Creative Pep Talk
073 - Trolls & Beanie Babies
(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. The fact that a business built on trends and taste is really built on Quicksand. 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. I'm your host, Andy J. Miller. Illustration Age is our proud syndicate. You can find this show at illustrationage.com/creativeplay. The Creative Pep Talk on SoundCloud and iTunes. Thank you guys so much for all the amazing iTunes reviews. I read everyone. They touched my heart. Thank you guys so much. You are the reason the show is growing at such a rapid pace. Thank you guys so much, and here's the show. 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. 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 in 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) I remember this one time my wife and I sat down to watch some Netflix as you do. And one of our favorite comedians had a new show on and we hadn't heard of it, so we threw it on. And I remember at some point at the beginning, kind of subconsciously feeling very confused and not like trying to enjoy it, but really having a hard time and not being able to put my finger on it. And at some level thinking, does this guy know that comedians are supposed to make you laugh? Like this isn't funny. And it really started to aggravate me. And I think at some point I realized that it was a one man show. It wasn't a comedy special. It was a one man show, whatever that might be. And I think part of the reason why we have all this weirdness surrounding the idea of the one man show is it's really hard to understand what the purpose of a one man or a one woman show actually is. And there's a lot of parodies for this reason. But think about this for a minute. Imagine a comedian, a standup comic that doesn't understand what the value of a comic actually is. Like what's the purpose of him going up there? Like he's watched all of the tapes. He's seen all of his favorites. And he knows that you're supposed to go up there and you're supposed to talk and you're supposed to do maybe some voices and all these different things. But he or she hasn't connected that the purpose of going up there is to make people laugh. You know, I would say five or six years ago, I really wanted to go all in on this commercial art thing. I really wanted to give it my all. And I wanted to be, you know, I started to really want to be a great commercial artist. You know, not just someone who is surviving, not someone who's just, you know, putting out commercial work, but something that really strikes a balance between art and commercial, something that works on a lot of different layers and really does the thing that we're meant to be doing. And so I started going on this journey of trying to discover what is good commercial art. Like what does that mean? What does that look like? And I was actually surprised to find that there wasn't a lot about this is what the value of commercial art is. And if there is stuff out there, I found it for the most part, not super satisfying. And I'm sure I didn't see everything, but I just struggled to find something that really defined what the value of what we're doing actually is. And I started thinking about the fact that a business built on trends and taste is really built on quicksand, that you can't build a thriving long lasting business on these things. Like if you don't have some core value underneath everything, your business is in trouble. It's not going to last. And I think so often in the commercial art world, we're chasing this inflection point that's based on people's tastes in the moment, trying to find that sweet spot. And really I think it reminds me of trolls and beanie babies, these things that have no inherent value that for whatever reason hit the cultural zeitgeist of the moment where all of a sudden everybody's going fanatical for these things that mean nothing that have no purpose. And I think if you're in that spot or you're shooting for that as a commercial artist, you have to understand that you're on quicksand, like you're on borrowed time, like that will not create a thriving business in the long term. And so you have to ask yourself, what is the real core value underneath everything? I think if you can imagine the comic that doesn't understand what he's up there doing, what is he supposed to be doing up there? You know, I was watching this talking funny video on YouTube. It's a conversation between Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, and Louis CK. And they're talking about comedy. They're talking shop. And I think you'll find lots of parallels between commercial art and comedy. There's so much there and it's fascinating to kind of hear it from a different perspective. One of the things that they talk about that I found to be fascinating was this idea of style and attitude. And they talked about how a lot of young characters, a lot of people that rise to fame really quickly, think that stand up comedy is all about persona and vibe and getting up there and really speaking to the moment and being celebrated in that moment. And I think that if you don't have the core jokes underneath it, if you don't have the craft, if you don't deliver on a deeper layer, there's a real process going on. You're really not going to build a career in the long-term. And you've seen these folks. I'm not gonna name drop anybody 'cause I just would feel like that would be mean even if they are or were celebrities. But you know these comics that rose to incredible heights only to fall very, very quickly because the veneer of style was very, very shallow. And it meant that there was no real craft or value that could be developed as styles and taste change. You know, one of the things I talked to my students about is that I do think it's a balancing act. You have to walk the tightrope. I don't think you can be so disconnected from the moment and so disconnected from trends that your work just exists in this extremely 100% timeless place. But I think you can be informed by all those things. But at the bottom, you have to have a core, a core voice and a core value if you want to really build a business around what you do. So if you find yourself sat here not really sure about what the core value of what you do actually is or you feel like you're certain that you've built your career upon taste and trends and you can feel the quicksand shifting. Maybe you've felt it for a long time. I don't think that it's something to panic about. I don't think it's something that should cause you dread because I think the truth of the matter is the good news is that building an art business with real value is not really about talent. It's not really about you have it or you don't have it. It's really at its core I believe about intentionality and hard work really digging in deep to figure out what is the purpose of the art that I make? Like what is the value? What do other people actually get from this? Or what would I like them to get from this? And then studying the greats, the people that came before that did this really really well and then practicing, developing strategies, trying out lots of things and then testing it. And then going back and analyzing what works and what doesn't work and trying it all over again. And so if you find yourself in this place where you're sure that so much of your success or so much of what you're trying to do is trying to hit this elusive inflection point of trends and taste and the moment and all that jazz and there's not this stuff, this underlying core thing pushing the work forward and really connecting people on a deeper level, then listen up, have I got a show for you? So the first thing that I think you have to do when it comes to unearthing the value that you wanna bring to the table, the core value of what you actually have on your hands, the thing that people will pay you money for, the first thing you've gotta do is define the problem. Like really get super clear about what is the value of what I do or what would I like the value of my work to actually be? And I got this idea from a guy called Josh Kaufman, he wrote the book The Personal MBA, The Masters in Business. And it's supposed to help you get the knowledge of what a masters in business would give you at a fraction of the cost. And early on he talks about the idea of value that if you're in business, that you are in the value business and you have to bring value to your customers and that's what they pay you for. And he brings up this idea that there are basically essentially five different buckets of value that your product or service could fall into or it might fall into more than one. And so he said there is the desire to collect for us to surround ourselves with things that we deem beautiful or interesting. We just have this innate desire to collect things, our desire to attract, so our desire to attract other people, to be attractive, a desire to learn, to learn new things. I think the podcast, part of the value of the podcast is hopefully to help other people learn things about commercial art. Our desire to defend what we already have, things like life insurance and then the military, those kinds of things, like to keep the things that we have safe. And the last one, the one that he added to the list was our desire to feel. And I think a lot of art falls under this category. You know, if you're a feeler and you love art because the way it makes you feel and you like certain types of feelings, I think you can start to even go deeper than that and you can look at all the art that really, really hit you in a visceral way, and what did it feel like? What were the feelings exactly? Because for me, one of the things that was really helpful was going back through all of the art that really struck a chord with me, the things that really hit me in a way that I really wanted to be hit, like defining what that emotion was and then going further back and saying, "Why do I want or need to feel that emotion?" And really thinking about how do I develop my skills to help other people feel that feeling? You know, Tim Ferriss, the blogger, writer, extraordinary, talks about scratching your own itch as an entrepreneur. Like nothing is more valuable in terms of figuring out what you should be doing than what is going on in my life that I need a solution for. And so for me, I'm really on the feeling spectrum in terms of feeling versus thinking and I realize there's not enough stuff out there right now that's really hitting me emotionally in the way that I want to be hit in terms of illustration and commercial art. And so I started to really try to define, what is that emotion? Why do I need to feel that emotion? How do things portray that in the arts? And one of the things that I found really helpful, I do this process all the time, is to come at it from a different angle. So what I do is probably considered illustration and I wanted to look at photography and music and try to define those things and also movies and try to look at it from those different angles because getting that little distance actually gives you a lot of perspective. And so I started making playlists and Pinterest boards that all felt like the things that really get me on a visceral level and started thinking about what's the common thread here and how can I make this happen for other people? And I think the interesting thing here is that it's not necessarily about making people feel good, like people want to feel, people want to feel the spectrum of emotions and art is a real gateway into hypothetically putting you into situations or striking a chord with different levels to help you engage with your emotions. Now, some of you are on the feeling spectrum. There's a lot of commercial artists that really want to help people think or learn. And I think even making that distinction between which way you lean can be really valuable. You know, I'm a really big Seinfeld fan and I love that in that show there is this wide spectrum of comedy taste. You have crazy, ridiculous, nonsensical things. You've got slapstick. You've got the jokey, pithy little one-liners. You've got everything in between. And I think really understanding as an artist, which one speaks to you? You know, do unto others as you want to be done to you. What is the thing that strikes a chord with you on a deep level that's the most meaningful? Maybe it's the reason you became an artist and really understanding the craft of that and being able to do that for other people. And I think in comedy, it's such a pure art form. It's such a developed craft. There's even these buckets, these very significant buckets that you can develop. And I think as a comic, one of the big steps is understanding which type of comedy really hits you in such a way that you would like to do that for others. The second thing that I think you really need to do is dive in deep into the research phase, really, really study the greats, deconstruct what's going on, what are they doing, how are they doing it? You know, the great comedian Judd Apatow, he's responsible for many, many, many great films and things of our time. And he seems like a real virtuoso, real master in terms of comedy. And I think if you look at his story, it's really fascinating how he got to where he is. You know, when he was in high school, he was obsessed with comedy. And he had a high school radio program. And he would actually go to comics, real stand-up comedians in New York City and tell them that he had a radio show. He didn't mention that it was a high school radio show, but he would go interview the great comedians, the great stand-up comedians of the time. And he would just really try to understand how they created jokes, what their idea, their philosophies were. And he would try to dig deep into these greats, to understand, to deconstruct what did they do? How did they do it? And it's so fascinating that from an early age, he created this giant bank of information. And he actually just released a book transcripting all these interviews. One of my biggest problems with the commercial art industry is this culture of everybody just scrutinizing everyone else's moves and really trying to defend and protect their own little tiny square on the earth of this is my thing and nobody's gonna touch it. And I think it's created this idea that we shouldn't be inspired by each other. We shouldn't be excited about what one another is actually doing and it really aggravates me because I think it really hurts the industry. And I think in comedy, there's this very, very clear idea that most of these people start off as rip-offs of someone else, of another comedian and that as they're going along because, and I think part of it is that comedy's so hard and you have to bomb for so long that most of the other comedians don't look over their shoulders because they're not worried about it. They know that people have to truly be great, really, really develop their own voice to find any real success. And so they don't have to worry about it. They don't have to worry about the new guy that's ripping off all of their style and jokes because they know that it's skin deep. You know, it's not really going, going to really hurt them in the long run. I think in our industry, there's a lot of looking over your shoulder and all that jazz. And it causes us to really not develop the industry to the level that it should be developed. And it causes us not to really do great things and really resonate on a deeper level and really develop and deliver value. And so I think one of the things that you've got to do, whether it's comfortable or not, is really go in and look at the people that are thriving, the people that are delivering that value that you're trying to do. Like, what are you, what do you want people to do when they see your work? What do you want them to take away? What do they get from it? I think one of the things that is really negative is that you get into this because you like style or you like the way something looks. You know, I think if you're an artist, often what you like about art, you know, on the surface level, maybe the thing that pushed you into this natural affinity for this art form, isn't shared by the general public. Like your grandma doesn't have those feelings, the feelings about art like you do. But the people that have money, the people that can pay you are usually not your peers, not your artist friends. And the purpose of art isn't really to resonate with other artists, you know, on its biggest macro level. And I think sometimes I found it really hard for students to really see beyond this taste and interest that they have in the art form that they've chose and actually go deeper and say, how is this going to strike a chord with the general public? And so I think you have to ask yourself, you know, what do I want to happen when somebody interacts with my work? Not just the people that are into the field. Not, you know, I think if you become one of these people that you're, you know, like they call it a stand up, comics, comic, you know, something where the general public really doesn't have a taste for this person, but other comics really love what they're doing. The bad news is that that person actually doesn't reap the benefits of their brilliance. Like usually they just inspire the more accessible comics to go and make the money. And so I don't think that's where you want to be. I don't think you want to be in this place where your work is celebrated by your peers, but the general public doesn't know what to do with it. They don't know what the value of it is. And so one of the things I've been trying to push my students with is when did you really, really feel something really hardcore when you responded to some art beyond the veneer of the style or just liking the drawing or just liking the shapes of the logo? Like when did it mean something to you? And then trying to figure out how to repackage and repurpose that value for somebody else. 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. It's time to freak out! Not because uncommon goods is here to make it easy. Listen, all I did was click the for her section on this site and I instantly saw five things that I could get, Sophie, don't tell her, but I'm thinking either the National Park sweaters, the tea advent calendar. There's also just below that little bubble tea kit for my oldest. And then I saw one of these, you know, the retro little viewfinder orange real viewer things, but you can make it your own photos. Okay, it might not make sense. Just you have to go check it out yourself. Here's a thing. I have seriously never seen so many good options for gifts online in one place and unlike lots of other convenient options, shopping uncommon goods actually support small businesses. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) Number three, get on stage. You actually have to go out there and shop the jokes. You know, the greats like Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Seinfeld, these people still have to go into the club to test the material. You know, they talk about this all the time, the fact that they'll think they have this fantastic joke on their hands, but until they're actually up there, trying it out, finding the metric of laughs. They don't know if they've really got some good stuff. You know, there's a quote, I can't remember who said it, but it says that what gets measured gets managed. And if you can't measure something, you can't really improve it. And I think there's a lot of feelings in our industry about this idea that social media is really distracting and really negative. And although I can see how there are lots of pitfalls to do with social media, I think that what's really fascinating is it can be a tool. If you're systematic, if you look at it in the right light, if you don't let it control everything you do, it is a way of gathering data on how people are responding. You know, there's a difference between people responding with likes and comments. You know, I found that when something resonates, you know, there's all kinds of different ways that you can kind of collect data. But I've always loved in standup comedy how it's this art form that's just very objective. Like it either makes people laugh or it doesn't. And I sometimes feel kind of annoyed that our art doesn't have that clarity. But I think that if you start thinking of social media, not like some random game and more like social proof, you're really gonna find something. You can use it to your benefit. And I actually believe that brands and companies see this as social proof. Like does this artist have value? Do they inherently bring value to the table to lots of people? Because if they do, lots of people are gonna follow them. Lots of people are gonna engage. And obviously, there are ways that you can take this that can get really nasty and stupid and surface level and all that garbage. You know, I don't think social media is the best proof. I do think that you need to go get it in front of real people. You know, back in the day, I used to do some craft shows. And I would find standing face to face with other people and watching them respond and hearing what they had to say in person really was a game changer to understand what stuff was really resonating and what wasn't. You know, what really hit people on a deep level? What made them actually laugh? Or what made them actually screw up their face and have some kind of visceral response to what I was doing? And what was just very passing. And so I think you really have to build out this stuff. You know, put your hypothesis to the test. You know, come up with ideas, research them and then create your prototypes. Create some personal work around these ideas, trying to push this value button and then put it out there and then measure it. Again, going back to Tim Ferriss, he talks about this idea that you would need to measure anything. It doesn't really matter what you measure. As long as you're measuring something and you're trying to push it, you're trying to create goals around that measurement. It's going to make you grow. It doesn't even matter if you're measuring the wrong thing. If you have a metric and you try to push it, you will adapt. You know, I think for me, nothing feels better than when some of my favorite artists people I've looked up to for a long time engage with my work on social media. And although I think that that's very affirming and it is one of my all-time favorite things, one of the things I find maybe equally fascinating or more fascinating is when my grandma really likes something I made or that's an exaggeration. I always, you know, my grandma's been very supportive of me. When I put something not just on Instagram where all my peers are, but I put something out there on Facebook that friends from high school and all kinds of people all over the spectrum can see it and engage with it. And I'm really fascinated by that. I'm really fascinated by when is this work really striking a chord with people that don't know anything about what I do? And I'm fascinated by that. So I think there's a lot of ways to slice it, but I do think that you need to get on stage, measure this stuff, see how it's really getting a response in the real world and then retool and rethink and fix and craft and develop. You know, I think this is one of the fascinating things about comedy is there's just this real craft and they talk about, you know, trying things out and noticing what gets a laugh and what doesn't even just down to the very word and the delivery of the joke, not just the joke itself. And so I think this disconnection and this disengagement with social media and how people respond to things online, although I think it sounds really sexy and cool to be like, I don't really care about how things perform and da, da, da, da, da, that aloof kind of persona that so many artists portray, I think that there actually is a lot of value to be able to put things out in the real world and in real time get feedback. I do think you need to be systematizing this and really understanding, you know, the fact that posting things at different times and all that jazz really makes a difference. And I do think you should balance it with real life experiences any way that you can get yourself with your art in front of the public in real life can be incredibly valuable. But I think understanding these reactions and really calculating and seeing how people enjoy or not enjoy your work and then developing, that's called craft. And I think we don't have enough of it in our industry. I think we need to take more seriously the fact that there is a very objective side to art. There's a very scientific approach to great art. And although great art often comes on the back of chance or happenstance or a moment of ingenuity or intuition, so does science. You know, science, the ball gets pushed forward, not necessarily always on the back of data. Often it's in, you know, a dream that a scientist has or a flash of inspiration. But so much about art is being able to put yourself in the posture of being able to catch that lightning. Like yeah, you can't always plan it, but you can plan on the best way of capturing that. You know the circumstance when you're most likely to have that flash of intuition. And I think comedy is such a great example of, they know that the good stuff happens on stage and it's not always fun. It's often painful at the beginning. And so if you're having this hunch of, you know, I'd really like to explore delivering this type of value in my art. Just know, going through the process of really developing a craft around that thing might be painful. But it's in order to put ourselves out there, to subject ourselves to that kind of scrutiny, that you actually get the type of information that's actually gonna push the craft forward. And I think in our part of the world, the commercial art world, we often disengage with this too much. You know, we try to keep ourselves too safe or we try to say it's, you know, there's not really a science to it. Because that keeps us safe. 'Cause that means that we don't have to perform on a dime because we're not really in control. But I think it's the ones out there like Pixar that have delivered value in greatness time after time. Have they had some misfires? I'm sure that they have. But clearly, they've dedicated themselves to a craft and to a science of storytelling that puts them in the right place to catch that lightning. And so, don't be afraid to be scrutinized, to put your work up there and get criticized and get some critique. You know, I'm obsessed with getting around people that will be honest with me. My relationship to my wife, one of the best things, and one of the things that really bonded us early on was her ability to be super honest about what she thinks about my work. And I love that about her. It's so helpful and I get so much feedback from her because I know that, you know, usually I have a niggle like, I know something's not quite right with this thing and I'll show it to her. And she'll be like, mmm, and I'll be like, ugh, I'm mad because she's reflecting the fact that I know it's not right. But that feedback, that's the valuable stuff. That's the stuff that you really, really need. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to get the critique. Don't be afraid to measure how people are responding. That's how you develop the craft. And I really, really believe that craft is the most important part of building a thriving art business. You know, Cal Newport in his new book, Deep Work, he, I haven't read that book, but I've heard him talk a lot about it on different podcasts and talks and such. And he talks about this idea that really, the value of the future is the ability to do focused deep work and that when you're really fully engaged, really problem solving, that's how you find this craft. That's how you find your work that actually strikes a chord. And so don't be afraid of that. Don't be afraid of trying to control this thing, trying to really get good at it. Trying to know all the twists and turns and deliver on a dime. So here's the recap. You've got to define the problem. You have to look deep into what is the value that I would like to develop and deliver with my art. The second thing you've got to do is go research the greats. The people that have delivered on this thing before, how did they do it? And I think really looking outside of your own little niche and market is really valuable for this because you might be too deep. You might be too interested in this and too enamored with the veneer of your industry to really see beyond that and get deeper into the value side. So if you're a photographer, maybe you need to go look at illustration. If you're a musician, maybe you need to go look at photography. For me, that's been a really big deal. The third thing you've got to do is get on stage, build the prototypes, make the stuff, measure how people respond to it and act accordingly. This is all about developing your craft. Don't be afraid to really put in the time and energy to develop your skills of delivering value as an artist because in the long term, if you can learn the process and the principles behind that, you will have a thriving, awesome career. We all know the bands that put out the One Hit Wonders and they don't know how to do it again. And on the flip side, we know the bands that have developed their craft that have dedicated themselves to really reinventing themselves each time they come out, really putting their hands to the mill and developing this stuff so that every time they come out the gate, they've got something new and fresh and something that's gonna hit people in a way that they want to be hit with value, right? Like we know the difference between the people that are just casual and they don't see it as craft and they see it as all inspiration and sometimes the songs are good and sometimes the songs are terrible, but it's not really up to them, man. It's just up to the spirit of inspiration. Don't be that person. You can't build a business on that view of creativity. And actually, this podcast, so much of it, is about believing that there are, there's a science to this. And I do think it's a sweet science. I think that there's chance and happenstance, but there's ways of even posturing yourself to make the most out of those things. And so build a prototype, dedicate yourself to the craft, go out there and hear the laughs, put it to the scrutiny. So is your art business built on quicksand? You know, I think a few years out of college, maybe one or two years, I started to get this pit of the stomach feeling that my work was a little bit too based on the moment. It was a little bit too based on taste. And actually, it was a long hard road to say, how do I develop this craft to where, when someone hires me, I can deliver the goods. And not only that, that in my own following and people that are interested in what I'm doing, that they can actually get something significant in terms of value from it. And so if you're looking at your work and you feel like you've got some trolls and beanie babies on your hands, maybe it's time to step back and dive in a little bit deeper on this front. (upbeat music) Thanks for listening, guys. I hope this episode helps you find clarity and strategy for your creative career. Thanks to Yoni Wolf in the band Y for our theme music. Thanks to our proud syndicate illustration age. Thanks to the band Anenon for their song, Cosmic Slop from the free music archive.org. Thanks to all of you out there sharing the podcast, telling your friends, reviewing it on iTunes, the Patreon backers, you guys are the reason this show has been blossoming. We've almost tripled our numbers in the past few months. So thank you guys so much, you are fantastic. It means the world to me. I really believe that success in commercial art is all about staying motivated and dedicated. So do whatever you've gotta do within reason to stay connected. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat 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 who 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 podcasts. (upbeat music)