Creative Pep Talk
051 - Original Work
(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. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey, hey everybody. It's me, Andy J. Miller, the host of the Creative Peptalk Podcast. This is the podcast where we help creative professionals find a high demand for the work that they want to be doing. The work that's creatively fulfilling to them. That's what this podcast is all about. It's about commercial art. It's not about business, it's not about art, it's about when they come together, and they make this beautiful thing called commercial art. That's what it's all about. That's what we're talking about today. So before we get all jazzed out of our minds and into the crazy action of this episode of the podcast, I wanted to bring to you a few different bits of info. Number one, you can find this show at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Illustrationage is an illustration website where they showcase inspiring new work from lots of different artists. They're great people over there, go check that out. You can also find them on Instagram now and get some inspiration fix that way if you so choose. 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And if that's something you're interested in as a company or what have you at some interesting sponsorship ideas that you have, you send me an email before you go back to Patreon because I wanna make sure that the sponsors are things, entities, people that align with the podcast that makes sense for the podcast and for the people that listen to this. I wanna make sure this is a good union for me and for you. So if you're interested in that, send me an email at Andy@Andy-J-Miller.com. (upbeat music) 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. 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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. Now, this episode, now on episode 50, I loved having all of you guests. It was a blast, super enjoyed having that. So, you know what? I'm gonna invite people from time to time to be on the show. Today, we're talking about making original work. And I invited my friends, Jen Masari. She's a hand letterer and illustrator. She's a Mica graduate and she lives in Brooklyn now. She makes fantastic work and she's one of my favorite people. I feel like we always end up in the same kind of conferences and places and places online. And she's just super awesome. Go check her workout and we're gonna have a little bit of a tip from her. And we've also got my buddy Brandon Reich. We live nearby, we get lunch sometimes. He does amazing work for the music industry. He does tons of merchandise, band T-shirts, crazy productivity. He did one of the Miller beer can, artist cans recently, so you could see that. Brandon is a really brilliant guy, super hard worker and he's gonna bring some information as well. So, stay tuned for that. Now, without any further chatting and messing around, let's get to the real point of today. What we're talking about today is original work. Original work, is it a real thing or is it a myth? Is it possible to actually make something new per se? Can you create something new from nothing? Can something come from nothing or is everything really just a mashup of previous things? Is everything just a remix? You know, is it still like an artist or is it that the only true artists create from nothing? Create the original work. So, I started thinking about this idea of something from nothing. You know this idea that we would sit in front of a page start making something and all of a sudden all of this new stuff would just come from nowhere, come from another dimension and just fly under our page. And it made me think about this concept that I learned in biology as a youngin back in the school days. I always kind of loved biology and science. I didn't really realize it at the time but I always did kind of, I loved it all the way through and this one concept stuck with me and it's called spontaneous generation. And the idea was that back in the day before like scientific method they thought that different living things could come from dead things, things that weren't living. They thought that if you sat a piece of meat, a dead piece of meat that out of the meat kind of magically maggots would arise, right? Because they couldn't see where these maggots were coming from. They didn't know they were from flies that maggots would come from nothing. And they would think that from water there would be tadpoles or whatever it is. They would think that fleas could be born from dust, right? That was old thinking. They thought that they literally thought that living things could spring to life from non-living things, from just dust and decay. They really believed that. And then along came scientific method and testing and controls and rational thought. And they realized that that idea was absolutely craziness that life could not spring forth from nothing. That something could not be born from nothing, that it's actually impossible. And I think that a more compelling version, a more interesting version in the terms of new work, new things, new art, new life, a more interesting, now set your personal beliefs down for a minute. I'm not arguing anything scientifically, but I'm gonna use some of these ideas to talk about where new comes from in our work. I'm very inspired by nature. If you look at the biodiversity in the world, it is staggering, it's crazy. If you look at, we've talked about this on the show for the Mantis Shrimp, what an amazing, insane, crazy thing that is out there. And when I think about new, original, exciting, you know, brand new, I think the Mantis Shrimp. Here's something that blows my mind, this little tiny shrimp in the ocean. You know, we have three cones to see color and the combination of these three cones in our eyes makes all the color that we see. They have, Mantis Shrimp has 16 cones. They see all kinds of colors that we don't see, like colors that we don't even know exist, that we can't possibly imagine. They actually, these Mantis Shrimp look like a rainbow. Not only that, but when they punch, when they punch with their little claw, it is at the speed of the bullet. If you put a Mantis Shrimp into your aquarium, it could punch through the glass. When I think of the biodiversity like that, when I come across an animal like that, and you know, online, I'm constantly seeing new animals that I never knew existed. When I see that, I'm so inspired because I'm like, wow, here's something that I couldn't ever have imagined. And it blows my mind. And so when I think about new work and I look back through my process of developing something that felt more unique of a voice, more original, I think a more compelling concept, more compelling than spontaneous generation where something magically just springs from nothing. I think a more interesting concept is the concept of evolution. The idea that through reproduction, small variations over long periods of time, spring forth, new species. Right? New does happen, but it doesn't happen just out of nowhere like sitting in front of the page and something new happens amazing. It takes copying, yeah, but it also takes variation, random mutations over long stretches of time. Take a look at, you know, go on Pinterest, go search for Fox illustration. Illustration of foxes on Pinterest. I did this with my students. And when you first do it, it's kind of cool. Like you're looking at, you know, the first 50 pens and there's just some really cool, interesting illustrations out there. But once you get to like the 5,000th Fox illustration, you get this unsettling feeling in your gut. And it's saying, how the heck am I going to cut through all of the junk? How am I going? It's not junk, sorry, Fox people out there. I just mean, how am I going to make something that stands up against all of the amazing illustration that's already out there? I think almost always we fight problems with obvious solutions and obvious solutions don't work because they're unoriginal and they've already been done by the thousands of other people that are trying to do this because they're the obvious solution. And it makes me think about Kobayashi. We've talked about this guy before. He's a hot dog eating champion. Here's a guy, you know, he came to this sport, if you can call it a sport, he came to the sport of hot dog eating, hot dog eating. And if you're going to try to eat more hot dogs than someone else, the logical way of going about that is brute force, like just practice eating tons of hot dogs and try to eat as many as you can as fast as you can, right? Like that's the obvious way. And I think if you approach art, commercial art, illustration, design that way, the most obvious thing to do is just try to make better work, just try to make it more high quality, just try to draw better than the other guy, right? But that sheer brute force isn't going to work because we've had billions of people on this planet for who knows how long, working on these problems of just trying to make the needle push forward a little bit, just try to draw a little bit better than the last person. Kobayashi comes along and instead of training and just trying to smash down more hot dogs, he thinks differently about the problem. Instead of just trying to ram more hot dogs in, he takes the hot dogs from the bun, he dips the bun into the water, he breaks the hot dog in two so it can just, so he can swallow the pieces. And so he goes from the world record, someone else held the record for like, it was like 24 hot dogs in six minutes, he comes along and he breaks it by double, he eats like 54 hot dogs in six minutes. And that's the kind of thinking, it's called strategy. And I think one of the best strategies to have is to have some unique original voice instead of trying to draw better, instead of trying to render your logos better, try to render them different. Illustration isn't about fantastic drawing. It's not about good illustration isn't amazing drawing skills, it's drawing differently. And I think pursuing, even if it's a myth, I don't know, maybe original works not really possible, like truly original, but even if you go and you dedicate yourself to that journey, the results are so much more interesting than just regurgitating the stuff that's already out there. There is so much to gain by attempting to draw differently, to make differently, to apply your own experiments and experience to your work. There's so much bland work out there that looks exactly like all of the other stuff. Now for me personally, making original work was incredibly difficult, why? Because even since a kid, I like the stuff that's the most simple. I like a lot of simple things. So I like, you know, really busy art, but I like it to be made of simple things. And if you try to do something original with basic simple shapes, it is nearly impossible. It is really difficult. But I don't like to make crazy, weird, bizarre flourishes. I wanted to have that like classic feel. And so making something that feels classic and original is incredibly difficult, believe me. You know, as a kid, I always like the superheroes that had the most minimal costumes. Like Spider-Man was really cool because they didn't have any like crazy flourishes. I liked how, I liked even just the roundness of the mask. Like I liked Cobra Commander on GI Joe's because of that like round, really simple mask that he wore. I just thought that was super cool. And he had like no pupils. I thought, I don't know, the minimalism of that, the simplification, I loved that. But if you love really simple things, you love classic things, it's really hard to find your voice within that. So I have pushed and prodded and thought and experimented and tried so hard to like find a voice within the simplicity. And I feel like I've made some real true progress within this ongoing pursuit to find a more original voice. And it's still, it's an ongoing pursuit. And I'm okay with that. But I feel like along the way, I've learned some pretty interesting stuff. I think one of the first steps to making more original work, to really diving in deep, I think one of the first steps is having a more mature understanding about where new work comes from, where original work comes from. I think this old backwards view of spontaneous generation, where new life just springs from dead things, that's bogus. If you're someone out there who hasn't had a lot of experience trying to make original work, you probably think that the artists that you're into are just insanely original, like completely original. Like if you don't know a lot about the history of commercial art, and you just have a handful of favorites, you probably don't know where their inspirations and influences come from. And they probably look like they're pulling new things right down from the heavens, right? But the more you dive in, the more deep you go into this thing, the more you realize an original voice, an original thought is really, really, really hard to come by, right? And that can be super discouraging. But I think knowing that, understanding that yes, that you do need all these other parts, you need to have influence, you need to build upon other people's work and other things in the world in order to start finding the variations. I think understanding that it's a lot more like evolution and a lot less like spontaneous generation is the first step to finding an original voice, an original work. - Ah, the holidays are here. You gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Catherine, and her kids, Jetson and Jeddon, Jirfree and Jacob, and another two J kids, it's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you gotta shop small, it just, it's a lot. But it doesn't have to be. Uncommon goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like to stitch a day advent calendar and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me. That was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family 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. - I think one thing to note that's important is that I believe that just like music, that our creative industry has genres of visual art and I think that's totally fine. I think that's totally fine. I'm not talking about creating a new genre. If you want to go back to the biology thing, how about this, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. I still know that from my school days. I was a real nerd with this stuff and I didn't even realize it until looking back. But kingdom, phylum, order, family, genus, species, we're talking about genus, that's like a genre. It's okay to be part of a genre because if you innovate and try to make a new genre, there's not a lot of reward there. We're gonna talk about that at the end, but I'm talking about a new species. So not a completely new genus of animals. We're talking about, it's okay to be a dog. Just be your own breed of dog. Be your own species of dog. That's what we're talking about. Genes is a collection of like things, but species have their own unique little corner of that collective group. So I think it's okay to be part of a genre, but you want to find your own voice within that genre. It's okay to be part of the punk movement. It's okay to be part of hip hop. Musicians that want to have a career, they don't say I'm going to start a completely new type of music. That's unrealistic, and it's kind of like that spontaneous generation thing, and that's not what we're talking about here. All right, let's get to a plan here. Let's get to the things, the right, what are the right conditions that need to be met in order for a new species of work to arrive? What things do we need to be looking for? How do we keep our eyes peeled for when new work, new original things actually happen? I've got a list of a few different things that in my own career, these are the places where I've noticed my work starting to become more original, right? So, number one, in evolution, it's one of the first things. One of the first conditions is reproduction. Animals getting together and making new animals. Reproduction, right? Everything is a remix. Go check that out, that's Kirby Ferguson, really interesting stuff. Most bands start as cover bands, and that's okay. Early on, I felt like I got discouraged because I would try to make something really original and new and great, and I'd make it, and I'd put it out there, and someone'd be like, "Oh, that kind of reminds me of duh duh duh duh duh," and I'd be like, "Ugh, gosh, so annoying. "Take the wind right out of your sails." And early on, that really bugged me, but looking back, talking to other artists, and then also studying other great artists, you realize that everybody starts out either terrible or pretty derivative, or both, and that's normal, you gotta start there. You gotta start with the building blocks of what's out there already. I believe that creativity is less about pulling new things down from the heavens, and it's more about making interesting connections from things that seemed unconnected or unable to be connected in the first place. Let's look at some of the greatest creations ever to be made. Number one, obviously on the list, boys to men. Here's someone, here's some of the greatest creativity that's ever been found, and all seriousness, the reason why they gained traction was because they created a really interesting combination of duop and RMB, and they mixed those two things together. They created these duop harmonies like an old quartet and mixed it with RMB, and it was this really weird thing at the time, and all joking aside, that's a weird combination that worked for them. What about bagel bites? Here's a creation, bagels and pizza, and you can eat them any time you want. Here's a real one, adventure time, right? Adventure time has changed network cartoons, literally changed the landscape of network cartoons for a generation. The way that cartoons are written, the way the people that consume cartoons, it was all dramatically altered by this cartoon, adventure time, and if you take adventure time, you rip it apart, basic parts are, take a Hayou Miyazaki film and throw SpongeBob in it, right? Those are the two main influences that Penn Ward had for that. Put those things together, SpongeBob, think about throwing SpongeBob into the movie Totoro. That sounds like the worst thing ever, but this artist found a way to mash these things together and create something new. And I think finding these interesting connections, like seeing connections where there were no connections, is a really difficult task. One of the things that I feel like I've done a lot of that's been beneficial for me is going into the business world and into marketing and soaking up tons of stuff there and figuring out ways of translating those ideas into the art world. And it's not easy 'cause you can't just copy and paste because it's too clunky, you have to translate it. It's in that translation often that something new happens. You know, one of the things that we've done a lot of is this Color Me Blank Show with Andrew Nier, my buddy. And we do this touring Color Me Show. And that was one of the reasons why we had the idea to push it a little bit is because in other places, live events are doing really well, like the music industry. Then if you look at like radio shows, even radio shows are learning, like this American Life and Radio Lab, are learning ways to do live events because people want to experience things firsthand. And so part of wanting to do that in other venues was wanting to translate things from other industries into things here. And this podcast is a good example of that. There are marketing podcasts that are very similar to this format, but there's not really anything like this for the illustration world. And so I wanted to translate that. And there's a lot of translation that needs to happen. There's a lot of effort that goes into translating and connecting in between. So much creativity happens in the space between pre-existing things. Now, the thing you've got to watch out for is taking too much from the same place. So if all of your building blocks for your work come from the illustration world, it's gonna get really, really boring. And before I say too much about that, let's cut to Jen Masari. She's got some fantastic views on this. Here we go. - Hi, Andy, hey listeners, what's up? How's it going? I'm Jen and I want to talk to you about how to make original work. Or at least what I've been thinking about lately, some things that I think have worked for me. So it's kind of easier said than done, but I think my biggest piece of advice that I could give to you if you want to make original work is to diversify literally like different stuff. You can control your environment and you can make it work for you. What I mean by that is what you take in effects what goes on inside of you, what creates those like marinating, creative juices, it's kind of gross, but those steep your work and it makes it what it is. If what you're taking in, whether it's what you're looking at for inspiration or how your workspace feels, or even how you spend your free time, what you watch on TV or what you look at on the internet, if what you're taking in is all manufactured by one community or one type of person, you'll only be making artwork for those types of people. The more you expand your curiosity and go out in search of different perspectives from your own, the more that you will find fascinating influence. And even if you're doing something as formal as typography or design, the spirit of that influence will absolutely be there and people can recognize that. Because we really can't deny that what we take in effects, what we put out, even if it is subconscious. If we so if we spend too much time looking within the design community or within our illustration community, within dribble or Pinterest or Instagram or what have you, we'll only continue to make work that is similar to the work we're looking at. And that creates sameness. And let's be real, sameness is super boring. So another notion here is that maybe it isn't beneficial to know so much about the work your peers are doing, not that you should deny yourself a community or deny yourself to be affected by your community. That's a different subject altogether, but instead recognize when you are looking at too much work that is too similar to your own. I personally have this threshold and I have to get away from the internet after a certain point. Because I've realized that if I'm looking too much at work that I admire, my work ends up being a cover version of that work. So go forth, go out, look at some cool stuff, find some different perspectives and make some great work. Bye. - All right, that is absolutely brilliant. And you know, I honestly, those are some of the same things that were big turning points for me early on when I started to dive deeper, not just into the past of illustration, but also beyond illustration. Some of my biggest influences, a few years out of college, I really started to dig into my influences as a kid, the things that really made a big impact on me as a kid. And the things that, you know, moved me in the world, whether it was like nature, biology, philosophy, science, quantum physics, those types of things really made a big impact. And I started to use this like psychedelic patterny stuff to represent the invisible things in life. And then also things from entertainment, entertainment industry, and started to bring some of that into my illustration. So yeah, that's totally true. Finding more diverse references, taking reference from things that no one else is taking reference from and using those as building blocks and connecting that to your illustration into the things in the illustration industry. That's where things really get interesting. So thank you, Jen, for taking a minute out to do that. Honestly, Jen's work has this really, really high level of craft that I'm just like blown away by. I think she is going to be doing just more and more fantastic, awesome, huge things in the illustration world. I'm sure she'll be around for like a long time. So if you don't know about her work, you will probably know about it really soon. Thanks, Jen, I really appreciate that. Okay, so you've got reproduction, where you're taking pre-existing things, putting them together and making new things, if you know what I'm saying. So the next thing, the next step, the next part that conditions for new, exciting things to happen, this is one of my favorites, is variation. So in evolution, they call it random mutation. So when the DNA gets together, two sets of DNA get together and an accident happens. And something kind of goes wrong, but it goes wrong in the most right kind of way. And we talk about this in art all the time. Some people, I don't know if it's like a Bob Ross thing, the happy accidents, is that a Bob Ross thing? Happy accidents, when you go to make something and it just doesn't quite go right, but it goes wrong, but in the right kind of way, when something accidentally looks good, you get that random mutation, you have an accident. Even sometimes, when you filter these references through your hand, your hand changes things, because you hold a pencil differently, you come to the page differently, you have this just natural difference in the way that you make stuff. Instead of running away from that, because it's an accident, 'cause you didn't do it on purpose, lean into that stuff. I feel like one of the most original parts of my work has happened through just making tons of things. And then over time, in say one piece of work, I have this little accident happen. I'm like, you know what? I kind of like the way that looks. So I take that little tiny random mutation into the next piece of work that I do. I intentionally notice, oh, that thing happened. I didn't mean for it to happen, but I like that it did, and I'm gonna do it again. So I do that again. And once you've made like 100, 200 pieces of work, slowly those random mutations, just like generation after generation, slowly new species evolve, just like that, you start finding new things, right? So don't shy away from these bad things that happen, these accidents lean into the way that you just happen to draw differently. Lean into that accident that happened that kind of look cool. Be mindful of that, and put it into the next drawing. Push it into the next thing. Sometimes like, I'll be working on client work, and I'll make something, and I'll be like, I know that's not right for the client. I accidentally stumbled upon this other thing. I'm gonna push pause on that in my sketchbook, and I'm gonna come back and make some personal work on that. So be mindful when these weird things happen, when these random mutations happen, 'cause I'm enough random mutations happen that are advantageous, that are somehow good. Eventually, over time, those things turn into new styles of work. And that's when stuff gets really interesting. If you look at this idea of evolution in nature, it's like randomly, these brown bears that lived in the Arctic, randomly, one of their babies was a white bear. Like something went wrong in the DNA. But that white bear hid in the snow better and could catch his prey easier, and so that gene gets passed on because he gets to reproduce a bunch of times because he's around for a long time. And because of that, some of his babies are now white bears, and that's where the polar bears, that's the theory of evolution says that that's where polar bear comes from. Doesn't matter if you like evolution or not. That's the idea, and it's a really good idea when it comes to applying that to your work. And so you accidentally make a white bear instead of a brown bear, but for some reason, it kind of looks right. So you take that same random thing. One of these things, when I use different textures or you collage a few different bits together, one time I was making a t-shirt design, and I was drawing a bunch of different stuff, and nothing was going right. I drew this one piece, didn't like it. I hid the layer in Photoshop, then I started drawing a new piece and making something new, didn't like that. But then I accidentally made that last layer visible, and the old thing went on top of the new thing. And it didn't look exactly right. I had to erase different parts and mash them together, but the composition I came up with on that time was way different than anything I would have meant to do. And I use that technique in future things. And so I think this random mutation, this randomness of your own experiments, your own experience, your own DNA. Like your own DNA is one of the most original assets that you have available. It's literally impossible other than twins or triplets or whatever. Other than that, it's literally impossible. The math says that it's impossible that two humans would be born with the same DNA, because there are so many combinations of this, like billions and billions and billions, trillions of combinations. The most original thing you got is you, your DNA. So when you pass these references through your hand and weird things happen, instead of being aggravated because you can't replicate things, lean into that stuff because it's that stuff in you that is going to produce the interesting stuff. Now, Brandon Reich, my buddy, has some great things to say about this. Without further ado, let's get to Brandon. - Hi, this is graphic artist Brandon Reich. Andy asked me to contribute some of my ideas on how to make more unique work. I think one of the easiest ways to get yourself in the habit of creating more unique work is to find a healthy distance from inspiration. So a lot of times we'll go to these design sites or Pinterest sites or, you know, designers blogs or their dribble page or wherever you see these designers work. And, you know, we kind of get in the habit of trying to like recreate what we see. And if you recreate what you see, then you kind of have to know that that is not going to be unique work. So you have to know that your main inspiration has to come from something within or some weird little viewpoint or some weird little way that you view the world or you view characters or you view letters or whatever it is that you make. That weird little perspective is your unique approach. Going to a website or, you know, a gallery full of inspiration is everybody else's work. And maybe that gets us excited about how we do what we do, but more than anything, it's going to sort of make us want to copy that and want to create that again. But it's already been created. It's already out there, you saw it. So you have to know that there's something inside of you in some weird little way that you see it. That's the most powerful thing about your creativity. The most powerful thing about your creativity is what you have inside of you that the world hasn't seen yet. So your job as a creative is to take that thing inside of you and to figure out a way to get it out. That is your unique approach. That is your unique voice. If you can figure out a process and a method on how to do that on a regular basis, you're going to start looking into your portfolio and it's going to be much more unique than it was and it's going to be from a very unique perspective and then it's going to start becoming your style. And then when people start referring to that style of illustration, they might put your name at the beginning of that style. So that should be the goal. Your goal shouldn't be to regurgitate everybody else's work. Maybe that makes sense when you're getting started. But we got to learn to use these inspiration websites as a way to sort of snap ourselves out of a creative funk as opposed to just being suggestions on the style that you should make. It should sort of be like an equivalent of just flipping through a magazine really quickly and then snapping out of your funk and being like, oh, I could do something like that as opposed to just recreating something or do I could do exactly that. You can see and be like, I can go in that direction. I can do something like that. And then your work gets a lot more unique because your inspiration is no longer a suggestion. It's just sort of a frame of mind to put yourself in. The source of your creativity is going to come from inside of you. So figure out a way to extract that. - Thank you, Brandon. Now, Brandon is a seriously hard worker. He is crazy productive. I've had the honor of going to lunch with this guy a bunch of times since I moved here to Columbus, Ohio. He is one of my all time favorite people. He gives great hugs. He's a good hugger. I love Brandon, he's an awesome guy. And he has this awesome work ethic. He has so much interesting unique experience. He just, I don't know, I love this guy and I think he brings up some really good points and I feel like we're kind of hitting a nerve here with both what Jen was saying and what Brandon's saying is getting some distance from your industry is really, really important. Now, one caveat before I go too much further into that, you got into this because you were passionate about this industry, right? And I'm not suggesting you divorce yourself from that or you deny yourself your passion. I love illustration, I love design. I love to see what my peers are doing. It does excite me and I'm like, this is awesome and I love that. But when I start getting that sense, that deep sense that, you know what, this is kind of looking too much like the other stuff out there. Instead of going into like, don't shame yourself because it's okay, that happens. And part of staying contemporary and staying in the now means knowing a little bit about what's going on out there and that's totally fine. It's totally fine to have influence. But when you start getting that sense like, this is just, I'm putting out some regurgitating stuff is, it's not new, it's not exciting. You need to go make your experiments in your sketchbook. You need to go experience new things. You know, when I go travel somewhere. Honestly, you know, I've never been someone who has romanticized the idea of travel. I've never, I never did that. I never, you know, I never kind of had that view. But honestly, when I go out of my comfort zone, all of a sudden, all these new things start to like percolate within me and I have these new experiences in my sketchbook. And we start taking reference. You start, you know, drawing from life. You know, literally drawing things from life. Like go draw in nature, go draw people on the train. Like once you start taking some of that firsthand primary reference and then you start taking reference from really obscure things. Like for me, things like Fraggle Rock are really, like I feel like I'm really inspired. Like a lot of my characters are inspired by the Muppets, visually even. And I feel like that's something that makes my illustration different. And so, you know, that's not even that big of a leap, but it's just one industry away from what we're doing. And then I can even get inspired by just actual nature. And I think we're hitting a nerf here by being inundated with all of this Pinterest and Dribble and all that stuff all the time. And you start feeling like you're just regurgitating. Don't beat yourself up about it. Just go out there and go have some fun drawing new things. So thank you, Brandon, that's really awesome. I'm sure it's gonna help all the listeners. Thanks for taking time out of your super busy schedule. Kicking so many butts. Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. Okay, so the number two was variation. The random mutations leaning into the ways that you are unique all on your own that make things wrong in the right kind of ways. Number three and our last one is in order for evolution to really happen and in order for species to come from nowhere, it just takes tons and tons of time. One of the things I run into often is, you know, when I'm doing these portfolio reviews or I'm working with students, one thing that I get hit with a lot and I'm kind of stunned by people that really, really want to have creative careers and they're not making piles and piles and piles of work. If you want a career, you want to make original art, you want to stake a claim as a great artist and you are not hustling and making piles and piles and piles and piles of stuff, you are doing it wrong. You really are doing it wrong. You know, one of the biggest breakthroughs in style for me was the nod project where I drew a new character every weekday for a year, 260 characters and it was through that forcing myself of coming up with that many ideas. You know, so many times you're like, you have to just think of something that you know is going to be bad because you know you can't reinvent something good and sometimes it didn't have bad ideas that something good happens. Just in that sheer quantity, right? Quantity in time, just putting those into the mix often yields new results. So for me, you know, I've told this story before, the indie rock coloring book, that idea came from Lane in my bed, trying to think of extra ideas to present at my college 'cause I had to present four ideas and I already thought of one that I liked so I wanted to come up with three other ideas that I didn't like. I spent all the months working on the first idea and then the day before the presentation when I had to present four ideas, I thought, while I'm laying in bed, I'll come up with three more and they better be bad so my first idea looks really good. My first idea actually wasn't so good but as I'm sitting there trying to think of bad ideas, that's when I came up with this idea for the indie rock coloring book that ended up going on to being a published book and selling a bunch of coloring books. Like that came from quantity. Like just sheer doing extra more and more and more as you force yourself into that uncomfortable place of trying to come up with something different, like trying to come up with 10 options. You're gonna know that some of them are gonna be bad and when you know some of them are gonna be bad, you're gonna experiment in a weirder way and you're not gonna put all the pressure on it and when you just by sheer quantity, by sheer time spent in the sketchbook, new things are bound to happen. So I think one of the biggest things that you can do to try to develop a more unique voice is just make tons and tons and tons of stuff. To me, the people out there that seem to be most successful are the people that are addicted to making new things, like just have to make new stuff all the time. And I think if you've never done a daily project, it's an interesting thing to try. Take a really small corner, take these really specific constraints, just really specific things, a little corner and just make tons and tons of stuff in that corner because you're gonna have to stretch these constraints over and over, otherwise you're gonna be bored or otherwise you're just gonna make the exact same thing every day. But it's in that uncomfortable place of time and time in the sketchbook and quantity that weird new things start to develop. So what we have here, we had reproduction, variation in time, combining pre-existing things in interesting ways, finding that space in between, leaning into the happy accidents. I really don't like that term, but it works. Those random mutations, leaning into that stuff instead of shying away from the way that your hand naturally draws. And then just making piles and piles and piles of stuff. You know, what does it look like to not lean into these things? What does it look like to fail at finding your own space in the market? Well, I'll tell you what I think it looks like. We've talked about this one before, it's buttered spaghetti. Right, if I had to make a meal and I had to feed every person in the United States, I would probably pick gluten-free spaghetti, dairy-free butter, and just make that because almost everybody in the whole country could eat that. But it'd be boring, nobody would be excited about it. And when you make this work that looks like everything else out there, it's buttered spaghetti. It doesn't have any extra sauce on it. It doesn't have anything that anybody can talk about. It just blends in, it's white noise. And if you do that, you're never gonna get anywhere with this. You're never gonna get, you're never gonna cut through all those foxes on Pinterest. If your fox looks pretty much similar to all the other ones, you're not gonna be at the top of that page. But if you dedicate yourself to this journey, right, if you go to find the Wizard of Oz at the end, okay, maybe original work is a myth. Maybe it's just a man behind a curtain, right? Yeah, that's possible. But along the way, along the journey, so much more interesting stuff is gonna happen in your work. I can guarantee it. Even if it isn't at the end, truly, quote, original. If you want to have a high demand on your work and you wanna make work that's creatively fulfilling, you need to put yourself onto the page. I watch a lot of Gordon Ramsay shows. I love Gordon Ramsay. I think he's so strategic in everything he does. I love the way he deals with chefs and restaurants. And one of the things they always say is, this dish is really you on a plate. You kinda get sick of hearing the same things over and over. But it's this idea that you really take this original DNA, this original unique experience that only you have, the experience of living your life. And you filter all of the pre-existing things out there through those totally unique things and you throw that onto the page. And if you do that, not only will your demand for what you're doing increased because it'll be different and it'll cut through the noise, not only that, but it'll also be more fulfilling because when you look down and it's you on a page and it's you in the story and it's you in the logo and you can see that you're you filtering things through you, it is so much more exciting and fulfilling. You know, when I make something like that, I often don't even care how it performs because I'm satisfied with the creation. So I'm encouraging you go dig deeper in your references, go find weirder references, go back to some observational drawings, go out there and find some weird things to draw. Go embrace the terrible drawings in your sketchbook. Go try to draw something terrible. When you go try to draw something terrible, weird things happen, that's where new stuff comes from. Go make piles and piles and piles and piles and piles of work. If you dedicate yourself to this journey of trying to find your original voice, I cannot guarantee you that at the end of it, what you have will be truly original. I'm not, I don't know if that really exists. Even in science, they have a hard time deciding, is there anything truly original or did everything come from something? It's a very weird debate, but it's really interesting. I can't guarantee that if you dedicate yourself to these practices, that you're gonna find some truly original thing, but I can guarantee that through the journey, your work will get more interesting. The whole journey will be more interesting. It'll be more fulfilling in the demand. I believe the demand will go up for your work. Now, I just wanna end with two disclaimers real quick, 'cause I think it's an, I think within this topic, there's a lot of stuff that gets thrown around and it's not all very accurate. And I just wanted two ending thoughts. One is, Paul Rand, one of my all time favorite designers, all time favorite commercial artists says this. Don't try to be original, just try to be good. And I get that. I like classic, simple work. So I have a hard time, I don't have this natural yearning to have this super original thing. I would rather it be good, I agree with that, I understand that. But I do think the pursuit of original is really worthwhile. But one way that I think he's onto something here is, innovation never yields the reward. It's the perfectors of the innovation that get the reward. It's not innovation, it's the perfectors that get the reward. Look at it like this, Thomas Edison, he's the one who got the reward for the light bulb. He didn't invent the light bulb, he invented the first commercially viable light bulb. He gets the reward. Facebook is not an innovative idea. It's a perfection of what Myspace already did. So I think an obsession with your work being completely 100% original is actually maybe not the right pursuit, completely. But I also think worse than that is the other side of the spectrum which is just copying other people's stuff. That's a real quick way to get the bottom of the Pinterest board, if it looks like everything else. But I do think it's interesting to note, trying to be so crazy innovative, there's not a lot of reward there, trying to invent your own genre of music. The reward's not gonna be there, it's the guy that comes along next and says, "Hey, that kind of thing that you're doing "that's super bad but also kind of unique, "I'm gonna make it not bad but take some of that uniqueness." That's where the reward is. So it's something to think about to even out this conversation because I think it's in the nuance that really interesting things happen. So I wanted to give a little nuance to this talk about original work. And the last thing I wanna say, something that's helped me a lot is if you're making a piece of work and it looks too much like something else, just change it. Instead of getting all huffy and puffy, huffy and puffy, I don't know what that means, but instead of getting all huffy, sorry, huffy and puffy about it, instead of that, just change it, change something fundamental. If there's one aspect of it that looks a little bit too much like another artist, just change it, just change something fundamental. And I can almost guarantee, if you just intentionally change it, something interesting is gonna happen. And the last thing I wanna leave you with is something that Sam Weber, the great illustrator coined it's, and he said, "Let he who without sin cast the first stone." And of course, that wasn't originally Sam Weber, but he said that a bunch of times on his podcast. And I think it was really interesting. I think we have these witch hunts within our industry. I just think we're disgusting, going out and trying to shame people for ripping somebody off. It's such a stupid conversation. And I think if your intentions are good and you're out there trying to find some original ground and you're fighting the good fight and risking the risk of making work, it's a risk to put your work out there. Don't be shamed by anybody. And let's not shame other people. You out there who looks down on other people and says, "Oh, that person's just a rip off of that person." I guarantee you have sin, you have sinned, you have copied, you have taken, you have re-appropriated a little bit too much here and there. I guarantee it. So don't cast a first stone. Don't let any of this be shame on you. Let's all take the risk of trying to make new work. And when we fall, which we will, let's be easy on each other and encouraging. That's the type of industry I want to be a part of. Okay, so go out there and try to make some original stuff. I feel really strongly about this topic. I thought there's just some really interesting things that were brought to the table by the guests. Thank you guys again. Thank you guys for sharing the show. Thank you for all the encouraging notes. Thank you for the Patreon backers, even the people that back one dollar a month or the people that choose to back the $2 a month or $2 an episode, you guys are awesome. I super appreciate it. That all adds up and I know who you guys are and we've started to have more conversations on there and get to know each other and I just super appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing that. You can find this show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. You can find it on SoundCloud. You can find it on iTunes. Thank you for all the reviews on iTunes. That helps other people find it. It helps us do better in the ratings of the iTunes charts and that helps, so thank you so much. Thanks for sharing it. Until we meet again, figure out however you have to stay and out. (upbeat music) (upbeat 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 wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna 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. (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. You know, 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)