through the dip. There’s high excitement at the start and the end, but not a lot in the middle. It’s perfect when you envision it in your head, but as you start working on it you realize that there’s no way it would match your vision. Maybe you don’t have the ability or resources. Keep the vision in your head, make it exist in some form or another as a finished product. It won’t be perfect but it will be something that you finished.
Imposter Syndrome. You might believe you have no business making a children’s book or anything else. That people who are way more experienced should be doing it. But everyone has something to offer. Everyone has something unique to bring to the table. Don’t be the one to cancel your own project. Pass that to someone else. Make a thing, let people decide if they want it or not, your job is to make it not rate it.
You’re gonna be a different person in five or ten years. You might not yet have a grandiose project within you at this point in your life. But you do have unique things to offer right now. They may be smaller things. But the way you get to the point of making amazing things is by making smaller things. You pave the road each time you make something. Each project paves that road further. Eventually you can coast along a nicely paved road. Some people try to do a big project without any paved road, and that’s really hard because it will fail inevitably. It also paves the road with thorns in the opposite direction. It’s tough to reverse this but it can be done.
Lee would see this when he taught in school -- he would always find kids who didn’t want to work for a company but wanted to own their own studio or company. There isn’t a path to that out of school. Lee would have to reroute them out of that even though it was crushing to their dreams. There is a road, and you need to pave it -- you can’t skip over it because it will stop you. Make something small and beautiful first.
THE VALUE OF STARTING
When you start a kickstarter, do you have any doubt that you will make money? Jake does not. It’s easier for him. He didn’t win the lottery, it’s because he proved he can make his projects work over time and has the experience and reputation. It’s easier the more you do it.
WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH IN ART SCHOOL
For people who haven’t proved themselves, that’s where it gets harder, because they haven’t laid the foundation over time. It takes work but you can get to a point where it is cause and effect, where success is no longer a gamble but is a given, and just a question of if you have the time or not.
Going back to Great White Zeke, Tim loves sharks -- he’s choosing a topic he loves, so it’s a lot easier for him. He’s essentially making it for himself. He also posted it to Facebook groups that love sharks and got feedback from them and generated interest. People like to hold their cards close to their chest because they are worried people are going to steal it or be critical, but you need to share your stuff if it’s in a place that you feel confident about it and you understand the material enough that you could share it as a well formed product. You want to get feedback and see if people like it or not. If you’re passionate about it, then yes, it doesn’t matter what people think because it’s gonna be a hard road. A lot of people take on projects partly as passion projects, but there should be some form of financial return or your time might be better spent doing something else. There should be some reward outside of it making you happy, if it’s a product that you are making. Share it, post it, nobody will steal your idea -- it doesn’t really happen that much. People come up with similar things and are influenced by other people, but even if they take your thing and do their own, it becomes its own thing. You really risk not hearing what people think and say about your idea because of something that probably won’t happen.
Lee sees a lot of people disillusioned with a project after they see other people who have made a similar product right in the middle of their own. Do you move forward, do you abandon it? What do you do? It depends on your purpose -- is it just for self gratification? If so, then make it -- it doesn’t matter if there are competitors in the market. If your wish is to make something that influences people’s lives then you need something unique that says its own thing.
Everything is a remix of everything else, we are just adding something new to something that already exists.
PRIORITIES AND TIME
Another roadblock: You’re too busy, and this isn’t a priority. It could mean you took on too many projects, you have a demanding job, you have a social life or you work out, you want to take a vacation, you want to have weekend getaways, etc. Taking on a project means you have to cut something out of your life to put that project in there. Tim has been asking Jake about publishing and getting distribution, and finally conceded that he is an architect and not a publisher, and that his time is so much more valuable as an architect. But he loves the book and wants to really bring it out into the world.
A lot of people tell themselves they will do it when they retire, or when they finish this next big job, or over christmas vacation, or something else. But those gaps in your time will always get filled with other things. Most successful people that Will can think of did their thing on top of their day job. Very rarely does someone have extra time in their lives where they magically can finish their project, something else always comes along.
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH INSPIRING PEOPLE
You are surrounded by people who either don’t believe in you or aren’t facilitating your path or making it easy to go down. Sometimes these people just aren’t doing cool things themselves. It can be harder to do cool stuff when people around you don’t get it and don’t do that sort of thing themselves. Don’t necessarily fire all of your friends, but keep people in your life that inspire and challenge you and make you improve and get out of your comfort zone. For Jake, it was a few people that he followed closely online, and he figured if they could do it so could he. Sometimes it is a parasocial relationship. Sometimes it is following less people who give you anxiety and more people who inspire you to make you achieve things.
FAILURE CAN BE THE BEST TEACHER
It’s important to recognize that we aren’t all the same. Will really learns by failing. He would rather fail and learn and get new information than succeed effortlessly. Some people don’t work that way at all though. If you start with a small project, you will reveal challenges you would never have predicted for your larger projects. Get educated with small projects, and your failures will bring you closer to success. You’re on the path to success. Every entrepreneur can talk about the long list of failures they have had. They are components to the success you will eventually have. After the dust settles, ask yourself what you didn’t know and assess why you failed.
You want to be humble and present yourself as humble to people that you want to work with. Don’t have an attitude about it or have any unfair expectations for others. You should be humble and be willing to admit that you have no idea what you are doing. Don’t fake it, just admit you are new and ask for help.
It’s hard to look at your failures as lessons. It can feel horrible. It takes time and effort to really heal and unpack your failures. Kickstarter is one of the best ways to try this because if it fails, you don’t owe anyone any money and you can just walk away.
Jake is working with a boardgame company who launched a kickstarter for another one of their board games, and they pulled the plug because it wasn’t getting traction. They have distributors and everything, but they used the failed kickstarter as market research and just pulled their project.
SUMMARY
List of roadblocks and their solutions:
You cannot commit to a decision and have too many other opportunities taking your focus. You just have to pick a thing to work on and have that be your thing.
You’re too busy and have too much on your plate. You just have to give up something. It could be a videogame, or Netflix, or working out. You just have to decide what is important to you.
You are not surrounded by people who support or inspire you. Search for people who can motivate or inspire you in either your personal or your online life. Cut off people who want you to fail.
You’re taking on something way too big. Start small. Don’t take on your biggest dream project right off the bat, start small and be willing to fail. Take small but steady steps towards the dream goal you want to achieve.
You feel like you’re faking it. There are a lot of smart people who are not successful. Stay in your lane and know how to do what you do. Everyone is faking it and nobody knows what they are doing. You’re not alone.
Stay humble. Know that even if you do fail, it is just a learning experience.
You haven’t given yourself a deadline or some sort of reason to finish this project. If you don’t have a finish date and give yourself a hard schedule you will never finish your project.
Push through the dip. It’s gonna look and feel dumb and not match your vision, but you have to believe that it needs to exist in the world. Use your deadline to help motivate you.
“Why is it important for you, Jake, to create projects?”
JAKE: Working on projects makes me feel useful and makes me feel like I’m contributing. Like I’m making a mark. There’s this thing inside me that makes me want to know what’s possible -- wouldn’t it be cool if this thing existed? But nobody else will make it, so I have to do it myself. We want our lives to have meaning.
There are a hundred ways to make money, but making something and putting it out there is a little bit more satisfying.
LINKS
Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com. Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44
Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt
Lee White: leewhiteillustration.com. Instagram: @leewhiteillo
Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com
Aaron Painter: painterdraws.com. Instagram: @painterdraws
Daniel Tu: danieltu.co.
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