Do Something Different

Intro

Greetings readers! Hope you’re doing well. I wanted to write a short blog about experimentation. This, of course is relegated to the art world, but a lot of the information I’ll be writing about here can be applied elsewhere. This was a topic I’ve had some time to think about since I’ve stepped back from animating recently (I’ll write more about this later), and it’s made a pretty significant impact on my day to day life. Let’s get started.

Comfort Zone

For the past few months, I guess since around December, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I should be taking more risks and experimenting more. This feeling probably came about because at that time, I had been animating in the original Frame of Mind style for about two years, and my growth was seriously stagnating. Both artistically and demographically. Now, I’m not someone who never takes risks, but if I’m being honest, I’ll have to concede that I certainly haven’t been dipping my toes in the risk pool for a few years now.

There is a lot of reasons why things went down the way they did, but I think the biggest reason was fear of failure. I spent a big chunk of time with creating the original Frame of Mind style and shorts, and they simply weren’t performing the way I hoped, nor left me with a great sense of satisfaction for completing them like my older films did. I was stuck for a long time, and I felt if I changed at that point, my ideas were failures and that the time I invested into those ideas was lost. It took a long time for that wall to crumble, but when it did, it opened up a far more interesting, dynamic and exciting path.

Before I get into that last part, the thing that clicked for me was realizing that “If I do what I always do, I will get what I’ve always gotten”. That’s a quote from Dr. Robert Glover, who wrote one of the most important books I’ve ever read, called “No More Mr. Nice Guy”. That thought resonated immensely to me, and was something that I’ve had in my head ever since I finished that book. I guess I was reminded of it at this time due to the nature of my situation. I had kept doing the same thing for so long and nothing changed, and needed a way out, so fortunately the thought came at the right time for me to change course.

Once the thought coagulated enough, it set off a spark. I had developed a habit of settling with my art. I settled into the idea I had to animate this project every moment of every day or it wouldn’t get to where I needed it to be. I fell into the idea that I had to do things in a certain way or everything will fall apart. I settled into the idea that my art had to look this way for every single thing that I did.

It was non-sense.

It took some time to realize that my settling came from my own stagnation as an artist. I didn’t have grand dreams about my art anymore. I just needed to get it done. There was no mystique, surprise, excitement or anything to my work. It was just run of the mill videos way below my skill level and expertise. My comfort had been killing me. 

As I started experimenting, I’ve found myself far more engaged with the art I’ve been making. I’m enjoying myself more, and my taking far more risks, more frequently. I’ve found myself exploring themes I’ve wanted to for a long time, but previously had no chance at doing. I’ve also noticed myself attempting to push my skills as far as I can. I’ve taken time to make things that have been very difficult for me. One of the good things about this is that I’ve had to learn patience with my own production capabilities. Experimenting has caused me to slow down. Before, when I started a picture, or an animation, I’ve had to get as much done in a day as possible. This meant that there were days where I would draw for maybe 8-10 hours to finish a picture. At this point in my life, I can’t ever imagine doing that again. I’ve been developing content that I spread over long timelines. Sometimes it might take a couple hours to finish something, but most of the new stuff I’m making, I spread out over weeks, months and even years.

The last positive to all of this is that I’ve gotten a lot more positive reactions to what I’ve made. Being able to step away from the norm and test new methods of making pictures has allowed me to generate a lot of really interesting pieces that I wasn’t able to otherwise. This experimentation hasn’t been lost and I’ve had many friends, family, co-workers and strangers tell me how much more they like this new direction as opposed to what I had been doing before.

Outro

This is one of those subjects that I can talk about forever, but this is supposed to be a short blog. If there’s anything to takeaway, I would say it’s this: Just experiment. Experiment with everything that you’re interested in, and if you have time or curiosity, experiment with things you have no interest in. Experimentation forces you to develop and mature, and it’s a great way to get to where you want to be quickly. As you experiment more and more, you’ll find things that work well for you. Hold on to that information, and continue to experiment. Refine your process, test new things and over time, your experiments will compound. Good luck!