Learning, focus, art, 10000 hour rule and entrepreneurship

[kerm]

Recently I read some books. Actually they were recomended by Chris Oatley. He mentions them all the time in his podcasts. The books are: 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferris and The Dip by Seth Godin. Books were good, I did not agree with everything in them, but they were interesting. After the books I somewhat started to search the internet by typing authors names in google. Some interesting videos were found. I would like you to watch them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDtkBsWgzWE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tylLgJ4rpTI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6K60mkmho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm3vq_zkOn4

Now, what's the point. First of all I would like to remind you the words of Chris Oatley who said that every artist should be an entrepreneur. Instead of working hard to look for clients and try to please them, try to come up with your own ideas for projects and find the audience for them. Quite interesting idea, probably nothing new. It somewhat goes with the Seth Godin and Tim Ferris books. Anyway, the people who make the most money out of entertainment industry aren't necessary the creators. Is it good or bad, that's not the point here. What I would like to put attention to is the mindset of average artist. We struggle to get better and better. To train our skills the most. Art is hard and needs a lot of practice. There's no doubt. What kind of made me wonder was the thing that most artist are planning to do when they actually get those skills. Land in dream job, get hired (wherever), get more commissions(from whoever). Aren't those quite vague and not precise goals? We want to do something, that unnecesarry we will be happy with, to eventually get money and forget about whole thing. Isn't that lack of planning? Here comes the entrepreneurship... Entrepreneur has everthing planned precisely (at least he should have). He know what tools he would need, what are the risks and benefits. He strips of unnecessary things. This is a project oriented thinking. Now we come to learning. I must say that the speeches by Tim Ferris and Jonathan Fields about "accelerated" learning really opened my eyes. Those guys are so precise. So focused and with apropriate and most efficent tools. This is something that I think artist are missing. We kind of go around everything. For example Burne Hogarts book called Dynamic Anatomy has 70 pages of preface where author mostly moans about the state of modern art and the dualism of art and science. Pretty entertaining, but still I bought this book to learn anatomy for f... sake! Anyway, what came to my mind after the books, videos and Oatleys podcasts is that we should be more precise. More project oriented. For example - want to do game that is mostly 2d and contains isometric buildings - train yourself for that purpose. Gain proper visual library, learn to push the design further and further, learn to draw greatly in perspective. Learn proper color mixing. That is a lot, but still, for this purpose you skipped human anatomy, character design etc. I don't want to say that those things are useless, but for your current project they are irrelevant. Maybe, your next project will be a comic book, then you will stick to anatomy, character design and so on. Of course I don't want to be rude or upset anybody. Futhermore I might be wrong. That is just a thought. Let me know what you think of this. I think this idea could be helpful when dealing with overwhelming amount of art issues, unstable market and persons who want to make a use of you. In this way you know what is your current focus and because of internet it isn't that hard to find audience. You work for yourself, not for somebody else. If you fail, what will eventually happen, you can learn from failure and try again. If you succeed you probably will be more happy than a freelancer or a person with artistic day job. And having a day job doesn't mean you cannot do your own projects. Who knows, maybe that is even safer way than learning alot, quiting day job and struggling as a freelancer.

[Madzia]

Probably what you are saying is best ways to achieve success in short time. You are absolutely right that focusing on getting better as an artist is vague, chaotic and not planed at all. But I always will admire the best, artist who not only can draw horses and cowboys riding to right but those who could draw any image they wanted just like old masters. I have a huge book with old art and I go through it every day thinking "if someone would today drawn a concept art for a game with such precision that would knock everybody to their knees". Your strategy is good for work projects, when you are working in company on something precise like gloomy, fantasy landscape, you should be interested in those topics the most. But personally I believe in targeting highest you can. Even if you never achieve your goal and stops in middle it will be still higher than in middle of closer goal.

[kerm]

You're probably right my old friend. Not arguing... But it also means that 10000 h of chaotic training doesn't equal 10000 h of precise, focused training. So probably, acording to above knowlegde it would be wise to have an 10000 hour plan divided in little 20h steps. :)

[Liberty]

Doing nothing but art is already very focused thing to be doing all your life.
Where do you draw the line to specialisation?

[kerm]

Art - could be fine art, contemporary art, character design, prop design, environment design, whatever... Probably doing a hodge podge - every day something else training would teach you less than focusing on one problem - for example gesture and working it out day by day for next month or so.
What's more if you come up with a project, u will focus on solving its problems the best. For example your project is doing a big and refined fantasy battle scene. You think what kind of tools you would need, for example: figures in persepective, gesture, adequate color and light to the scene, composition, some visual library/reference stuff. U work on every step in order to get to satisfying level of skill and then apply those to your project.

[Rognoll]

So what you're basically saying is, you have to learn what you want to market, right?
I kind of understand what you mean. You can take all the time you nead to do every single thing right, but un fortunately, you have a limited lifespan, plus, you've got to eat, so you don't really have that much time to learn to do everything.
I've always thought that the only difference between a hobbyist and a professional is that a professional knows how to sell his/her art.

Probably what you are saying is best ways to achieve success in short time. You are absolutely right that focusing on getting better as an artist is vague, chaotic and not planed at all. But I always will admire the best, artist who not only can draw horses and cowboys riding to right but those who could draw any image they wanted just like old masters. I have a huge book with old art and I go through it every day thinking "if someone would today drawn a concept art for a game with such precision that would knock everybody to their knees". Your strategy is good for work projects, when you are working in company on something precise like gloomy, fantasy landscape, you should be interested in those topics the most. But personally I believe in targeting highest you can. Even if you never achieve your goal and stops in middle it will be still higher than in middle of closer goal.

That, although, is also true. I think, even when you work in your "dream job" you've got to keep pushing, keep diving into the unknown, keep learning, eventually you'll get better, possibly at everything, but in the meantime you need to have a job. Maybe it's just a matter of learning concentrated bit by concentrated bit. What do you think?

[kerm]

Well, maybe more of knowing what you want to do, pushing this forward as much as you can and finding an audience. It is said that 1000 fans is enough to make a living. Don't know how much this is true, but here's the source: http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/...e_fans.php
Don't mean also that quiting your dayjob is required from start, it's more like having a focued side project, whatever that is. Here's Will Terry speech on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgjHCC0sr3w
And... I'm not a specialist in this, I'm also new to those ideas. Just been reading and listening to a lot of stuff across the internet. Just wanted to ask what daggers think about this.

[Adam Lina]

I think focusing on one thing at a time is good. Like you said learning gesture, perspective and costumes for a specific idea. But as a bigger picture I want to be able to be at least proficient enough in character design and environment design in multiple genres. If I do that I might not be amazing at one thing but for example, if a futuristic environment job comes along I wont have to turn it down because I only do fantasy character design. Being too specialized in that regard would be pretty limiting and I would think get pretty boring always doing the same kind of stuff.