E35: Can Hustle Help Your Art???
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 сер 2024
- This is The Thirty Fifth Episode of the Visual Scholar Podcast - With Tim Mcburnie.
Let's talk Hustle vs Hard Work. Should we Embrace the Grind? Or Avoid Burnout? How do these concepts help our creativity... and the final art we create.
Below is in Automagically generated summary so you can check out the content and also to help with search functionality!
---
ARTISTIC GRIND AND HUSTLE CULTURE
The grind is often seen as part of being an artist, with intense work expected in jobs like VFX and game development. Companies exploit young artists' eagerness, leading to burnout. Freelance work isn't much easier, requiring constant hustling.
PRESSURE IN EDUCATION
Students face pressure to grind through exercises to reach a professional level, driven by the need for validation.
HARD WORK AND CREATIVITY
Hard work is necessary for success and creating great art. However, the grind can lead to early burnout and health issues. Many idols who worked excessively hard didn't live long.
REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
It's crucial to set realistic expectations about the amount of work needed in the industry. Understanding the industry's demands helps artists prepare for their first jobs and enjoy the process.
UNDERSTANDING HUSTLE CULTURE
Hustle culture promotes constant work and minimal breaks, which can be harmful. While working hard is important, it's vital to maintain health and well-being.
CREATIVE FLOW AND DEADLINES
Deadlines help focus and push creativity, but excessive crunch can cause burnout. Recognize the difference between productive pressure and harmful overwork.
DISENTANGLING WORK ETHIC AND HUSTLE
Work ethic and hustle are different. Hard work and dedication don't necessarily mean constant grinding. Enjoying the process and building a healthy relationship with art is more sustainable.
SOCIAL VALIDATION
Artists often seek social validation through hard work and high-profile projects. Understanding your personal relationship with hard work and creativity helps manage stress and expectations.
FINDING YOUR RHYTHM
Everyone's work rhythm is different. Some thrive under pressure, while others prefer a more relaxed approach. Identify what works best for you and adapt accordingly.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Realistic Expectations: Understand the industry's demands and set realistic expectations for yourself.
2. Creative Flow: Use deadlines to focus, but avoid excessive crunch.
3. Healthy Relationship with Art: Build a positive relationship with your art, separating work ethic from the hustle mentality.
4. Personal Rhythm: Identify your preferred work rhythm and adapt your approach to suit it.
---
This Podcast is designed to help you demystify the world of Art, Productivity, and Creativity. So you can get better faster, and enjoy your Art Journey. We discuss Drawing, Painting, Illustration and Entertainment Design. Along with Productivity and Career Advice.
The Visual Scholar Podcast is designed to help you demystify the world of Art, Productivity, and Creativity. So you can get better faster, and enjoy your Art Journey.
We discuss Drawing, Painting, Illustration and Entertainment Design. Along with Productivity and Career Advice.
Find Visual Scholar as an Audio Podcast Here:
Apple: podcasts.apple...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6VbdwbiZqy8nqb90ruKQCX?si=21b9c1d02c85419f
Show homepage on The Drawing Codex:
www.thedrawingcodex.com/podcasts/the-visual-scholar
Learn more about Tim Mcburnie:
Learn Drawing and Illustration at The Drawing Codex: www.thedrawingcodex.com
Check out The Drawing Codex UA-cam Channel:
/ @thedrawingcodex
Portfolio: www.timmcburnie.com
www.artstation.com/tim-mcburnie
timmcburnie
timmcburnie
How did I not find this channel sooner?! Really appreciated your through and careful exposition about this topic. Personally, I'm still trying to figure out my "rhythm" of drawing everyday. I strongly feel the need to work longer hours (say 10 hours/day?), 5-6 days a week to make it as a freelancer. Of course, I'll be thinking about how to accomplish this healthily. But the longest I can do is ~5 hours at the moment--with so much distractions to fall into, along with chronic dry eyes and a sore hand--which is a pretty disheartening but I'll keep trying. Thanks for the podcast :)
I really appreciate your sober navigation through the topic. A lot of the certainties that other careers may be able to offer through additional time and effort directly correlating to more money or more success is not guaranteed in art careers. I have certainly ebbed and flowed, working projects that have demanded more of my time and attention for little money- but pushing through those projects opened up an opportunity to work a project that was more relaxed and paid very well. It takes careful intentionalism, not just aimless engagement, to develop. Telling a story through a thoughtful design, composition, and color is what is important- the speed or labor that that work demanded will never be seen by the viewer, so we are only doing it in service of that design delivering. More than anything, I've seen myself getting overly attached to a piece and working and reworking it because I was concerned how that piece would represent me if I DIDN'T overlabour it, moreso than the piece requiring more work on it (when the crunch wasn't necessary to get finished)
There is a slight difference between crunching and hustling. Crunching is an additional labor to meet a high-pressure deadline, where hustling's connotation ( to me, at least) is additional labor of one's own volition. Maybe having multiple projects going on at once, or running a shop for your work as you also make it. That hustling seems to be an unfortunate necessity to be a full-time independent artist.
One other thing that I don't recall you mentioning, and this advice is particularly for the independent artists or projects who have control over the work they are required to do- but planning is so important to prevent yourself from needing to do unnecessary additional work and in turn requiring crunching. If you're writing a comic or animation, pay attention to what you're writing as relevant to what you are trying to communicate with your story. Is it absolutely necessary? If it is important to you and how you feel your story should be told, by all means, crunch to make it happen. But if is an additional labor that you'd be convincing yourself to do but you lack confidence in how it may contribute to your larger picture, it may be worth asking yourself how you could reduce that workload for yourself.
I have heard often of crunch in game design and one in particular I've thought of was Red Dead Redemption 2, which has an incredibly well-done story, amazing visuals, and such thoughtful attention to detail that it has even been praised for successfully recreating the exact wildlife of the time period it is set in (late 19th century America). This already was an incredible feat of game design and the workload had caused many developers, artists to lose fundamental time with their families and friends- ruining marriages, fracturing relationships with their children. But there is a chapter in the game where the characters get shipwrecked on a Caribbean island, meeting a whole new cast of characters and enemies and environments. That attention to detail? It's here too. They've also recreated the wildlife, with its specific nuances and differences to the other environments of the game solely for this chapter of the game. The island is created with such vivid detail that it is simply a flex that the studio had the budget and workforce to create a whole separate area for that two hour chapter of the game. You could make an argument that the chapter had to be in the game for the story, but considering the already insane amount of work the game demanded of its team, you have to ask yourself- was it necessary? If it needed to be in there, did it need to be so thorough? Does the area really lend itself to the whole experience to be so much more rich at expense of the additional time, labor and money it would require? Could it have worked to have us follow another character on the mainland while the other characters were off on this misadventure, maybe adding that chapter later on as an additional expansion to the game after the game had released? There is certainly a failure of leadership when the workload isn't honestly assessed and asks so much more of the artists than is rational of any other work environment.
Thankyou! I think I might needed that
My first career was in law, and the field has very high stakes “crunch” whether you’re preparing for a trial or on the regulatory side defending or leading a government investigation. So by the time I encountered “crunch” in concept art for games, I understood that it was primarily a mgmt tool that’s used to motivate/ pressure the workforce to finish a project within deadline. Not to say the entertainment industry is not important, but it’s far different from the sort of pressure you feel in law or medicine. I see young artists for whom this is their first career & they get so stressed bc they truly view deadlines as fatal. I wish there was a better way to motivate teams that didn’t involve burnout
One final thing I’ll mention- when someone asks me “do I need to draw everyday?” I tell them yes, if you want to draw as your job, you’ve gotta be able to do it almost daily. In my experience, people who can’t make art without inspiration should stay hobbyists & not pursue a career in commercial art/ design. Note that this is the only career in which workers even ask that question. Can you imagine a physician or an attorney asking if they’ll need to do their work daily or whether they can just wait until they’re inspired? 😂
Feng Zhu is the Gary Vee of our industry no doubt haha
I'm totally right there with you. I need that challenge, without it I tend to also have way less results. Once I have work and a goal and i get that motivation rolling, it snowballs. I'd love to have a cabin somewhere and just get paid a decent sum to just draw and be a hermit lol.
I also think that as much as most of us would like to say "No, crunch is horrible etc etc" but I feel that a lot of us, like you said, default to drawing till our fingers bleed due to the fact that it is a passion and we love it. I also strangely feel like this is another reason why artists do so well in collabs and creative groups. We don't really want crunch but we do and by having cohorts that we respect and look up to we tend to "inflict crunch" ourselves in a healthy way.......anyways, your vids as always feed the inspiration cogs, so thank you so much. Another great one!
Looking forward to watching this later!!!
📦 🐈