bobulate:

“We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators.”

That’s Barbara deWilde in “Can You Teach Someone to Be an Entrepreneur?”, a response to the class carefully crafted and led @svaixd by Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo. “Internet School,” or the course, challenged students to use the power of the network to complete assignments, and if tacit responses around the studio were any indication, life lessons.

Barbara confirms:

The lessons from Internet school are life lessons. If I can sum them up I would say they are: 1. The Internet and the emergence of networks have disrupted and will continue to disrupt structures that are hierarchical. 2. Learn technologies and use them to build. We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators. 3. Know yourself, have an opinion and share it. You’ll find others like you. Networks aren’t lonely, they’re empowering. 4. There is very little reason to work for others. If you have the skills that make you hirable, you have the skills to create something for yourself, and in turn, for others. 5. Don’t spend all your time refining, get your ideas out there and see if people like them.

The lessons from guests, the lessons from failing in public, and reminders of what learning is for in the first place gave way to a wonderful things. I suspect this is only the beginning.

Geez, how many great links are in that reblog above? Talk about inspiring. Spend your lunch reading this.

The Artist as a Reporter→

Leif Peng has (another) awesome series over on Today’s inspiration, this one by Daniel Zalkus. It’s all about drawing on the spot.

I especially like this, because it touches on something that’s been bouncing in my head a lot recently:

Direct drawing changed the illustration field. Sickles noted that prior to the advent of reportage in illustration, art directors and editors used to say, “Yes, fine. This is what we wanted. Now go home and do me a finished one”.

This has been happening all over again now, hasn’t it? Deadlines are are tight, quality and time are crunched. You can’t spend weeks making something amazing, you have an afternoon. Then ship it. And still make it amazing! For some things, anyway. Most things published online, for sure.

It certainly keeps things fresh. And new. And often.

But what about great?

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn’t keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there…

- Neil Gaiman interviewing Stephen King? Yes, please.

holidayrocket asked: Hi, I just read your writeup about pitching and developing a series, I'm a simple animation post grad in the UK, I'm about to send it to big, scary companies. I've developed a idea and I'm planning to send around pitches soon, but I do have lots of my own rough paperwork and I'm a bit cautious. I'm thinking of a pitch pack which will contain the basic pitch, basic character sketches and a script. Ideally I'm expecting to get noticed as a scriptwriter Am I approaching this the right way?

Have a good idea of who you are sending this to:

  • Make sure you’re sending to companies that actually make original content
  • Would the vision of your show find a place amidst the other work they do? (eg: might not want to send an adult cartoon idea to a company that has only made preschool shows)
  • Do they have any indication on their website that they are (or aren’t) accepting submissions? (this isn’t a deal killer but could help)

Cut down your pitch to only what is necessary. I’m not saying be like Hemingway. You want to entertain people with your pitch as the show will entertain, but just don’t waste people’s time. Answer the big questions:

  • What is this show about?
  • Who is it for?
  • Who are the characters?
  • Why is a great / different / revolutionary? (but don’t use that word)

Be extra critical of the artwork. I especially say this because you say you want to be a writer. Writers don’t have to draw, and a bad piece of art could hurt the overall impression. If it’s really good and you feel really strong, then leave it in. But realistic about it. Also, sketches - I would not put anything too rough in there. One solid image that tells your story would give a better impression than several pages of very rough art that could be interpreted many different ways (such as - “Is this what the show will look like?”).

Stand out. If your show is about food, then paint and paper mache a shoebox to look like a miniature fridge and put your pitch in that. Seriously. If you do it well, and the front office gets a mini fridge delivery addressed to the head of original content, do you think that person will get up and take that fridge to that executive right away? I would. That’s a conversation starter. Would the executive open it up right away? I would. What’s inside? If I pulled out an envelope containing a story pitch with the most hilarious adventures of food in a fridge, you’d have impressed me.

You’re correct on your assumptions - This would be an excellent way to get the ball rolling if you’d like to become a writer. Writers are in the business telling stories and coming up with ideas - so if you have some of your own - let others know about it. They may not be needing a new property right now, but if you pique their interest they may throw a writing gig your way for another show they’re working on.

A lot of all of this has to do with timing. Don’t be discouraged if no one calls you back. They could be busy, they could have three thousand other pitches to look through first, or they could just not use you right now. And none of these things means they’ll call you and let you know. Just keep at it.

I’d also suggest you find whatever writer’s guild you’ll have to join to work in the business, and attend some of their meetups. Ask around, send other writers in your area and field emails. Ask them stuff. They’ll probably offer a hand. They were in your shoes at one time.

Go forth and be awesome.

3rd batch of Justin Time season 1 title cards.

All of these were digitally made in Photoshop. I apologize for the kerning, design nerds. I really wanted to take these on to get more comfortable working with type. I’d change some things seeing them now, but they were as much a learning exercise as a necessary piece of production art, for me.

They were also fun. Making title cards is a whole different type of interesting and was a welcome distraction from the daily chaos in animation production.

see more title cards

Nights and Mornings

Night owls vs. early risers. Which is better? Who cares? Here’s a thing:

New research shows that early risers find their inspiration in the evening while night owls are at their creative best in the morning…. Those lulls in concentration increased the possibility of considering alternate solutions to problems that might otherwise be ignored. (via)

Right.

Do you fit into either group? Or do you fit into neither and feel like you missed that day you were supposed to pick one.

Some days I sleep in until I’m almost late for work. And I love my job, greatly so. I just like sleeping.

And some days I get up even before my lady, and she’s a pastry chef, and if you know any bakers, you know they have to get up pretty damn early. Because some days just call for that sort of thing.

Sometimes those late nights bring the most productive environments for making things. But so does being up ahead of the rest of the world, energized with complete freedom early in the day. It’s the alone time, I guess.

So I decided that I’ll work when the time and inspiration is there, and I’ll sleep when the tiredness becomes more powerful than the inspiration.

And right now, It’s 3:42am.

Looking and Seeing

There’s a trick they teach you in art school when drawing the model. The trick is not to look, but to see.

They tell you that you aren’t looking at a person. That’s not an arm. Or an eye. There are only shapes in front of you. The positive shape of the thing you are studying and the negative shape of everything else around it. It’s hard to see this way at first but it’s useful when you want to draw something accurately.

When drawing a face, if you look and think ‘eye’, you actually begin to draw what you believe an eye looks like - Which for most people, is a circle and a dot. But there’s a lot more going on in that eye than a circle and a dot. It’s just the brain doing it’s thing - making sense of the millions of things we deal with every day. Building a library of images that we can access as we need to. As an artist you will fight this library. But most people don’t.

We recognize this as designers. A designer may need to dive deep into this realm and find the most simple and familiar imagery when designing a character for a film, or making icons for a piece of software, or creating a logo for a business. By finding common images we all share the design resonates freely.

Clarity trumps accuracy, most of the time.

And this can be great. Because when we see that little stick man on the door we know that’s for men. And the stick man with a dress is for women. And when you’re stumbling around the basement hallway of an unfamiliar pub, this can be very helpful.

But then I think back to that art class. And I remember that we would draw from the model frequently. And yes, it was a regular sort of practice artists do when learning to draw. But it was also seeing practice. It was to remind ourselves to live outside of our heads. To see what was really there and not what we thought was there. It was like a daily gut check, a humbling exercise to keep us honest.

To spend just a moment of our day looking - seeing - what was in front of us was one of the most important things we could do.