I knew learning how to draw would take a long time. I was watching proko podcast. And he was saying some people learned from not knowing anything about art to pro level in five years, but that’s just if you’re really dedicated, but I can definitely see it would take most people at least 10 years. I’ve only started really applying myself and trying to learn it for the last two years I would say and before that I was just like drawing here and there, it sucks that really is a thing you have to constantly practice. You can learn the theory and how to do the thing but you’re not going to get better unless you actually practice it a lot. Like you may know how to do it, but it’s not going to translate when you first start drawing your line work is going to be terrible, I guess it’s just like playing a musical instrument. You’re going to sound awful at first, even if you technically know how to play it.
When I started out, I wanted to become a concept artist at a certain game company. I still want to do this, but for about 2 years ago my childhood dream of becoming a mangaka has really started to hunt me. Recently, I also feel like I just love drawing more than painting, even though I also love the latter... I guess I am one of those "too many interest" artists. On the one hand, my progress is annoyingly slow, but on the other hand, I am a bit proud that I can at least draw & paint something from everything (aka interior, props, characters) to an equal level. I am still making myself practise illustration more than drawing manga, but it gets harder and harder tu ignore this urge. :/"
Lol very different attitude than another aussie Ashley Wood "I just think most artists are lazy." Great video. The one thing that I think really anyone needs to here tho is this from Ashley Wood. "I'm inspired by the fact that I'm going to die. The clock is ticking, and time is against me. You can't just wait for an opportunity to come, you have to go out and chase your dreams. Some people hang out in cafes and talk about doing something, but I'm out there working every day. I go out on weekends and take pictures of clouds I like." Many, myself included are happy to spend the day in recreation and say oh well I'll get to it tomorrow. Is that what you want to leave behind?
Thankyou for your thoughts on thumbnails I watch that as I draw with that long video playing in the background I want to be better at telling stories with my art
Very good video that I know I wish i watched when I was young and I'd say any artist needs to be hearing this. As someone who took way longer to really make a career in art but now am arriving so to speak the biggest thing in my way was the inability to commit.
I started drawing around 20 and I’ve taken breaks away from art that last in the years. I think last time I drew was maybe around 6 years ago. I’m 32 years old right now and preparing for a serious comeback. I very much needed to hear this, Tim. Therefore, a million thanks.
Tim thank you so much this was really wonderful talk and I needed to hear that so bad been avoiding art to not feel guilty for letting go this is just quality tips I really appreciate it 🙏🙏
My first career was in law, and the field has very high stakes “crunch” whether you’re preparing for a trial or on the regulatory side defending or leading a government investigation. So by the time I encountered “crunch” in concept art for games, I understood that it was primarily a mgmt tool that’s used to motivate/ pressure the workforce to finish a project within deadline. Not to say the entertainment industry is not important, but it’s far different from the sort of pressure you feel in law or medicine. I see young artists for whom this is their first career & they get so stressed bc they truly view deadlines as fatal. I wish there was a better way to motivate teams that didn’t involve burnout One final thing I’ll mention- when someone asks me “do I need to draw everyday?” I tell them yes, if you want to draw as your job, you’ve gotta be able to do it almost daily. In my experience, people who can’t make art without inspiration should stay hobbyists & not pursue a career in commercial art/ design. Note that this is the only career in which workers even ask that question. Can you imagine a physician or an attorney asking if they’ll need to do their work daily or whether they can just wait until they’re inspired? 😂
I regret wasting many years on jobs unrelated to creativity, and which I didn't enjoy. I could have learned so much more in that time, but at least I have started anew, and now I am really enjoying my new adventures as an illustrator, appreciating every day I get learning new skills and improving my old ones. Focus is very important, but it is also good to have a few different creative outlets, because doing one thing only can quickly become boring (at least I think so). I like to do fine art as well as illustrate comics, which I find is a great way to keep things interesting. I have had to pull the plug on many other creative paths, realising I never could become good at everything I wanted to do, as well as not having enough time to pursue them!
Thanks for sharing. I started to take it seriously a month ago and did have a hard time overthinking the things I want to create not matching my skill limitations. And I think a lot of artists have the same issue. I just started to shift a bit and focus on the fundemantals first and go from there.
You touched on all the points I had in mind about this stuff. Being publicly traded will make a company start pushing anti-consumer practices. In general, they can literally get sued by share holders in extreme cases. One thing on AI though I think is not talked about enough, is the lack of an avenue to pay royalties to artist that they use to train their products. The major problem is that they are using Creative Cloud data to train their AI, which is literally stealing from their customers. And since this is all new, there are no laws in place to protect us from this. They let you opt out, but its kind of hidden
I'm glad I came across this video because I've been really struggling lately. I'm a 3D artist and I have ADHD and particularly suffer from executive dysfunction, which most people don't even really understand. But it's exactly what you're talking about here, the pressure of the blank page, the overwhelming nature of starting a project or working on something where you aren't even sure how to approach the act of creation. Everything you say here are things I've thought but it's easy to be completely demotivated especially when other people don't even understand what you are struggling with. So it's really helpful for me to just listen to someone else go through the entire thought process of what's even happening here. Appreciate it!
Thanks for the fascinating new perspective on procrastinating! I like the idea of seeing it in a more positive light and delving into why it feels so hard to start at that moment, rather than seeing it as some dark force to constantly fight and suppress.
24:41 sounded awesome. "[To this procrastinator,]] success means you scraped it across the line." 29:57 sounded awesome too. I love my memories of my sketchbooks. 32:14 Yea that totally worked for me. Just sit down and do something. It was so hard to get started with my current game project. I told myself I would sit down and do 2 things I *know* I could do. Now it is very easy and I am doing much much more. 40:57 Really awesome. Hayoa Miyazaki says "Working hard, it's just something you do. If you don't, nothing meaningful gets done. Thinking about that, some people can't sleep at night. That's a matter of course. At times like that, can you forgive yourself? Those who don't, don't do very good work." It's like by being present at the sketchbook, you are turning yourself into a person who does art. 46:49 Sounds awesome. "I'm here anyway for half an hour" it becomes so easy to then try to do my best. Right now I'm highly motivated because I have an explicit goal. "Release an alpha for the game within a month." And I think I can actually make a good game in that time period; it's not a sacrifice. 58:42 Ooh! Similarly if we allow ourselves to look at our phone, then the exciting part of art is getting bored so we can look at our phone! So it need not be an option perhaps. It seems to me that in hundreds of years regarding our impact on art history, very little about the suffering we endured matters. The people who did really well got to work one way or another. Thanks for the podcast!
hahaha not my problem at all! my problem is not the lack of ideas, but the lack of TIME....what does happen a lot is getting bored once I think "ok, the idea is already clear...lets jump into the next one" and maybe it is just clear to ME because may brain will know how to fill in the missing bits...but people out there will have no idea.
one of the things I see behind IA developments is that there are no artists there.....what I see instead is a bunch of software engineers who would love to have artistic talents that they clearly lack, and this is like their sort of "revenge", let say, it is about them pretending to shout "look, artist, I can be an artist too!!!!!!! muahahahahahahaha I don't even need skills at all!!!"
The only AI tool I use as is reduces production times, is the Adobe Podcast online tool to enhance audio files in just one click...I could use adobe audition or Logic, but this is literally one click
Procreate is great, it all depends on what do you need to do...for me as a caricaturist illustrator, It gives me all what I need....it is great for what it is meant to do.....as always, you can't judge a Ferrari for its capability to climb a mountain..then you can export from procreate as PSD, so, you can use procreate everywhere on the iPad and when you need photoshop tools, export the PSD and use airdrop to pass them to a workstation or laptop
something terrible about adobe is that even being all the softwares part of the same family, sometimes they don't share the same tools in the same way....for example comparing Illustrator with InDesign, they have a different logic
the main problem with adobe, for me, is that in Mac, the latest versions are getting more hardware demanding, as you need to update the OS as well in order to keep updating, and for example, my laptop at work will not get updated until 2026 and I am already having issues for many cool features in After Effects, that I know how to use them, but the hardware/graphic card is not there.
I'm on the same boat.....I don't like them but I'm forced to keep using it as in my work they don't want to move anywhere...but in fact, for my personal projects I prefer Procreate...of course there are lots of features missing there, but I prefer to figure out how to get what I want with what I have.
wow, very very very very long video.. without intending to be rude, you could have done it way way shorter, and keeping the momentum for your watchers. it's difficult to keep focussed on what you try to say, and the message underneath it all. Even professional conferences/discussions/talks are often short and sweet (30 minutes max). just offering some genuine possitive critique i try to offer here, to improve your channel.
Personally i'm sick of companies taking our art for granted and taking us for granted. I moved to Affinity and use either Clip or Rebelle for painting. And you're right a tool is just a tool. I don't need adobe to make art but they do need me to continue to make money.
A paintbrush is also a tool. A tool you pay for once and have complete, infinite, unfettered access to whatever you make with it. Photoshop? Not so much. Some of us were _very_ considered, taking years even to reach a point where we decided "ok, that's enough." Some of what you're seeing is (thoroughly justified) anger. A lot more than one might think are people's heads synching up with a decision they made in their heart a _long_ time ago. Or vice versa.
Surprised to hear Adobe messed up on saving program settings on cloud? Clip Studio Paint have this feature and it works really well without any problem, all my brush, workspace, shortcuts, materials, etc easily restored whenever I do a fresh install.
Photoshop stopped being worked on for artist a long time ago, so many simple features that could be implement and where never made. I only use still because its industry standard for now. Since the start of the Firefly AI stuff I've been trying out other software, and Krita has been the best! Being opensource, and the community is amazing, almost like the blender community! Tons of good free addons. For my personal work I'll be using Krita, it haven't crashed one single time, never , runs smooth as butter, flipping the image is INSTANT no matter the file size or complexity! Edit: And the brush engine is soooooo much better than photoshop!
I grew up and trained on Adobe for graphic/ design purposes, but when it comes to digital painting, clip studio paint has been my go to. They do everything so good.
Maybe the real service was the friends we made along the way.. :D On more serious note, Adobe - is just the latest hot example of the company got confused in hype around "how to make more $$$ quick". Throwing money in sparkly fire hoping to make more money -> fail miserably -> layoff workers -...-> sell business. SaaS is cancerous branch of software evolution. It has its good faith cases, but it is not universal. You can't shove every single product in this frame and hope it will work, just because you saw another service making huge piles of $$$. This is just stupid gambler mentality: "play big - win big , bro". And you see it everywhere.
So nice to hear a thoughtful mature take on this. So many channel are farming click bait trigger words and riding current sentiment about anything. We do need to think carefully and long term about how this will shake out.
I think Adobe ( its Photoshop division specifically), never understood Artists' needs and wants, who use it to draw. Early Photoshop was used to edit photos before becoming a painting tool.
A great example of Adobe having no clue about how people use their software...You cannot change shortcuts in Fresco on PC, you have to use a third party software like Autokey. I guess it's just a quick port from mobile to pc version..
Love your videos and perspective Tim! As a freelance designer, I'm locked into the Adobe ecosystem for the foreseeable future. If it wasn't for that requirement to share files with other people, I would switch to Affinity. Their tools are getting better all the time, and no subscription necessary.
Hey Tim ! Just want to say that your videos and artwork are insanely helpful and amazing ! I wish more and more artists would know about your channels. I also switched to Krita recently, still trying to get used to it. Wish you have a good day and looking forward to more of your Visual Scholar podcasts !
I really appreciate your sober navigation through the topic. A lot of the certainties that other careers may be able to offer through additional time and effort directly correlating to more money or more success is not guaranteed in art careers. I have certainly ebbed and flowed, working projects that have demanded more of my time and attention for little money- but pushing through those projects opened up an opportunity to work a project that was more relaxed and paid very well. It takes careful intentionalism, not just aimless engagement, to develop. Telling a story through a thoughtful design, composition, and color is what is important- the speed or labor that that work demanded will never be seen by the viewer, so we are only doing it in service of that design delivering. More than anything, I've seen myself getting overly attached to a piece and working and reworking it because I was concerned how that piece would represent me if I DIDN'T overlabour it, moreso than the piece requiring more work on it (when the crunch wasn't necessary to get finished) There is a slight difference between crunching and hustling. Crunching is an additional labor to meet a high-pressure deadline, where hustling's connotation ( to me, at least) is additional labor of one's own volition. Maybe having multiple projects going on at once, or running a shop for your work as you also make it. That hustling seems to be an unfortunate necessity to be a full-time independent artist. One other thing that I don't recall you mentioning, and this advice is particularly for the independent artists or projects who have control over the work they are required to do- but planning is so important to prevent yourself from needing to do unnecessary additional work and in turn requiring crunching. If you're writing a comic or animation, pay attention to what you're writing as relevant to what you are trying to communicate with your story. Is it absolutely necessary? If it is important to you and how you feel your story should be told, by all means, crunch to make it happen. But if is an additional labor that you'd be convincing yourself to do but you lack confidence in how it may contribute to your larger picture, it may be worth asking yourself how you could reduce that workload for yourself. I have heard often of crunch in game design and one in particular I've thought of was Red Dead Redemption 2, which has an incredibly well-done story, amazing visuals, and such thoughtful attention to detail that it has even been praised for successfully recreating the exact wildlife of the time period it is set in (late 19th century America). This already was an incredible feat of game design and the workload had caused many developers, artists to lose fundamental time with their families and friends- ruining marriages, fracturing relationships with their children. But there is a chapter in the game where the characters get shipwrecked on a Caribbean island, meeting a whole new cast of characters and enemies and environments. That attention to detail? It's here too. They've also recreated the wildlife, with its specific nuances and differences to the other environments of the game solely for this chapter of the game. The island is created with such vivid detail that it is simply a flex that the studio had the budget and workforce to create a whole separate area for that two hour chapter of the game. You could make an argument that the chapter had to be in the game for the story, but considering the already insane amount of work the game demanded of its team, you have to ask yourself- was it necessary? If it needed to be in there, did it need to be so thorough? Does the area really lend itself to the whole experience to be so much more rich at expense of the additional time, labor and money it would require? Could it have worked to have us follow another character on the mainland while the other characters were off on this misadventure, maybe adding that chapter later on as an additional expansion to the game after the game had released? There is certainly a failure of leadership when the workload isn't honestly assessed and asks so much more of the artists than is rational of any other work environment.
How did I not find this channel sooner?! Really appreciated your through and careful exposition about this topic. Personally, I'm still trying to figure out my "rhythm" of drawing everyday. I strongly feel the need to work longer hours (say 10 hours/day?), 5-6 days a week to make it as a freelancer. Of course, I'll be thinking about how to accomplish this healthily. But the longest I can do is ~5 hours at the moment--with so much distractions to fall into, along with chronic dry eyes and a sore hand--which is a pretty disheartening but I'll keep trying. Thanks for the podcast :)
