Creative Pep Talk
078 - Level Up with Kyle Webster + ICON
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work, or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. Hey guys, it's me, Andy J. Miller, and before we jump into this episode, I wanted to fill you in on some new, fantastic news. We are going to be one of the media sponsors for ICON Conference this summer in Austin in July, and I am stoked out of my mind about it, because last time, 2014, they were in Portland, and I went, I stayed with my good buddy, Will Bryant. We had a good old time. I met some of my best friends, actually, at that conference, and greatest business contacts. It was a fantastic time. I loved that conference so much. I highly suggest, as a media sponsor, but also, just as a person, that you go check it out if you're an illustrator or designer. The lineup is phenomenal. Some of my favorite people are going to be there. Jima Carell, she's amazing. Jessica Hish, Kyle T. Webster, the guest of this show. Ping Zu, there are some phenomenal art directors there. All kinds of great stuff. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to be interviewing people there, but I wanted to give you a heads up. There's still some tickets. Go to the illustrationconference.org and go book your place now. You are not going to regret it, and I will keep you up to date with ICON News as we go. Thank you, guys. Thanks, ICON, and here's one of my all-time favorite shows with Kyle T. Webster. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, and I have applied this to my creative practice, too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro, and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out, squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself, and when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. (upbeat music) Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly. We talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation. Now, when I think of play, I don't think of documents and email. So if your team is often working remote, you need something more dynamic and collaborative. I think that Miro's mind maps and flow charts where team members can edit and play in real time has a lot more capacity for innovation and playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the internet. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, UX, agile or IT, bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary innovation workspace and be faster from idea to outcome. Go to Miro.com to find out how that's M-I-R-O.com. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, you're listening to the Creative PEP Talk Podcast. This show is about commercial art, finding the balance between thriving financially and being creatively fulfilled. So making good money, making great art. I'm your host, Andy J. Miller. Illustration Age is our proud advocate. You can find this show at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on SoundCloud and iTunes. Okay, let's do some show stuff now. (upbeat music) So today on the show, we have Kyle T. Webster, of KyleTWebster.com and KyleBrush.com. You may have heard of that. If you know how to draw, you probably know Kyle's name because he makes these fantastic Photoshop brushes, the most renowned brushes in the biz. We have a long, old-fashioned, long-form chat together and I had an absolute blast. Listen back through this. There are so many amazing things that he brought to the table and this was one of my favorite conversations I've had in a long time. Thank you so much, Kyle, for being on the show. It was a pleasure interviewing you and I know that my listeners are gonna get a ton from this. You are fantastic. I love what you're doing. I love the positivity and the wisdom and just the generosity that you bring to the industry. You know, I think Kyle always brings a great sense of anatomy and drawing skills to everything that he makes and he brings a real high level of excellence and quality to the digital brushes that he creates and I just think generally he is a really fantastic voice in the industry that is just a force for good and so thank you, Kyle, for being on the show. I'm sure everybody is going to just love this episode. Go check out Kyle's work and his brushes and get on with that. Thank you guys so much for the new Patreon backers. That means so much to me. You guys are fantastic and thank you so much for the iTunes reviews. That's how people find the show. If you haven't reviewed the show on iTunes, it really will take you like 30 seconds and it massively helps the show grow. So just go to iTunes and rate it, I super appreciate it. Let's get on with this fantastic interview with the one and only Kyle T. Webster. (upbeat music) So I'm here with Kyle Webster. He is the brush master and a fantastic illustrator. I guarantee all of the listeners already know about who he is and have already paid him some of their money and is using his fantastic brushes. Today I wanna talk about leveling up your freelance career and kind of going beyond the working project to project, letting people own your time and really expanding your view in the way that I looked at it. Are you a Zelda fan? Oh yeah, I mean, the old stuff, I mean, I'm talking about the true stuff. Like I like the Super Nintendo one, that was my favorite. The Dark World, did you play that one? And so-- I didn't have the Super Nintendo, I had to play it on a Fred's house. Not well, all right. Well, I had some long nights on that one. That was like one of my favorite games. But the way that I kind of viewed this was, as you're playing the game, you get better at defeating enemies and like as the bosses get harder, you get a little bit better. But at some point, you hit a wall where it's time, you have to level up your sword. Like the old sword from the beginning of the game isn't cutting it anymore. You get the master sword and all of a sudden those enemies that took three chops only take one. And I think some of the things that I see you doing, and obviously I only have like a second hand perspective, but from what I can see it really, some of these things are game changers. And that's kind of the stuff I want to talk about. So that sound OK. Yeah, cool. All right, man. Let's jump into here. So the first thing I want to talk about is this idea of going from thinking of yourself as a freelancer to thinking of yourself more like a small business. And I don't know if that strikes a chord for you, but there came a time for me where I started to tell people, someone will come to me and say, hey, what's your day rate? And I would say, no, thank you. And it's not that you can't do day rates. But what I would try to say is I've come to a place where I'm like, all the things I do on a daily basis, I do so many different things, I can't just bill you my time. I can't just be like, yeah, I'll be the next two weeks. I have so many things going to keep everything working at a high level that I can't just do that. Have you had any experience with that? Do you see yourself as a freelancer or more like a small business? - No, I'm a small business. And that transition occurred probably when I'd made some iPhone games. - Okay, yeah, I don't know that story. What bring me to that story? - In 2009, I made an iPhone game just kind of on a whim. Well, I mean, I'd seen some games and I just thought I could do one. And I decided to just go for it. And I didn't know how to make games, but I just read really quickly some stuff online, like, how do you make a game? And I didn't want to bother learning Xcode or whatever. And I, so I came up with an idea for a game. I designed it, created the graphics assets. And then I went on Twitter and just asked, hey, is anybody out there want to help me complete and submit a game to Apple? - Yeah. - And this really great guy, who got in touch with me, he and I became partners on it. And we submitted the game and this was, you know, when there weren't that many games in the store, wasn't that crowded? - Yep. - And it got featured by Apple and made a really good income from it in like a month, you know, more than I would have made in probably five or six months just doing regular freelance work. So all of a sudden I was thinking, and then people started asking me to make games, you know? - Yeah. - Even though I was an illustrator. So I thought, okay, well, I'll just say yes to all that stuff and I'll have Dennis, Hennessy, the business partner with that stuff. We'll just work as a team and take these new jobs on and I'll become not just an illustrator, but I'm also making games and then, you know, so all of a sudden I felt like, you know, 'cause then, and then right after that happened, I was, you know, getting asked by people, you know, when you go meet someone for the first time, what do you do for a living? - Yeah. - And I used to always say, I'm an illustrator. And instead I said, well, I do a couple of things. And then as soon as I said that, I started changing my answer shortly thereafter and said, I'm a creative professional and I do a lot of different things so a lot of different people. It's a longer answer, but it sounded more kind of like, I don't know, it was more accurate. - Yeah, yeah. - So the problem with that was it also sounded a little wishy-washy. - Right. Didn't have specificity and people didn't maybe know exactly what you meant by that, yeah. - Yeah, so like, I don't know. Lately, if I get that question, my answer is always, I say it's really hard to answer that question. - Yeah, yeah. - But I say, generally speaking, I'm a commercial artist. - Yeah, that's the term. - I don't know. - I think it was the best trick. So was there a big difference between the person before you made the game and then the person after the way that you perceived your career, the perceived potential of the future? So what's the difference between the old you and the new you through that experience? - Well, the biggest difference was that it was the first time that I had an idea that generated a bunch of money for me, where I was on my own time, making it my own time. I had the idea for it, I made it happen, and then it just became this income generating project. So that's when I switched gears and started thinking about other things I could do that would work in that same way. And that was when, yeah, I started seeing it more as like, you know, I have a brand and this brand can do whatever I want it to do. - Yeah. - I just have to decide what it is and then make it happen. - I think one of the things that's really interesting and it was true for me is that the same qualities that it takes to start an illustration career, or there are a lot of similar qualities that you can actually bring those same strategies to all kinds of different sub things, different things that are almost closely related, but I think often it's just a limiting belief of, I'm an illustrator so I don't do those things. Did you have any struggle like publishing that game? Was there any internal struggle going on? - No, but the reason for that is that I would, before I was an illustrator as a freelancer, you know, I worked at a graphic design firm for four and a half years, and before that I worked as a web designer for about three years. So I had done these other things and especially when I was, I mean, the web design thing was, you know, you do web design, it's kind of limiting, at least it was at the time. - Yeah, yeah. - But working as a designer, I had to do all kinds of stuff. I was editing photos, I was going to photo shoots. I was, you know, working with motion graphics. I was doing, you know, I was doing tons of branding and identity design, you know, and then also doing illustration. So wearing all those hats and then going out and becoming a freelance illustrator and then also expanding. And even when I was just being an illustrator, so to speak, I was doing logo stuff as well. So it was not a big leap or stretch to then start doing games and then start to slowly build out the range of services that I could confidently offer to people. It just had to go out there and start announcing that I could do those things, you know? - Was that a challenge or not? To announce? - Well, yeah, because that was, I mean, people still don't, people still don't really come to me very often for any design work. 'Cause I don't advertise it very well. - Yeah. - But I can design the hell out of a logo. I mean, I've done hundreds and hundreds of logos. I feel really confident about my logo work. I just don't advertise it and I probably should because I really enjoy it too. - Yeah. - I just don't know how to because I, you know, I friends who are designers and that's, they do 99% like that kind of work. - Yeah, yeah. - And so they're known for it and they're in different circles and I'm not really in there. So I don't know. - So was that your 20s when you were working at these different places and kind of cross pollinating throughout these different markets and all that? Is that 20s in your 20s? - Let's see. I was, yeah, 'cause I quit, I quit my job to start this business when I was 28. - Yeah. - So, or was it 20, 20, 29? - Yeah. - Yeah. - So that's what it was, yeah. - One of the things that I think is really interesting, if you go to that, Steve Jobs commencement speech that he did for, I wanna say it was Stanford, did you ever watch that? - Yeah, I think I did. That was like, what, four or five years ago? - Yeah, there's some good stuff on there. And one of the things he talks about is that, especially early on, you have to kind of have the faith to explore what's in front of you, what's interesting to you and just let your curiosities kind of go. And I think one of the things I notice teaching undergrad is that they feel this immense pressure to have everything figured out by the time they leave, walk off the stage at graduation. And I think, you know, this is my last year in my 20s. And so, what I feel like, especially looking back at the first part, there was all kinds of random stuff that I was doing that, like letting my curiosity go, like for instance, in college, and right after college, I was making a bunch of really terrible rap music on GarageBand and-- - Cool. - Yeah, so-- - I'm a little familiar with that. I need a little something back in time. - I'm gonna get to it anyway. - Let's not-- - You can look at the surprise. We're gonna talk about that later. - Your gangster moment, but-- - Oh no, you do know about it, I didn't know, I don't know. - And, but, you know, messing around with GarageBand, I spent so much time on there, and it made the transition to doing podcasting really easy. But I would have never saw that coming, you know? And so, I just find it interesting that all these skills that you developed from going around to these different places made it so that you had the base knowledge to jump into some different things. And so, you know, I think it's an interesting thing. Early on, maybe, to be a little bit open to, like, where that path goes and explore all these different things. - I think the key there is being a curious person, and I think that's not something you can teach, and I get a little worried about that because I have some students come in when I'm in the classroom and I don't get that sense from them that they have that curiosity that you kind of need to succeed. I really think it's the kind of thing that, because you're curious, you always take things one step farther because you want to learn a little more about something, and a lot of my students come in, they do the assignment that they're given, and they never push it, they never do anything more with it, they never ask questions about it. - It's like that movie "Office Space" where Jennifer Aniston's character that Mike Judge is her boss, and it's like, what do you think about people that only do the bare minimum, you know? And it's not like, I'm not equating, like, doing the bare minimum of laziness, I'm just equating it with a lack of curiosity. - It's like a zest for life, and I think-- - Right. - It's actually one of my biggest pet peeves about teaching undergrads is that, for me, I think I had it before I went to college because I had a real sense that-- - I'm sure you did. (laughs) - But I did in high school, I didn't in high school. - No, I'm sure. - I was just totally apathetic in high school, and I think I just realized I found a love of something that I really loved, which was making art, and I also knew that A, it was gonna be super hard, and B, that if it didn't work out, I was gonna hate whatever else I had to do. Like, I didn't wanna do anything else. I wanted to do that, and I knew it was gonna be difficult, and so I think even in college, I had some serious passion, but I feel like a lot of the kids that haven't really felt any-- I don't know, they don't feel the real life coming, or they don't understand the gravity of trying to thrive as a commercial artist in the long term, and I don't know. - Sometimes I think, or I hear people say sometimes, oh, you know, it's important to suffer or to have a lack of resources when you're a kid. - Yeah. - So that you want it more badly, but you know, I had a great childhood, and I didn't want for anything, so I'm not sure where that curiosity came from. It's like, I remember being seven or eight years old, and just seeing, all I saw was one origami bird, and I was like, oh, I wanna learn how to do that. And then getting origami books from the little kids library there, and then making sure I learned it until I could make a bunch of origami. Then after that, I was like, okay, move on. I learned origami, now what? And like always wanting to just learn these little things, whether or not they were practical or at the time, or even they weren't, but they actually turned out to be later, all those little activities made it possible for me to quickly grow my business in different directions, I think because it's all still coming from that same place of curiosity, or maybe it's also just this need to kind of wanna be able to do things other people can do. I don't know if that's like a weird needy thing, or a jealousy thing, I don't even know what that is, but-- - I do know that early on, I had a thing where, and I equate any drawing power that I have definitely came from jealousy of like, I saw my cousin draw these ninja turtles, and I was like, man, I have to be able to do that. And I remember first grade, I was like king of the class in drawing, I could draw the Chicago Bulls logo better than anybody else. And then this kid's important, it is important, it was like my economic share, like this is what I have to bring to the table. And I can draw a great Chicago Bulls in a pretty good North Carolina logo too. And, but anyway, this kid comes in one day and he blows me away, and I hated his guts at first, but eventually he just brought the best out, and so he started to compete. So, there is some weird thing about, I don't know, proving yourself, or I don't know what it is, but I also-- - Actually another, oh sorry, I was just gonna say, it's such an important ingredient too, and your kid is having one other person who's into the same thing, you are, but does it slightly better, or about the same, and you guys compete, and you keep giving each other reasons to get better, and sometimes you never have that. So, but I remember those kids by name, you know, the ones who are in my primary school. I still know you, can you draw, are you an illustrator? Meeting you. - It's amazing though, isn't it? How you kinda need those people? - And actually, when I'm talking to people about, you know, there are, I teach at an art school, I teach a class, and there are things about art school that I think are completely brilliant, but when someone asks me if I think they should go to art school, there's only certain circumstance where I will say yes, you know, there has to be a certain, it has to make sense on a lot of, like if, like if I say, well, how are you gonna pay for it? If they say my parents are gonna pay for it, and they want me to go to the best school, then I'm like go, do it. There's some fantastic situations there. The thing I usually say though is, do whatever you have to do. Figure out the most efficient way to be around the people that are doing the thing that you wanna do. Nothing, nothing matters more. And I think, I told my, the college I work at, most of this technical stuff, people could find it for free online or next to nothing. So, but, there's still a lot of success stories coming out of art school, so what is the secret sauce? I think it's proximity. Proximity around these people competing, and you know, that's always been a big factor for me. - Now me too, I need to have those people around me, just standing shoulder to shoulder doing the same work, and looking over at their easel and seeing what they're doing, and that for me was an essential part of growing. - Yes. - But, maybe not for everybody. Some people, maybe they're self-motivated enough that they can just move on and do it, but I'm not one of those people. I, you know, I mean, now I am just out of necessity at kind of working alone, but that's different. You know, I have different reasons to have to work now and to try and produce and to try and be good at what I do. - Yep. - Those reasons didn't exist when I was 19. - And it becomes a discipline, I think, you know? - Yeah. - I'm so much more of a disciplined person than I ever imagined I would have been, you know? Ten years ago, just keeping that motivation fresh and trying to like, compete and all that stuff was really important where now it's just a rhythm. I just, I'm naturally driven to come up with new things and work hard and all that, and it's just become a rhythm to what I do. - What's interesting about what we do for a living too is I think that it does get to become sort of an addiction, and I, you know, you have to be actually careful about that because I enjoy what I do so much sometimes. I mean, there are stretches where I'm working on something and I love it so much that I really do truly neglect everything else in my life and that's a huge problem, so I have to really watch myself. - Yeah, how do you, you know, I have the, obviously have the same problem and it's a battle and I've learned some things to combat that. Have you learned anything that will get you out of that zone? - Well, okay, guilt, guilt is great. (laughing) Guilt. - Totally, man, yeah. - That's totally good. - I mean, if it weren't for me feeling guilty about not being around, you know, my five-year-old son and my seven-year-old daughter, it's like, if I ever I do too much work in a stretch of two or three days and they're so honest, like my son will say, "Daddy, we never see you, you don't play stuff like that." - As soon as they're like, "You hear that?" - You're like, "Oh my gosh." - This is, and I'm like, "That's it, I'm quitting my job. "I'm never gonna work again." - Yes. - So guilt is really important. - Totally. - And then also, scheduling is important, like having a regular workday schedule and also having an office outside of home. So like, you know, I work somewhere where I'm not, I don't work at home, except that we just made the mistake of we bought a house recently where I do have a home office. So it's so tempting to go in there and be like, "Ah, I gotta fiddle with this. "I gotta check my emails or something." You know, I gotta be really careful, so. - That's interesting. I've always had a home office and it's pretty separate. And I don't think like being productive isn't a problem for me. I think that's what a lot of people think is that the problem working from home is that you're not gonna be productive. I'm super, I'm more productive, I think, working here because it's here. The real downside is the lack of separation from home and office. That's the challenge. - I really enjoy having an office outside of home because it only serves one purpose. - Yeah. - It's just I'm there to work and then when I'm not there, I have to be a different person because I don't have the option to work. And I think that's healthy for me, but a lot of people don't need that. I'm just speaking for myself. - I definitely, that resonates with me. I think the thing, my problem is, there's something a little bit fantastic about making a living to an illustration. It's like creating something from nothing. There's, you can, the lack of overhead is just, I think early, I'm so, I can be so scrappy. And early on, I was so DIY of like, how do you just get this thing? You know, I like the idea of like breaking into new markets and just like, I love that. And so there's part of me that's just like, I'm so, I'm like, man, that's a very, I think ethereal might be the right word, like this concept of like separation from home and work. It's like, that for like 500 bucks a month, like that's a weird concept to pay for. So it's just, I don't know, it's a stretch for me for some reason, I don't know. - Well, see, yeah, for me, I don't have to pay anything. That's why it's really great. - Oh, it's good. - I work on the campus where I teach, so they let me have an office, which is just really generous and I love it, but. - That's great. - But what you were just talking about, with breaking into new markets, and you say, yeah, you're excited about that. And it's an amazing thing, but that makes me think of something I just talked about recently, which was how people don't feel, people want to do something, right? So I wanna be, I wanna illustrate for in the book market. I've been doing editorial, but now I wanna do books. Or maybe they haven't done anything yet, but they wanna do books. And then they, but they don't actually go through the trouble of figuring out how to do that by asking artists who currently work in that market, or by doing some reading, or creating new bodies. - Or creating new work that's relevant, or being there in the right place. - But I always am scratching my head all the time, wondering why people are so scared to just ask these questions or figure it out. - Yeah. - And I think it, this is just the theory I have, but I'm worried that in school and at a young age, I'm talking mostly about people who are, the people I'm talking about who have this problem are people who are like just getting out of school now, or who I've been teaching in the past few years. - I see the same thing too, yeah. - And I think there's something that's either, it's just not part of your life so much that you have to dig to learn stuff, because the internet gives you these super quick answers to everything. So if you don't get an immediate answer to a question, and it's through a direct, yeah, through like a direct questioning route or whatever. If I can't, basically if I can't get the answer from Siri, how do I become a book illustrator? - Then it's too intimidating to have to go around and through and under and get to the information I need, or maybe that's a life skill that no longer is being developed. - So I have a lot to say about this, because it's very relevant to me doing the podcast, because I realized that a valuable skill of mine was, so the class I teach is on self promotion, right? And I think a lot of the resources out there about promoting yourself as an illustrator are really limited. They're really limited in their view. And even if you look in the world of marketing, there's only a few people that have done the deep work to figure out what's actually working now. And so what I've realized is, my willingness to beat my head against the wall until I can connect things, that is more valuable than almost anything that I am doing. And so-- - Yeah, that is. - And actually, I think the point you're making, I think it might even go back to this. It's almost, it's hard to come up with a question that you can't find an answer for on Google. So if you have a question that it doesn't come up on Google, you think, oh, that must be the wrong question, or I must not be able to, or there's not an answer to that. It's like, that's actually the fascinating stuff. That's the stuff that I like. No, I have to make the connections. And I've realized I'm building out an online course, and it's some of the things I've learned through doing the podcast, some of the things from teaching the self-promotion class. And as I'm working through it, I'm like, they're, you know, I'm making connections from marketing and business and other things that I've learned, but a lot of it is purely stuff that I've tested myself, that I came up with these ideas, tried them, some of them work, some of them don't. And there's an author named Cal Newport, and he wrote the book, Be So Good That They Can't Ignore You, or something like that, which is based on a Steve Martin quote, actually. And he has a new book, which I haven't read, but I've heard him talk about it called Deep Work. And he talks about how in the newest economy, the only thing that the real commodity that's really gonna blow people away is your ability to do deep work, which means not distracted. It means fully engaged, like really problem solving, and the fact of the matter is so few people are able to do it these days, like. - Well, I mean, geez, the number of distractions that exist now, as opposed to 12, 15 years ago, it's not even comparable. I mean, it's incredible. - Yes, it is. - I mean, I find myself too, just having to turn everything off, or I just can't get anything done. I mean, just emails, emails are terrible, but that's how we communicate. - So have you read the Stephen Pressfield book, the War of Art, have you heard of that? - No. - So it's a really interesting book. He talks about, he calls it the resistance. And when I first started reading that book, I didn't really resonate with me. I thought, I don't know if this is really a true thing for me, but the resistance is there everything in the world is against you making your work. And you have to be aware of it, or you're not gonna get anything done. And so before I read that, I never really noticed that. And after the fact, I've realized when I go down to do some writing, or some brainstorming for the podcast, or try to come up with a new product, something that's gonna take my full energy. Right when I sit down, I get a phone call, I get an email, I get 18 things that are begging me not to do the work where I'm actually focusing. - Yeah. - Or you'll throw on something like a podcast, which I think is great for like when you're doing your coloring work in illustration. - Yeah, yeah. - But not so great when you're trying to think, you know? - No, I have to think in silence, I cannot do it, unless it's maybe quite Mozart or something. - Yeah, yeah. - Otherwise, forget it, it just can't be done. You cannot do it. And I feel really, really sad for a lot of the people who are coming up now into the world who've grown up with all these distractions and are so used to it that maybe they don't even notice if they are giving their full attention to something. They might think they're giving their full attention to something when, to them, the idea of what we would consider anyway, your full attention or your deep attention is a very different idea. But I could be wrong, they also might just be conditioned to thrive in that environment. - I don't know. - Yeah, who knows? - I don't know, I'm not them, but totally. - But that was my case was I wasn't even realizing how distracted I was until I identified it. So let me ask you this. - That's hugely important. - Yeah, it is. When you first started and you were, like when you first went out on your own and as an illustrator, how have your income streams differed from that point to where you are now? So, when I first started, I was just doing job to job and all the jobs were very different and but they were pretty much job to job. Did you start that way? - Yeah, that was, I mean, I was an editorial illustrator. That was 99% of my income was editorial. So I was doing a ton of alt-weekly's and newspapers and regional magazines and a couple of nationals and just mixing it all up and doing that week after week after week. - Was there, yeah, was that working or was it good or what are their bad thoughts? - Yeah, it worked, I, well, I got to it but there, I did get to a point where I couldn't do it anymore because I could do it but I couldn't make more money. - You hit a ceiling? - Right. - The first, I hit the ceiling. So the first five years I grew every year and everything was great. And then I got to this point and it was around 2009 when I did the games. - Yeah, yeah. - That I looked at my income from the previous year, I looked at my income for that year and it was like maybe five or $6,000 more but that was it and I was like, okay, wait, you know, we just had a kid. - Yep. - I need to make more money so, but I'm one person. I couldn't possibly do it without cloning myself and I already worked super, super quick. I was doing like two or three jobs sometimes a day. - Yep. - And the money wasn't, the money wasn't getting any better. The money did not change. The first time I did an illustration for any publication was 2003 and the budget hasn't changed today for that. I mean, it's like 12 years later, now it's 13 years later. Nothing, just no improvement. So that's scary. - Yeah, that is not fantastic. - Naturally, I think this is totally aware of that. So I had to make a change. - And this is part of the mindset shift that, and everybody, everybody, you know, there are people that are considered to be technicians in the field that they're gonna hammer out the same type of work day in day and that's fine. And if they're making that work, that's fine. But the thing that I try to challenge is, the mindset that says the thing that made you an illustrator is a different set of skills than growing your business into different places because I think a lot of people find themselves hitting that ceiling where it's like, I'm making this work. The only other thing I could do to make this better is if I had a clone. And so at some point, you have to think a little bit further outside of the box, right? And so nowadays, how many income streams do you have going? - So now I have, well, I got, - If you don't mind me asking, I guess. - No, that's okay. I've got teaching. I've got prints and apparel for sale through society six and in print. I've got the illustration work that I do for the editorial market. - Yep. - I've got picture book work, which is my own writing. So I'm the author and the illustrator, which means I get more of the royalties. And then I've got this Photoshop brush business, which is expanded from not just Photoshop brushes, but just this past week, I released a set of, what I call an impasto kit. So you can emulate. - You can solve that. - The exact wet paint. Thank you. I'm really proud of that. And that's actually gonna expand also into online courses in how to use my brushes for digital painting and for emulating natural media. So those are the five things. Some do better than others, but there's always something out there in the world making me money even if I'm sleeping. And that's my goal is to keep that, I want that business model to sustain me all the way through quote unquote, retirement, whatever that means for an artist. - Totally. And I recently-- - Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot one. - Go ahead. Come on. - 'Cause it's very new. This is very new. But only in the last calendar year, I've started doing consulting, specifically on improving digital tools for other people's software and stuff like that. - Oh, that's cool. Yeah, and actually, this is about you, not me, but I can quickly say I teach a class, I get a little bit money from the podcast, I get money for consulting and art coaching, I get money for editorial work, I do advertising work, I do prints. And did you get out of the gate and run in 10 different directions at the same time or did you kind of bite off chunks as you went along? - Let me think about that. I feel like I did the former. I feel like I went in too many directions at once just to see what would work. The throwing stuff against the wall, but. - Yeah. - And I think I did a little bit of that, but once the, let me think, how did I start zeroing in on stuff? I think teaching is what got me to slow down a bit and then be more focused. That was a dedicated part of every week. Those hours were spoken for. I was forced to be more efficient with my other work so I could take time for the teaching and the other work and not make one cancel the other out. - You'd be surprised how much I could tighten up things. Like I've done that, when you start teaching you're like, okay, I just lost a day a week, but I have to make the same amount of work. So yeah, it's actually a good experiment. I did the same thing. - It was, it was good. But that was, I think that was probably the point where I was very good about or had to become good at and learn the skill of sitting down and planning, saying, okay, in the next two months I'm going to do like a couple of dummies for picture books and send them to my agent. - Yes. - And I'm gonna also keep the other stuff flowing, but I'm also gonna turn away anything that I think is whatever. You know, that kind of stuff, like making plans. And now I'm starting to plan more like every quarter. I'm like, what am I trying to accomplish this quarter with this part of the business, with that part of the business? And it's tricky. I'm not like, I didn't go to school for that, you know? - Yeah, totally. - But I'm trying to make that happen. - And actually, I think one of the difficulties I find when trying to parse out any wisdom on anything, I think that one of the tricky things is understanding how to communicate the nuance of seasons. And so I think early on in the podcast I was talking a lot about focusing on one thing. And I think some people took that as you should just have one thing in your career that you do. And when I realized what I was saying was really, I think it's important to kind of tackle one thing at a time. I think what I did early on was I went in a billion different directions. I dip my toes in a thousand swimming pools and try to get all kinds of different things. But what I realized is anything that was worth doing, that where you actually made a significant achievement required a significant investment. And so I think I got to that same point where I was like, okay, I'm gonna focus on my advertising illustration stuff. And I'm gonna focus on that until that starts to feel like it's up and running. And then when I'm starting to get that kind of like, okay, that's no longer challenging and I feel like it's happening, I'm gonna focus on something else. And it happens less maybe conscious than that. But I do think that I think the end goal for a lot of people to be thriving, where you can, if you wanna support a family, if you wanna have a retirement, you're gonna have to think about how to diversify those income streams because I have a hard time imagining somebody thriving their entire life on editorial illustration alone and retiring. I can't imagine. I know some people who've sort of done it, but man, do they work a lot. - Yes. - And obviously they have, not only be prolific, they have to be in demand, they have to keep in demand. - Yeah, it is a serious stressor, I mean, because also the deadlines have never changed. It's always like, we need this tomorrow, we need this tomorrow, we need this tomorrow. I just got tired of that, I still do it, but I do it much more selectively and I think I'm healthier for it because, and the other thing is like you can't even take vacations, really, when you're on editorial schedule all the time, unless you just decide you're not gonna say yes to work at all for a week or whatever, it's tough. - That's totally true. And are there any other benefits other than money that come from having all these different types of plates spinning at the same time? - Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup. Every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True Fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. It's holiday shopping time, y'all. 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(upbeat music) - I actually don't think I would have been able to get a book published if it weren't for the passive income because it did give me that peace of mind where I said, okay, well, if I don't say yes to work for the next three weeks, which is what I did to finish my picture book, I just didn't do any other work. I just did the final paintings for that. And even just getting it written and getting it, you know, like having the time to even generate the idea for the book came from me having downtime. - Yeah. - Having some margin to actually-- - Yeah. - I think, you know, thinking and brainstorming and being creative, it rarely happens when you're in grinding survival mode. You know, it's-- - Never, it's ever, never. - I never have, I don't have the brain space to be thinking about cool stuff when I'm trying to-- - Stay up all night on a deadline and all that jazz. You know, so-- - No. - So yeah, so it's-- - It's like with the margin. - Right, right. And the brushes are interesting 'cause the brushes business does, it does that, what am I trying to say, it's creating the margin. - Yeah. - And then during that, and then while I have that time to think, I'm creating more stuff that's gonna perpetuate that same thing and even build more of a buffer because like this recent set that I released, I tinkered with it for probably, you know, I don't know, four or five months on and off and then the last 30 days, it's basically all I did day in and day out. I probably took on two assignments in that whole stretch of time and they were just like spot illustrations for a magazine. - I think another thing about having that clarity with your focus in any given season means that when you have that downtime, you know what you're working on. And that's one of the things that I still do is like, I don't have anything to do and I don't know what to do. And I think having an idea of what this period of time in is in terms of like the stuff you're planting for the future is really, can be really valuable. I've found that to be true for myself. In terms of-- - Yeah, I'm sure like-- - Go ahead, no. - Go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, I'm sure like me, you probably know what you're doing in February already. Like, you know, some kind of general plan. I do, you know, I wanna make my next picture book. - Yep, I've got, yeah, I'm working on a class. I'm, you know, I'm working on a class and I've got a few other little things in the background and I'm planning out the podcast in advance. Like you probably have ideas about what's next for the brush set and, you know, what are the ones that have in the future? Which that helps, that means you're efficient. You're doing, you know, you're never having those moments where like, I just don't even, I wanna make something but I don't know what to do. Which I think a lot of people are in that situation more than you would probably guess. What about-- - I think so. - Creative, what about just energy or emotionally? What does having these different arms do for you? - I think, well, lately I felt like I've been having a hard time settling down and really looking at the big picture and trying to think creatively about just what I need to do next, or how next is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. And I think the reason for that is because I've been too busy and something has to give. And I think that even though I talk about, you know, not taking on work from a rather assignment work or commission work so I can focus on the brush as well, the one downside to the brush's business is having literally 200,000 people around the world who can email me anytime they want with a question and I'm the only one who's gonna answer it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So I wake up in the morning and there are 30 emails in my inbox with technical questions, customer service questions, complaints. I get to the office, I go teach. By the time I get back to my studio to work, there are another 30 emails and so I don't mean to complain. I'm very glad that the business is successful. - Oh yeah, fantastic. - But oh my God, man, the hours that get sucked away from customer service and from communication, I need to figure out who am I? Am I a guy who runs a brush's business? Am I an illustrator or am I both? Am I, when we were just talking about this, like, okay, I'm a small business, but I think part of my small business needs to disappear. - Yeah, yeah. - Or part of my small business needs to be acquired legally and for a fair price by Adobe and I can get on with my life 'cause right now it's driving me. - Do you hear that Adobe if you're listening? If you're-- (laughing) Yeah, no, that's true. And then, you know, there's a million different ways of looking at, I think there's, Brandon Reich was talking to me about the theory from the EMITH, which says, you know, any business has three different types of people or three different mindsets, which are either the technician, which is the person making the product, you know, the expert making the art or making the brushes or whatever. Then you have the manager, the manager makes sure everything's happening as it should be happening and keeping the upkeep and then you have the entrepreneur who's thinking big picture, vision, exploring new territories, expanding the business. And I think, to me, it sounds like it might be time to hire somebody to automate that stuff at any way. - Yeah, I think it is. I just don't know who to hire. It's really hard to think about somebody who would-- - I have to be somebody who really tries. - I have to be someone who really tries. - I have to be someone who really tries. - What's that? - You'd have to really trust him. - Yes, big time, big time. So, but you asked, what is it for my creative energy? I'd say my creative energy right now is a little sapped and it needs to be recharged. And so, I'm taking a nice vacation with my wife, my brother and his wife in a couple of months, but that's too far away. So, between now and then, I'd like to take an entire week away from assignment work, away from anything other than, I do have to still answer these emails from customers, of course, and keep that going. But I don't want to do any work work, so to speak, for a good, solid week. And I think I'll come back then from that with some kind of ideas that always happens if I go on vacation, I always get ideas. I don't know about you. - Totally, just getting in a new place, it totally changes the biochemistry of the way that you view things. And yeah, that's actually funnily enough. When I was a kid, you know, I feel like when you're a teenager, you know, the girls are always talking about, you know, the girls are always talking about travel. I want to travel and I'm like, what do you mean you want to travel? What does that mean? We want to travel? That sounds so, I don't know, just meant nothing to me. But now, I love traveling because it gets you in, and just taking you out of the environment makes everything fresh again. You just, the world changes. But yeah, it's definitely true for me. Have you gotten better at noticing the rhythm of your creative energy as you go along? Like, 'cause you seem like you're in touch with that already. - Yeah, I can even feel it coming before, if I know there's gonna be, I can feel a dip in a low coming weeks before it finally hits and I just sapped and I don't even know what to do with myself and I can't draw anymore, which happens, I mean, that really does happen. Like, I just can't get the pen to do what I want and I know it's because I'm just done. My brain is telling me, this is it, get out of here. Try it off for a while. - I think that's one of the things that's really valuable, or that people that go on to do really great stuff are observant of themselves. They notice patterns and I think pattern recognition is basically what wisdom is. And so being able to be observant about your emotional energy, your creative energy, that's something that you should be perfecting all the time because you, yeah, I think it means that you don't burn out as easily or you notice when you need to change. I think that's really interesting. - Yeah, I wasn't naturally good at that. I burned out a few times really badly in the last 15, 20 years. I mean, I was like, whoops, okay. So it takes a while to-- - Totally, it's not something you can fake, but you can try to be more observant, I think. What about teaching? Does that, how does that affect your creative energy? - I love it, I love it. Teaching, I don't ever want to stop doing that. At least I can't imagine wanting to stop doing that anytime soon. I'm not, I haven't been doing it that long. I've only been doing it for five years. So it's not, you know. But every time I have a good class, you know, which isn't always, obviously, but-- - Yeah, totally. - If I feel like there was some connection that was made with even just a single student and a light bulb went off or whatever, they made some step forward, that's a greater feeling than anything I've ever felt. Like if I get something published in a New Yorker or something, it's like that sort of worn off. But having some human connection and making a positive impact, it sounds very corny, but that really is the most valuable thing I can do professionally speaking is just teach, so. - And actually I've found that because of seeing that light bulb moment and the way that you can affect positive change in someone else, all of a sudden that's reinvigorating your own practice because for me it's like, I've been, I'm working on some bigger goals in my own creative work. And actually doing the podcast has really fueled those because I'm like, it's not just, I'm not learning these lessons of how to break into the kids market or this or that, just for my own benefit. Now they're meaningful because what I learn, I know that's gonna go affect somebody else. And I think without that arm, it can be pretty depressing because you, I think eventually you just realize like, past a certain income bracket, it's no longer that fulfilling to continue to achieve things or push yourself or whatever. - Not really, no, it's not. I mean after that you need some real growth for yourself, you need personal growth, you need something, you need to feel like you're doing something that has some meaning outside of simply, yeah, okay, I got paid for that, you know, it's just not. - At some point it's not, it doesn't do the fix. And do you, if you buy into the concept, do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? - I'm an extrovert, I'm a people person, I mean growing up I always had to be around people, I wanted to play team sports, I wanted to, you know, join clubs and be in the band, all that kind of stuff. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, and actually an interesting flip to that for me is that I consider myself to be an introvert, but in the same way that if you have too much sleep, you then feel tired, if I'm alone too much and I, 'cause I'm energized by being alone, that energy goes from positive energy to restlessness and actually going and being around people, I think, you know, I would be up for arguing anybody that wanted to argue that you don't need people in your life, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you, I do think being an illustrator, being alone in your cave, can really take a toll on, not just your mental health, but the quality of your work, whether it really is in touch with life or, you know, I don't know, hasn't a deeper undertones. - Yeah, but yeah, I understand that. - Yeah. - Yeah, and by contrast, you know, I do need to get away from people sometimes. - Oh, yeah, absolutely, man, so I'm just trying to look through here and see if I, let's, I'm gonna move over, I'm gonna move down to, there's this concept that I have, I wrote a guest post for a website, I don't wanna give too much of information away, I never know, you know, how they're saving content, you don't wanna, I don't know, let the cat out of the bag, it's not really a big deal, it's just me writing an article, but one of the topics I'm thinking about is uncovering, like, subplots to your career, and you definitely have gone on some subplots alongside your illustration career, one of them, we'll just go ahead and jump in, I don't know if we'll extract any value from this, but we should talk about your gangster rap days, or your moment, right? Tell us about that, tell us about that story. - If you don't mind. - No, I don't mind, I'm always really happy to talk about that, it's a really silly thing, and I, lots of people, I think they expect me to be embarrassed by it, and-- - No, no, the thing about it that I love is that it, it was, it was popular, people liked it, so I feel like that's a success, you know, and I never meant for it to be anything. - What is this about, what are we talking about? - Oh, sorry, yeah, well, I wrote a rap called Original Design Gangster, and I put it up on YouTube, and I did it as a, as it just a side project, 'cause I wanted to have fun for a couple of days, and wasn't working on anything, and it just went, it became one of those things that got passed around. - You were asking about being a graphic designer, and in-- - Yeah, yeah, sorry, hip-hop themes versus graphic design themes, and it's humorous, you can go check that out. - I'll put a link in this show there on YouTube. - Yeah, and you can also go read what Armin Vitt said about it, and Steven Heller, and I mean, this is some big names in the business, so I felt like I'd accomplished something, I got their attention, you know? - Yeah, man, and actually, I do think there's some interesting stuff to unearth there, because I found, you know, being able to put myself out there and being willing to be a person, be a real person that has more than one dimension, has really served cutting through noise, you know? Like, there came a point where I was just really open about my guilty pleasures in terms of musical taste, and all the just weird nuances, I think, there comes a point where it's good to polarize people, even I think, 'cause I'm sure there are people that's what happened. - People hated it and people loved it. - Yes, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, and the other thing is, too, no matter what it is that you do, as long as it's not offensive, I mean, if you're not trying to like-- - Polar or something, yeah. - No, no, but what that also does is it springs you out of that state of anonymity, because this is a crowded business, a crowded world, and at the time I made it, I didn't yet have a name that I wasn't, people didn't say, oh, yeah, I know him, he's an illustrator or something like that. I was still one of those guys who was, you know, just barely kinda creeping around the edges of getting into something, and I was working, but not enough, and, you know, so then all of a sudden, that was a springboard to being a person-- - It almost doesn't matter what it is, and one of the things I think about, it's not the best analogy I'm actually working on coming up with a better one, because it's a point that I often try to make, where, you know, so I used to go to a pace, or Indiana pace, or games all the time, I'm not a sports fan at all, I can't watch basketball, I try. When I go to the game, I try, I sit every time, I'm like, I'm gonna watch this game, five seconds later, I'm looking at the cotton candy guy, and like, I just can't, I can't do it, so anyway, my whole family are sports fanatics, they're obsessed, but they're more obsessed with being strategic, right? They don't want to get in a jam, so even if it's the playoffs, and it's down to the line, we will leave 10 minutes before the game, because we don't want to get in the bottlenecks situation, my parents, my dad-- - Traffic. - Yeah, he can't deal with it, and so, I think one of the things, the majority of sports fans, if you're a fanatic, your strategy is, how can, when the game is over, how can I respond faster, and run faster to the door, but everybody else there is thinking the same thing, and so, it's one of those things where, you have to think a little bit, and so, in our industry, so many students I see, they're just like, how can I draw better, I'll just draw better, I'm like, no, everybody's trying to draw better, like, you're gonna have to think of something different, and you might just have to make a rap video, that might do the trick, yeah, yeah, exactly, so I think there's some really interesting stuff there. - Well, my favorite thing about that whole experience, was about a year after it came out, and it's kind of not, you know, people still knew about it, but nobody was talking about that much. I had to go on a trip to New York, and I was on a subway car, and a guy came up to me, and said, are you the ODG? - Oh. (laughs) - And I live in North Carolina, and I was like, this is, you just made, I told him, I was like, you just made my life, and he happened to be, yeah, well, but he happened to be an illustrator, and he's a really great guy, but-- - Oh my gosh, that's so funny. You know, it was just funny that that happened. - I definitely think one of the things that I'd love to be able to articulate better is, you really have to give people something to sink their teeth in into, other than I draw pictures. It's like, yeah, so does the sea of people, and I think even more than your gangster rap, the brushes have really done that. I assume, and you could tell me if I'm wrong, that the brushes get you good work, too, as an illustrator. Just buy people having something to attach to your name, you know? - Well, the best part about their brushes is they've helped me also to actually use other styles than what I typically would work in for it, whatever the market is. They've expanded my reach with stylistically, which is something I'm always happy to do anyway, but they've made that even easier, because a lot of the samples I show online show me playing around with different looks, and that's made a huge difference. - Yeah, and actually, we could touch on that real quick before we kind of sign off, but I've learned that, so my style is pretty consistent, but I've learned I have a spectrum of audiences that I can work for, you know, a band, but I can also make kids' books, and that's something that I think early on, people misunderstand your artistic voice, like they think it means a specific niche, a specific market, a specific audience, all of that stuff, whereas I think, you know, it really does help to be able to kind of cross some boundaries, and it's different, everybody has their own personal art values, but you've been vocal recently about the benefit of trying different things, and, you know, I mean, what are your thoughts on that? - The reason I, yeah, I recently wrote a little article on Medium about how I think part of the reason I've been able to make it as an illustrator for a long time, long-ish time anyway. - Yeah, it's because I don't stick to just one way of working, and I think, yeah, there's always, and this is a difficult conversation to have because when you say style, some people say, okay, well, it's not really just simply the way you choose to make an image in terms of how it looks, but it's really what people are paying you for is how you think, I mean, that's the bottom line. I like the way that person solves a problem. I can see that they do that well, I'm gonna call them, and then after a while, I think style just becomes very fluid kind of thing. It's just a means to an end, really. It's just, how do you produce the same kind of work this? And people always tell me that even if they're looking at something I've done that looks kind of like an oral painting, and then something I've done that looks like a pen and drawing, they're like, yeah, I know that's you. - They can see that always shines throughout it, and I think one of the interesting-- - I guess so, I don't see it, but they do, so that's good. - I think, I often see it, when I'm scrolling through Facebook and I see something, and I know it's a different brush, you know, but I, and I know it might be something really kid friendly or it might be something really realistic. I can usually, I usually get a pretty good instant. I usually know it's you. - That's good. - Yeah, and I think the other side of that is understanding what you're bringing to the table in terms of skill and talent, and I think one of the things you have going is that you're just really good at drawing, and you've developed that to where it doesn't really mat. That, I think that's what always shines through with you is that the drawing chops are there, so you can really, you can kind of improv all over around the fact that you're really making a good drawing. Whereas I think-- - Thank you, that's nice. - Yeah, I really, and I always notice that. I always notice that things are well drawn, well illustrated, and you take a different, maybe approach, but that's always there, and I feel like, for me, I probably bring something to the table that's a little bit closer to the, I might be making illustrations, but it's probably closer to the craftsmanship of a designer. And so, that's a different core. So I think when you understand the core, which is maybe closer to your artistic voice, then it is a really beneficial thing to be able to kind of sing in different octaves, or you know, whatever. - Yeah, I like that, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - That's interesting. - I always just never understood the logic, either. People saying you absolutely have to have this one way of working, visually speaking, stylistically speaking, and that's how you succeed. I always thought that just made no sense. If I can offer five different things to five different kinds of clients, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? - Yeah, and I think, again, maybe it's a misunderstanding of, style is just one example of how to show that you can be consistent. So you show that you can be consistent through a lot of different things. And like I said, one of the ones I noticed is that everything's always rendered well. So they know they're gonna get that. And so I think you can be consistent without it being this particular consistent thing, because they have to trust you. That's the thing, they have to trust you. - Yeah, that's of course, that's the bottom line. Are they putting in your hands the responsibility of making whatever it is they're paying you? - Yeah, you gotta make them look good, you know? - Exactly. - If they know you can do that, they loosen the grip a little bit and you have some freedom. - Yeah, that's totally true. Well, I've had a complete blast circling around and running on these topics, it was a really good time. Thank you for your time, man. I know it's really valuable. - Thank you, no, that was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. - Yeah, me too, sorry, and sorry, man. I get so excited that I'm cutting people off all the time. I try to just, I try to figure it out. It gets messy, so I'm sorry about that. - No, it's fine, but I just get too excited. But I loved hearing all your thoughts on all this stuff and do you have anything you wanna add before we move on and say our final goodbyes? - Yeah, I would say to people who are listening, if you are just sort of right there getting started, be really brave and don't be afraid to approach the people who you want to work with or the people who you want to be like who are working a certain way. I mean, just like go to icon, for example. Go be present, go be part of the industry. Don't hold yourself up in a little room and never come out. I mean, you have to meet people and talk to people who are human beings, and I think the internet's great, but the internet is keeping us from actually connecting with each other in the real world sometimes, and that can lead to it being difficult to get anywhere. Most of the opportunities of my life come from face-to-face meetings of some kind. - Yes, and actually, you know, the waves crash back and forth, and I think an interesting thing now is like, with the internet being so prevalent, so ubiquitous, it's like actually most of the values in real life, like now it's switched back. It's just the kind of ebb and flow of the way things work, but I totally support that. You need to go be around these people. You're never gonna feel ready, especially when you're beginning, and you're gonna make mistakes, and it's okay. - Yeah. - So, all right, thank you, Kyle. I really appreciate it, man. - Thanks, that was for a lot of fun. Thanks, Danny. - Oh, man, that was so good. Kyle, thank you so much for being on the show and taking out some time to chat with me. I really do believe that this is gonna be a super encouraging and helpful episode for the illustrators and designers out there that listen to this podcast. Kyle, you are awesome. I appreciate you so much. I'm glad that there's someone out there working as hard as you're working, and just, you know, I think it's a tough game in a lot of ways what we do, and I think that you just seem to continually pep yourself up to go out there and do fantastic things, and so thank you so much for all you do for all of us. Thank you guys for listening to the show. It means so much to me, honestly. It's been an amazing thing to do this podcast. You know, I've been doing it for a little over a year and we're at, I think, episode 78, and it's been a life-changing experience to be a part of this with you guys and get to know all of you and get to be a part of your lives and see, you know, the iTunes reviews that you guys have given me, so many of you have reached out and said that this podcast has been a big part of your creative journey, and that is extremely humbling and it gives me such a sense of fulfillment in pouring my time and energy into this, and honestly, you know, without any hype, this thing has been such a privilege to do because, you know, the truth of the matter is, I struggled for several years really, really struggled in my creative career and there was a lot of sincere pain, real pain, real hardship to a degree early on of trying to get this thing off the ground and it being really tough and, you know, being able to do all these things and share these things with you, mean that. It feels like all that's not wasted and I can see purpose in that, and so thank you guys for all the feedback. I just super appreciate it. I hope that the show just continues to get better and better for you guys. Thank you guys so much. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music. I love that music, Yoni, if you're out there listening. I, man, I'm so happy to have that music on the podcast. Thanks to our proud syndicate illustration age. Thank you, Thomas James and all that you do. Thanks to the music from the freemusicarchive.org. We have the song "Anina" by Cosmic Slop. If you love the show and it's helped you in any way, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. That really does mean a lot to me and it helps us grow. If you can financially support the show, just a dollar a show or $2 a show or $5. patreon.com/creativepeptalk. Thanks to you guys. You guys really make it easy to do this show. Thanks for listening. I really think that success as a creative person isn't about inspiration. It's not about talent. It's about discipline and I think discipline takes getting yourself motivated and inspired on a daily basis and that's what this show is all about. So do whatever you got to do to stay peped up. Thanks, guys. [music] Hey, y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately and if you want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself and when you're ready to launch use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks, Squarespace, for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. [music] I did consider Barney a friend and he's still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. I love you, you love me. I call it the purple mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music)