chainsmoking and binge drinking are great ways to regain motivation and ward off discouragement.

They are also great ways to get kicked out of the community/old folks home

I have ADHD, and this way if I draw something I don't want to, actually, I'll burn out very quickly. So drawing something horribly self indulgent is the only way to keep going. Very helpful for breaks between commissions. And helpful solution if your mental health detoriates over external reasons (politics, it's all that)

Freebase, nooooo!

I've been on a bit of a slump when it comes to drawing digitally (especially lineart) ever since I finally got a pc again after not having one since May, and that pisses me off cuz not only do I wanna draw fast, but now I also have to contend with my urge to play games now that I have a better pc than before and there's so much I can play >:(

Don't sweat it. Keep drawing and practicing and you'll draw faster as time goes by. As for games, play them, just remember to stablish a limit so you can both play what you like and keep working in what you want

Unfortunately discouragement is artist daily bread but sometimes giving yourself time to get new inspiration is very important ... of course it doesn't mean to just do nothing - for me it was pretty interesting experience because I discovered that I like and had a lot of satisfaction in building stuff - I never knew that I have a knack to it ... - now something like 4 years later I already build my own desk in U shape, table with sliding tablet in it and illuminated shelf ... this time of different creativity give me boost in drawing...

P.S - If somebody is interested i can put photo of my builds :3

Am I the only one who finds it really discouraging when one of the friends I have fron college keeps telling me I should apply to Disney if I want to break into animation?

Like I get that he has good intentions but he makes it sound like that its the only way to break into the field when I know for a fact that most of the time recruiters are looking for something specific per project and I'm doing everything I can to get my portfolio up to snuff by networking with others on here and taking on different projects, which I try explaining to him this and why I want nothing to do with Disney.

Putting aside the fact its also who you know that gets you into the industry not what you know.

I’m going to be brutally honest: Your friend sounds like he doesn’t know shit about the industry. Is he even an animator himself?

I think @jthrash also said something somewhere about wanting to be an animator while avoiding the mainstream animation companies. Maybe he has some knowledge on what paths there are for you to take.

He isn't and tbh I'm about ready to lay into him something he doesn't know if he keeps insisting on applying for Disney.

Don't get me wrong, I love my friends and they helped me get through some tough times when I was in a dark spot but some of them really do not know when their advice isn't good at all.

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED!

...And unfortunately, outside of working with @sirjeffofshort on a Sketched skit in the past, as well as a tiny 3D animation for the Chuck Jones Center of Creativity (probably the highlight of my animation career efforts so far, although it was an unpaid internship during college), I haven't had much luck turning my animation into a full-time job, as opposed to a hobby. Like @DioShiba said, it really is about who you know, not what you know. And with Hollywood's tendency to absolutely blacklist or "cancel" people who fight too hard against the industry's status quo, knowing people who once worked in Hollywood, but eventually left because they didn't like the direction mainstream entertainment was heading, doesn't count.

Like I said, I worked an unpaid internship at Chuck Jones Center of Creativity, so while Chuck Jones himself died back in 2002 (I was 7, then), I have the immense privilege of knowing his surviving daughter and nephews--but the Center of Creativity is a non-profit (which is why the internship was unpaid, although my boss was still nice enough to give me a hundred bucks as a Christmas present, at least, the following holiday), and they frequently have to ask Warner Bros for the rights to "borrow" characters Chuck Jones himself created, so it's not like I've since had an easy path to working at Warner Bros-Discovery in particular. There's also the matter that under Zaslav, Warner Bros' commitment to, at the very least, re-booting Looney Tunes for the younger generation, has been...MIXED at best. Many of the classic episodes plus the well-received newer series has been removed from Max; Wile E. Coyote vs. ACME was cancelled AFTER production finished; The Day the Earth Blew Up will still come out, but it will be shown in theaters by a small company with hardly the resources WB-Discovery has (Ketchup Entertainment) because Zaslav wrote that off as a tax-write-off, too; but there is a children's show on Cartoonito starring cutesy versions of Bugs and Lola Bunny, and of course Hollywood in general right now is more interested in rebooting existing IPs than creating new ones, so Looney Tunes isn't completely dead under current leadership, at least. Chuck Jones in his later years was very critical of how Warner Bros was handling his characters in the 1980s and 1990s, to the point where he was kicked out of a pre-screening of Space Jam for harshly criticizing the creators of that movie for supposedly ruining his legacy (or so I've been told), so being associated with him might actually be a knock against me if I every applied for a job at Warner Bros, not something that could help me get a job there.

My college itself seemed to have groomed me for a job at Blizzard, specifically, since it was closer to where I lived at the time than all the LA studios and most of my professors + the school guest speakers worked on some of Blizzard's best games, including OG Warcraft III and StarCraft. Unfortunately, I was probably too shy to fully take advantage of these connections before the school suspiciously closed down for good right after my graduation, and of course the school closing down was also a setback since they promised to give me extra help and connections to get my first job (most likely at Blizzard) post-graduation. Turns out my school was so infamous that the outgoing Biden administration and his Department of Education literally bailed me out of paying student loans this past year due to the school not honoring such promises to students before taking our money!

Some other former celebrities that I could name-drop due to knowing them at some point in my life include Lou Ferrigno (played the Hulk on TV in the 1970's--still looks like a real-life Hulk at like 80 years old, just less "green"); the actress that played Marty McFly's girlfriend in Back to the Future; a former Disney artist who told me to NEVER work at Disney because they went "woke" (his words, not mine); and controversially, one of the US Gold people who localized Super Dimension Fortress Macross as "Robotech" in the United States (due to US Gold's copyrights, Americans can only find and legally watch the Robotech dub, I've had to watch the original and arguably-superior SDF Macross version of the show through...other means,,,). All cool connections, but unfortunately not connections that could get me a job at a studio simply because they've retired from show business and the places they used to work at have changed so dramatically in the last 30-40 years that they would be unlikely to get a job if they went back.

I guess what I can suggest is to give yourself grace and recognize the industry itself is in a tough spot right now--I've had ZERO trouble getting literally any other day job, AND without having any borderline-nepotistic connections in these other industries, either, while I think I recently learned that unemployment in VFX a year after the dual writer's-actor's strike is close to a whopping 40% (and of course, studios are still investing in potentially-job-eliminating AI as if the strikes and negotiations never happened at all). Rockstar veteran art directors have been losing their jobs for the past several years, so you could have the absolute perfect portfolio that looks better than what people working in studios now produce, yet still be rejected because studios right now are so risk-averse, even hiring someone outside their industry "bubble" is too risky right now, let alone hiring unknown talent to kickstart an original IP. Draw simply because you enjoy it right now, and hopefully when things FINALLY stabilize somehow, you'll be more prepared to get a job in the new entertainment "Golden Age" than people who just spend this time worrying and griping about lousy sequels making a ton of money.

I would also recommend investing in portable hardware to make it easier to squeeze in time to practice your art skills every day, no matter how busy you are with your day job or if your back hurts to much to sit at a proper computer. I especially recommend an iPad and an Apple Pencil or something if you only draw 2D art or do frame-by-frame animation--a proper desktop PC is only necessary for stuff like Blender, Maya, cut-out animation in Toon-Boom Harmony, or anything else that involves processor-intensive rendering or automatic tweens between key frames.

This is such a wonderful idea for a thread, Creatives need to stand together, support and inspire one another, particularly in this day and age, also a YouTube playlist is a genius idea.

The best ever advice received was offered as just general life advice, but I think it definitely applies to being a creative. Despite what you think, your thoughts, your negative voice, the self saboteur, they don't control you, you are the one giving them power over you. I've seen so many people give up on their dreams because of them, and end up just settle for a pedestrian life. It especially does not help when you have people, like my own family, "advising" you to give up on your pipe dreams and get a real job. But I never gave in on my dreams. Even when I at times I feel so disheartened, questioning if putting all my time, and effort for very little reward is actually worth it. But the alternative is a dull, passionless existence, and I can't do that.

The thing that really breaks my heart is the all the great things that never even saw the light of day because the creator felt like a failure or was forced into the machine and spat out on the other end as a piece of meat.

When it comes to your creative endeavors, I have seen and heard a lot of people compare themselves to other creatives, I've been there. You want to be as good as ____, to have their recognition, and their fans, but the brutal truth is you will never have what they have, because you are not them. The ONLY person you should ever compare yourself to is yourself. Improve on what you did yesterday, what you did months and years ago, learn from your mistakes, but also, as David Bowie once said, "If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting."

The moral of this story is you are great, and the sooner you stop fucking yourself over and letting others drag you down, the sooner you can become a self-sustaining entity of immense creative power.

You got this ❤️️

A reminder that your art doesn’t need to be perfect and you don’t need to be a perfect artist. Perfection is impossible because we’re only human and all humans have flaws. Those flaws will bleed into your art and that’s ok! Try not to be perfect simply do your best!

flaws are the best: they create anomalies, and anomalies bend into creativity

Anytime I hear "Wow you draw so well! You should work at Disney!" it's like a more peer-level version of when my Boomer dad would be like "Wow you type so fast!! You should work for Bill Gates!".

Only you can be you, so make what you wanna make man. Just live your life the way you wanna live it.

Hey, me again.

Something just feels off this holiday season, it feels like there’s something more I should be doing for art or creative output, but I don’t know what it is/can’t put my finger on it.

I’ve already finished my yearly art project a few days ahead of time, it’s sitting in the art scheduler. I have a couple other holiday artwork ideas I’m debating on how to do, and I have another vaguely festive little thingy I made spontaneously thanks to a friend’s idea.

Is it because my friends are doing the secret Santa and I feel left out even though I opted out on purpose? It doesn’t feel like that’s the answer, but maybe.

I also am a bit disappointed that I tried to apply for the Tankmas Adventure team and didn’t get anything. I know I didn’t submit my very best artwork, but I’m not sure I could’ve contributed something of that caliber with the deadline.

All around, something just doesn’t feel right and I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what it is.

Trying my best to get through a hefty art block. Haven’t made a finished piece in months and I really wanna get around to earning money off of my art again. Had a couple of people through my socials ask for some self portraits and I hate how I’m goin through this block whilst there are people actively asking me for commissions and willing to pay me.