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  • Hello!

  • Last year I made a $1,000 bet with my younger cousin.

  • Normally when siblings make bets it's over something fun

  • like doing a backflip on a motorcycle or something crazy like that.

  • But mine was purely artistic.

  • So the bet was: I had to get 1,000 likes on ArtStation, within six months

  • for something that I'm terrible at which is 2D painting and drawing.

  • And to make things more interesting, if I actually succeded,

  • I would actually get nothing.

  • The deal was: if I failed I would give him $1,000

  • and if I succeeded I would get nothing.

  • So why would I do that, right? Why put myself through that?

  • Basically, I've always wanted to learn painting

  • but somehow the motivation was never there.

  • And then I learned about "Loss Aversion".

  • Which is that you're much more motivated to stick with something

  • when you have something to lose.

  • And it worked!

  • For the next six months, almost every single day

  • I was drawing, painting, going to drawing classes on weekends,

  • all sorts of things.

  • Learning to draw.

  • And I'm pleased to say that, with just 3 days left in the challenge,

  • I disappointed my cousin

  • by reaching the 1,000 likes on ArtStation.

  • Now, I don't say this to impress anyone, of course.

  • I say it because, while I learned a lot about drawing and painting,

  • I learned a lot more about how to be an effective artist.

  • Because, previous to this,

  • the way I learned Blender was the way most people learn new things.

  • Which is: they learn it when they have time,

  • they drift around, they watch tutorials, whatever.

  • But when you have something to lose, like $1,000,

  • it really throws things into question.

  • So what I've done is: I've distilled down the 7 biggest lessons,

  • the 7 biggest habits into this presentation.

  • And throughout it I also talk about

  • the habits that some of the world class professionals today use.

  • You'll learn what, for example, Stephen King, Pixar

  • and even Kanye West have in common.

  • So, you guys interested?

  • Alright, good, yay!

  • The first habit is deceptively simple:

  • Daily work.

  • You need to be working on your task, your artwork,

  • whatever creative goal you have, every single day.

  • Now, you think of this and think "Why every single day?",

  • "Why can't I just do it when I have time?"

  • "If I worked 1 hour monday to friday by the weekend that's just 5 hours.

  • Why can't I just do 5 hours on saturday or sunday?"

  • Well, the thing is that these large blocks of time

  • that we imagine, they very rarely ever pan out.

  • And this is why most great artists across history

  • achieve whatever it is that they do, writing books, music, whatever it is,

  • by putting in time every single day.

  • So, for example, J.K. Rowling wrote the world of Hogwarts,

  • Harry Potter, across 5 years. And she did that whilst raising a child.

  • And instead of waiting for these big, grand moments where she'd have free time

  • on a weekend far away when she could block it off with the childs

  • and the babysitter, she worked on it every spare chance she had, every single day.

  • Jerry Seinfeld wrote the Seinfeld series by putting an X on the count of

  • every single day that he wrote jokes. And then, after he had

  • a couple of days in a row, his next goal was to just not break that chain.

  • Mike Birbiglia, another comedian and a screenwriter,

  • found that he was putting off writing his movie scripts

  • because he had too many meetings with other people.

  • So, instead, he did something interesting which was to make himself a meeting

  • with his script. Everyday at the cafe. To sit down for 2 hours at a laptop

  • and type away. He found, by doing that,

  • he wouldn't put it off.

  • And personally, from a first-hand experience, I can speak on daily work

  • in that it sounds simple. Who wouldn't want to work every single day?

  • Everybody would want to do it. Why don't people do it?

  • And the thing is: after you've worked the whole day at the office,

  • listening to your boss ramble about stuff, you come home, you're tired,

  • the last thing you want to do is punish yourself by learning something new.

  • Instead, you end up on Netflix, Reddit, videogames, whatever it is.

  • So one thing that I found worked for me was to agree to do the smallest amount

  • of work possible. So, in my case it was to put the pencil on a paper

  • and draw one line.

  • So in days when I felt like "I can't do anything, I don't wanna do anything."

  • "I've had such a tough day I just wanna sit and relax"

  • I'd say "Alright, can I do one line?" So I go "I can do one line."

  • The thing is, by the time you clear the table, get the notebook out,

  • you get all your pencils ready, you get the sharpener, the eraser,

  • you get the chair, the lighting, you sit down.

  • By the time you do all that, of course you don't stop at one line.

  • Before you know it, you've done a couple of hours.

  • And you've just lost track of time.

  • So that "getting started" is often the hardest part about it.

  • Once you can do that, it's always fine.

  • That's what worked for me. Obviously it's a much bigger topic, "Motivation",

  • there's a bunch of books on it if you're interested.

  • Daily Work! It always trumps short sprints.

  • The world "trump" looks funny now, doesn't it?

  • It's like it changed its meaning.

  • Number 2: Volume, not perfection.

  • Honestly speaking, who here would consider himselves a bit of a perfectionist

  • when it comes to their artwork? Show of hands.

  • Most people, right?

  • Most artists have this affliction. And a lot of artists would actually

  • consider one of their strengths. To be a perfectionist.

  • Now, while you should be striving for a high standard of excellence

  • and for bettering the work that you did last,

  • being a perfectionist actually undermines your growth.

  • Because it prevents you from reaching the next epiphany

  • the next lesson.

  • Ira Glass, from the famous "This American Life" radio show

  • said it best by saying that the most important thing you can do

  • is a lot of work. It's only by going through a volume of work

  • that you're gonna close the gap.

  • I want to give a more well-known example. Think of Picasso.

  • Most people can really only pinpoint sort of a handful of his work.

  • So they go like "Yeah, that's Picasso, we know that."

  • But actually his library of work includes 800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures,

  • 2,800 ceramics, 12,000 drawings, and this isn't including prints, rugs

  • or tapestries.

  • So Picasso has a huge volume of work, and most of us can really only pinpoint

  • the hits, the big ones that really went on to success.

  • So he has this huge volume of work. And if you're wondering

  • if the volume of work had anything to do with the success,

  • researches say that it did. They did a study on 15,000

  • musical compositions from Beethoven, Mozart, things like that,

  • and they found that the more compositions that a composer produced

  • in a 5 year period, the greater spike in the odds that they actually created a hit.

  • So, volume is very important.

  • Speaking from a personal standpoint, I found that when I was creating these

  • 2D works, the perfectionism stage - that last little bit where you've done

  • most of the work, but is tweaking it, zooming in really closelly, and getting

  • the fine details in the shadows and the lightning, all that kind of stuff -

  • it eats up a lot of time. An interesting thing is that

  • you don't actually learn a lot in that last bit.

  • The majority of the learning comes in the stuff before it.

  • When you're putting down the big shapes, getting the anatomy of the face...

  • All that stuff. That's the stuff that you learn the most from.

  • The stuff at the end, that's easy. It's putting reference next to the thing,

  • zooming in closely, and just painting over it.

  • And that's the stuff that eats up a lot of time.

  • My point is that if you're a perfectionist, you're not able to

  • get to the next lesson, to get to the next big epiphany.

  • Volume, not perfection. Get on with your next work.

  • That's number two.

  • Number three: Steal.

  • Right.

  • It's common to look at the work of our idols and just assume that they

  • were born to do whatever it is they do. That Rembrandt,

  • first time he started painting, he just had this idea for how to

  • paint light and shadow. Or that Quentin Tarantino was born to

  • make these fun, interesting stories.

  • But that's not how the human brain works.

  • It's always built upon the ideas before it.

  • Our idols, the stuff that we look at and go like "They're such an original!

  • how do they do this thing?" They built upon stuff from their idols,

  • stuff that they loved.

  • And this is why, if you look across history, you'll find that

  • most great artists recommend stealing.

  • David Bowie says "The only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from."

  • Steve Jobs openly admitted in an interview that they are shameless about stealing

  • their great ideas."

  • And you've got Banksy stealing the stealing quote from Pablo Picasso.

  • Quote: "The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal."

  • Love that one.

  • So if you're curious, "Why are all those people suggesting stealing?"

  • Stealing is immoral. That's what we grew up with. That's wrong.

  • Well, there's a difference between good theft and bad theft.

  • And this is outlined in the book "Steal like an artist".

  • There's a list there, but the one that really stands out to me,

  • the most important one is third from the top:

  • Stealing from many versus stealing from one person.

  • Steal from one person and that's called plagiarism.

  • Steal from many, people can't tell.

  • Or, as Gary Panter put it best, "If you have one person

  • you're influenced by, everyone will say you're the next whoever.

  • But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original!"

  • So one thing I would recommend is: find your idols. Find things that

  • you truly love right now. And this is very easy to do with the internet

  • world today. You can just go on ArtStation and find stuff you love.

  • So this is what I did: at the start of my challenge, I started an evernote file

  • I and just went to ArtStation and I just copy-pasted

  • the stuff that I love and put it into one file.

  • Don't overthink it, don't over discriminate.

  • I didn't even quote the authors. I don't know who some of those people

  • even are. I just copied and pasted it. And this worked as both reference

  • and inspiration in the future. So when I was making a face

  • and something wasn't right about the eyes, I just opened this up, went to all these

  • different ones, and I'm like "Oh, that's how they did that,

  • that's how they did that."

  • And then on really dark days, when I really wasn't motivated to work,

  • this also works as inspiration. Because opening it up reminds you

  • why you got started. Stuff that you love, truly.

  • Not thinking about traditional painters or anything like that.

  • Stuff that you truly love.

  • That's "Steal". Find your idols and steal from them.

  • #4 Conscious Learning. So, show of hands,

  • who has heard that "practice makes perfect."

  • Most people! The other one of course

  • is "if you want to get good at something, if you want to

  • master something, you need 10,000 hours of practice", right?

  • Well, I used to think this was the case. And this was the advice that I gave

  • to people in my podcast or my tutorials. If someone emails and says:

  • "I want to get good at Blender", I say "You gotta practice!"

  • "Practice, practice, practice..."

  • But that's not all that is.

  • Because the human brain is wired to avoid pain.

  • So practice can actually, if you're not carefull about it,

  • it can become a source of procrastination.

  • We tend to think of practice like this: The more time I put in,

  • The greater the results will be and it'll be a linear graph.

  • But really it sort of becomes a little bit like this:

  • You get a little bit of growth at the start,

  • but after that you can sort of stagnate, with just pure practice.

  • Before I started my challenge I just e-mailed some people that I liked

  • and I was like "Hey, can I ask you a couple of questions about painting?"

  • And one of them was the artist Efflam Mercier. I love his work.

  • And he said something I never heard of before, which was that

  • One of the biggest wastes of time is not being conscious of what you're doing.

  • Or, in other words, "doodling around".

  • And it really didn't ocurr to me, until later on, what he actually meant.

  • One thing I like to do, by myself when I'm working at home.

  • Just on the computer. It's very lonely work what I do.

  • I don't talk with a lot of people. And so, at the end of the day,

  • sometimes what I like to do is I just like to hear people talk.

  • So I put on my headphones and I listen to podcasts.

  • Bill Burr or Your Mom's House Podcast... A lot of comedian talk.

  • And it's relaxing to me. So what I do is: I open up a notepad,

  • I put on the earbuds, and I listen to podcasts and I would just... sketch.

  • Not really a goal in mind, but I would just sketch.

  • And what I was doing was not good. It was really quite horrible actually.

  • Some of them don't even look like people.

  • But I thought, you know, the age old mantra:

  • "Practice makes perfect." If I just keep at it, I'll get better.

  • But I look through the previous work, I flip through the pages,

  • and I notice that from a couple of weeks ago

  • there wasn't any difference between them.

  • I wasn't getting better over time. They were sort of about the same.

  • And I thought "I'm putting in more and more hours here,

  • but I'm not learning." So I thought "Okay, I've got to go back

  • and I gotta learn something."

  • I actually hate watching some tutorials.

  • Some tutorials, especially drawing theory videos

  • can be incredibly dry stuff.

  • My wife took this photo of me when I was watching a facial anatomy course.

  • One of the most boring courses I ever sat through.

  • But I did this, and I hated it. At the end of the day I don't want to

  • challenge myself. And I'm sure you can relate to it. After you've done

  • a hard day, if you're gonna sit down with Blender, sometimes you just want to

  • do what you know, right?

  • And I hated doing this stuff. But in this process I learned,

  • I discovered that I completely misremembered several facial measurements.

  • I was drawing faces that were totally wrong.

  • And they never would've gotten better unless I learned this.

  • After I completed this, my faces improved almost immediately.

  • Just like that. Because I stopped to relearn. Had I continued

  • just praticing, "practice makes perfect", It wouldn't have got better.

  • So, really, this graph looks a bit better like this.

  • When you include conscious learning in it, you go up a step.

  • Your areas really improve at greater amounts than if you were just

  • doing practice alone. Practice is important, don't get me wrong.

  • But practice alone makes perfect? I don't agree with it.

  • It's conscious learning! It's not always fun, but it's the fastest way to grow.

  • Rest!

  • Who here has had an experience where maybe you're working on a scene in Blender

  • and then you're just stuck. You hit a brick wall.

  • You don't really know what's going on and you're stressed out.

  • Who's had that experience before?

  • Oh, yeah, lots! Okay, that's good to see! Not alone there.

  • I have this a lot. And you've probably had this experience as well.

  • That maybe you walk away and start doing the dishes,

  • and then suddenly you come up with the solution. It's weird.

  • Maybe you're in the shower. You're somewhere and you just go

  • like "Oh yeah, I could put the lightning on the other side,

  • I could change the color of the shirt, that will match the thing!"

  • And you just think of this thing when you're removed from the work.

  • This is actually a strategy that most professional artists use.

  • For example, Stephen King, he reckons

  • What would he know?

  • Stephen King, he says that any novel, regardless of its size

  • shouldn't take longer than three months to complete the first draft.

  • But then, after the three months, you should stop work

  • and not look at it for six weeks. Six weeks, do something else,

  • go on a holiday or start another book. Do something else. Then after that,

  • when you come back to it, it's like you're reading somebody else's work.

  • You see it from a completely different perspective. One that you would

  • never have gotten had you just sat there and just continued to type away.

  • From a personal experience, I drew this Rey from Star Wars over a couple of nights

  • and I didn't really know where to go with it. I was like

  • "Hmm, black and white. Traditional, got a black background, whatever."

  • I didn't really know where to go from there. So I took a 3 day break.

  • I went and I just started some other drawings and did some other stuff.

  • Then after 3 days I came back to it. And I remember feeling

  • completely detached from it. In a good way.

  • In that I could work on it like I wasn't "in it" anymore.

  • Like I could experiment with it. So I remember seeing a brush

  • that I'd never seen before in Photoshop, and I just drew over the top of it.

  • And I was like "Oooh, that was kind of interesting."

  • And then within about fifteen minutes I had this interesting effect.

  • This sort of "force", kind of a weird aura about it.

  • And I never would've gotten there had I continued to work beyond those 2 days.

  • That break, that rest period, gave me a period where I felt detached from it.

  • Having this rest period is very important.

  • It's also what we actually do now at Blender Guru as a strategy.

  • So if we got 3 artworks we want to create, for like a trailer,

  • like "Grass Essentials" trailer, or something. Instead of doing

  • all 3 of them. Like: we complete one to completion, then start the next one

  • and then the next one to completion, then start the next one. We do all 3 of them

  • simultaneously. We work on this one for 1 day, this one for the next day,

  • this one for the next day... Then loop back.

  • And every time you loop back to it, and you repeat the cycle, and go

  • through it one by one again, you see things that

  • you never would have seen before. And I'm sure you can all

  • relate to this feeling, So that's Rest.

  • Take a break, and see your work with fresh eyes.

  • #6 is Feedback.

  • We sort of imagine, when we think of "original thinkers", great artists

  • across history, that they were originals, so they had to

  • thumb their nose to the critics, the naysayers, the people that said

  • "Oh, that's not good, you shouldn't do that." And they had to just do

  • because they knew what they were doing was the right thing.

  • But if you actually look at professional artists and you listen to interviews

  • or biographies, you find that the exact opposite is true.

  • They seek feedback more than anyone.

  • And that's the one thing I found true looking across musicians, writers,

  • anything like that. They all seek incredible amounts of feedback.

  • So, for example, Pixar, they have a room called the "Brain Trust", which is that

  • when you walk in the room, your role is removed and you are free to

  • speak your mind. You could be a junior artist at Day 1, and you could

  • sit down and you could say "This movie sucks!"

  • Sitting next to you could be the CEO of Disney.

  • And you both have equal say and you're not gonna get fired.

  • You're not gonna get any repercussions. It's a free process

  • to speak your mind. And this, Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar,

  • says is one of the most crucial parts to their success.

  • Because their early movie suck. And he went on to great lenghts

  • to remind people how bad the first versions of their movies are.

  • He said they are not these great masterpieces that they just come out

  • from day one and just make it. It's through a process of

  • iteration and feedback. They change the movie to be totally different

  • from what they've started with. That's the only way that it gets there.

  • And in terms of people seeking feedback, the one person you would imagine that

  • would be least inclined, maybe, to seek feedback, would be this guy.

  • Guy that's sort of sure of where he's going. Kanye West.

  • If you look at his most popular, most celebrated album,

  • My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, this album was unanimously loved

  • by critics. Some people say it's the best hip-hop album of the last decade.

  • Or decades, or of our generation. Just unanimously loved by all critics.

  • This was the work of several artists. I actually had a look, there was 38

  • artists and producers that contributed to the album. He actually rented

  • a studio in Hawaii and then flew in his favorite artists. People like Jay-Z,

  • Rihanna, Drake, a bunch of people to come and both contribute to the album

  • but also critique it. Pusha T mentioned in an interview the process for it.

  • Which was that he would basically take people in a room and say

  • "What do you think of this?" And he was sincerely interested

  • in what they had to say. And when you compare this with Pixar

  • it sounds a very similar process. No one is going to be persecuted,

  • it's true honest feedback. And that's what can contribute to the success.

  • To give a 3D example, this is sort of a 3D conference,

  • Gnomon School. Who knows Gnomon? You guys heard of Gnomon?

  • They are the #1 CG school in the world. I think they have a 97% placement rate.

  • And I think the second school underneath that is like 50%.

  • Crazy, they're doing some amazing stuff there. And I actually came

  • to Australia, to Melbourne, and they had a weekend event. And I went there

  • and I was talking with Alex Álvarez, who is the founder. He was saying that

  • although all students there have a high standard of excellence

  • in every classroom there's about 1 or 2 people that are the rockstars.

  • That will go on to huge amounts of success and have no problem

  • finding work in the future. And so I asked him

  • "What separates the rockstars from all the other students?"

  • And without missing a beat he said: "They seek criticism, and

  • they actually listen to it." He didn't mention composition,

  • lighting, storytelling, any of that stuff. It was the sole thing that actually

  • separates the rockstars from the rest of the pack.

  • Very interesting. And from a personal standpoint I can vouch and say that

  • I had this work here, wasn't happy with it. I posted on Twitter,

  • and I got a bit of feedback, but I wasn't really sure where to go with it.

  • I was actually at the Gnomon event, and there was Dylan Ekren, who is a

  • character artist from Disney. And I came up to him and I'm like "Hey,

  • can I show you some work? You know, bust my balls telling

  • what you think of it?" And he said "Sure!"

  • I took out my iPhone, and straight away he pointed at it

  • and goes "You got two different sources of lighting" it's very odd, back-lit

  • and front-lit, doesn't match. "And also you got two different styles.

  • You've got a cartoony style face and then you've got some realistic hair.

  • You have to match them up." Interesting.

  • Straight away, I knew exactly what he meant. And it only took like a minute

  • but it saved me hours of work. I worked on this and it improved a lot.

  • I hope to say it improved a bit. So that's "Get Feedback".

  • It's worth its weight in gold.

  • #7 is to create what you love. I personally think that motivation is a

  • hugely overlooked area of art. We tend to imagine that the great artists

  • you could give them any topic and they could make it great.

  • That's what we sort of imagine. But really if you look at the work

  • that the great artists and musicians of today are making, it's stuff that

  • they are personally interested in.

  • Christopher Nolan, he makes movies about things that he is really interested in.

  • About the state of mind and being trapped in things and sci-fi sort of elements.

  • He is really interested in this stuff. And he builds these stories and these

  • worlds that have a depth that you often don't find in some similar movies.

  • Elon Musk! He's not an artist, but somewhat successful.

  • His 3 companies, SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, he created these companies because

  • he has an interest in humanity and seeing it succeed.

  • So this is a personal, intrinsic motivation. And it's stuff that he's

  • interested in. I'm sure if he started a bakery, I'm sure it would suck.

  • He's not a genius... Well, he's a genius. But the Midas touch, that myth thing

  • I think it's really themes that a particular artist is interested in.

  • To give a more artistic example, Brian Eno, he's a great artist,

  • make this ambient music, he said he got into it because he was

  • interested in listening to music that he wanted to hear. And that

  • really shows through his music.

  • And from a personal story, I remember when I was doing some drawings,

  • I was posting them up on Twitter and Facebook. These little sketches

  • and things. And pretty soon, after a couple of months, people said

  • "So you're only going to draw cute girls?" And I was like "Oh", it affected me.

  • I'm like "Oh, no, I'm gonna become one of those guys who

  • just draws cute girls." And this was family members telling me.

  • People online, people on Instagram, "Why you just draw girls?"

  • And I was like "I gotta balance it out, I gotta start drawing some dudes."

  • So I started drawing some guys. It just didn't work!

  • My heart wasn't in it. Hector Salamanca, I love this series.

  • But I just wasn't interested in it. And the effort required to

  • make something look good... You need that intrinsic motivation.

  • My heart just wasn't in it. And I remember there was a...

  • It was around the time that Myth Busters was hitting their decade of being on air

  • or something like that. And I don't really watch Myth Busters.

  • I know it's a cool show and "Science!" all that stuff. But I wasn't into it.

  • But I thought all the people would like it if I probably drew a nice picture of

  • the two guys on it.

  • Didn't really work. And I get, my heart wasn't in it.

  • It's a great show, but I just don't watch it.

  • After a while of having these failed attempts,

  • I was eating time - I've got 6 months to achieve this thing,

  • I was wasting time, and then I had this epiphany:

  • Who gives a shit what people think? Who cares?

  • And so I went back and I started doing the stuff that I really loved.

  • Honestly, I find girls to be a lot more of an attractive subject than most guys.

  • That is what I think! And there's enough red tape in life. The government telling

  • you what you can do. Your boss telling what you can work on.

  • Art is one of the few fields where you get to do what you truly are interested in.

  • And so I personally think that when you start letting other people

  • interfere and tell you what you should and shouldn't do, I think it's a big mistake.

  • So, create what you love. You'll make better work - honestly you will - and

  • you will stay motivated in the long run.

  • That's the summary! Daily work, putting work every single day.

  • Focus on habit building, very important. Don't be a perfectionist, although

  • you think it's a good thing, it's generally not.

  • Find your idols, steal from them. Conscious learning, although it

  • kind of sucks, you do need to go through and find what your weaknesses are

  • and attack them. Have a break, that's often better than just working through it.

  • Get feedback from everybody. It's not a good thing to be putting your

  • head in the sand and going through it. And then, finally, create what you love.

  • Thank you!

Hello!

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