Guys, if you want to be a good artist and storyteller you need to absorb other media and influences beyond popular comics and movies and video games. Hell, even beyond visual art. Read novels, science articles, history books. Listen to podcasts, watch documentaries. Dip into different disciplines. Explore stuff outside your everyday. What you create and the pool of ideas you can pull out of is expanded by the knowledge you gain. Don’t do yourself a disservice by limiting your library. You never know when some weird shit you read about mushrooms could end up inspiring you or helping you solve a design/story problem.
some of y’all have never gone to make a happy birthday card, and thought “i don’t need to trace it. i know how big letters should be,” and begun with a big-ass H, followed by a big-ass A and… oh, no! oh, god! ok, all right. real skinny P with a high hump, and then we’ll put the second P below the hump of that first P, sort of like a motorcycle sidecar situation. and now you have no room for the Y, so you do a kind of curled-up noodle Y. block letters and cursive look good together. and then you go to write “Birthday” and you totally forget the lesson you just learned with “Happy.” you’re like, “yeah, but the past is the past. big-ass B. surely more letters will fit in the same space,” and it really shows.
a gentle reminder that you did well this year. you met new people, learned new things and felt new feelings. you did so many things that made you scared. you picked yourself up off the floor after feeling completely defeated or heartbroken. there were some really tough nights but you survived them all. you made people happy just by existing. you accepted many goodbyes but the serendipitous meetings made up for them. it was your own hard work that paid off but you always downplay it or compare yourself to others. that’s not fair on yourself. you’ve come so far from the first day of this year. you have more wisdom and strength now. yes, other people seem more “successful” but does that even matter? please don’t think so lowly of yourself to only think about your failures. 2018 was your year of growth. I hope you take a moment to be kind to yourself, and believe that 2019 will be even better.
“if fear of failure is keeping you from drawing, deliberately draw the stupidest, shittiest ideas you can think of so you’ll get practice in without disappointing yourself” is like, unbelievably helpful advice.
