The Artists Mind: The Secret to Success by Stephen Silver

[Music] Welcome to another Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast. Hey Tony, oh, you're not here, that's right. I'm recording this without Tony because he is just busy right at this moment. But this is our intro to a really fun talk we did with the great Steven Silver. If you don't know Steven Silver, he is a character designer that's been in the industry for a long time. One of his greatest best known hits is that he designed the look of the Kim possible Disney TV show back in the day. We'll say it was 90s to early 2000s somewhere in there. But amazing look and style to that, very consistent and it's a well-loved show. But since then Steve has contributed to so many TV shows and feature films. And now has got it very heavily into teaching, has some great books too that are both art and inspiration. He also has his own Academy. It's called the silver drawing academy.com. Silver drawing academy. And he is passing along character design knowledge there. And I've heard amazing things. That's great. If you want like an expert giving you one on one and also video based lessons, that's the place to go right there to learn character design. He's also now teaching at SCAD in Savannah. And that's a new thing. He also went there. He also before that was a talent recruiter for Disney. And so he just comes from a lot of different angles of not only being an artist in the industry, but also hiring people into the industry, knowing what the big studios like Disney need and want and are looking for. Now I think you're going to enjoy this talk. So this talk that we're about to launch into, he calls it the artist's mind. So it's a lecture that he gave at animation, you know, expo this last one our very first one back in 2025. We are just now into 2026. This is the beginning of our new year. And so you're going to enjoy this if you weren't able to see it at animation, you'll expo. We are offering it today for you to listen to this is Steven silver talking about the artist's mind and digging into how to make it in this career, but the mentality behind it also. Thank you, Stephen for doing this for us and enjoy. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for showing up. That's the most important thing show up. Everything that you do, that's the one thing that I always remember. So one time was show up and that's how we end up again. And I just want to tell you just one of my favorite quotes that I've ever heard that I repeat to everyone. It's by Mark Twain. And he said, I've had many problems in my life, many of which have never occurred. So one of the problems guys that we face that we think about oftentimes it just never happens so try to not get yourself in that in that head space. Today what my goal is is to share with you just a little bit about my journey into animation. But I want to just break down on again, just the mindset philosophy things that you all want to do and just think about questions we got to ask ourselves as we're moving into this industry. Again, the animation is just one aspect of the sum of everything when we're involved in just art. So it's something for you to keep in mind that just remember. I talked funny because I'm from England originally. I'm not from New York or Boston or any other place. I was, I actually was born in London England when I was about six years old. I was looking out my bedroom window and I saw something sitting in the lawn and I went downstairs and I grabbed it and it was a sketchbook. And the sketchbook I don't know where it came from most likely the heavens came down onto the ground and in there was just filled with portraits and landscapes and everything else. And that was from that point forward I started drawing and that's where my journey really began. Unfortunately people ask me all the time to still have that sketchbook but I think my mom, I'd like to blame my mom. But I probably lost it being a young kid when I moved from England to America. And then coming to America, I was very fortunate that I come from a large family and I have a twin brother and his smart and I'm not. And I was just really focused on art. So all through my schooling and learning I was able to cheat off of him in school. And it got me through school because I was just making fun of my teachers the whole time all the way through. And then I went to high school and I started drawing for my high school newspaper. I started to fall in love with cartooning. Discovered my first books that I ever discovered was Mad Magazine and that was just like more trucker and Jack Davis became my heroes and the people like wow who are these people I want to learn from them. And then I also discovered more in Rockwell. And that made me realize I want to be a painter someday. But again I just realized for me painting wasn't in my cards. I just didn't have the patience. I just couldn't do it. I'm just very ADHD and my my country's all over the place balancing, hop-skipping and jumping every minute. So for me just to do line all work was perfect and I could settle with that. And in high school we entered a high school competition. There were 19 high schools and all of us were going to compete against each other for the best political cartoonist at the high school. And I went to that competition and I was so proud of myself because everyone in high school, Steven, you're the best. You're so good when you're in a big fish and a small pond. You're like in high school you think you're so great and your parents are telling you all the time how great you are. You're wonderful and you're the best and everything you have. They were giving you so much support and love. So I agree and started to believe that. And then enter this competition and they start to name off just all the awards. And I was just so excited and they just like remember there's 19 schools and 19th place goes to Steven Silver. You know, so that's it. You're never going to make it as an artist. You'll never be anything. And I put my help between my legs. But I was again, I was always making fun of my teachers in high school and that eventually led to me getting character moving into caricature drawing in theme parks and I dropped out of school. My parents said you got to go to college. You got to get an education. If you want to be something do something in your life, you got to have the degree and I tried it. I tried it. I went to community college and drawing all my assignments, even in college. And the counselor's called up my parents and said, this guy doesn't need to be here. He's drawing on everything. He's not paying attention. He's going to fail. You know, this is horrible. And I just told my parents I'm out of here. I'm dropping out. And they said to me, Steven, if you are going to drop out of school and you're not going to go through with this, I was 18 years old at the time. Then you got to move out in the house and start paying for your own bills and everything else. If you think you can make it as an artist and that was the first step for me when I realized that I'm kind of in it to win it. You know, this for me, it's just about moving forward. There was no falling back for me. And that's where a lot of my drive in this industry has come from because that was it. My parents were very supportive, but they just wanted to give me that extra push. And it was the best thing that they did and I moved out. I started joint characters and theme parks started my own company, my business. Eventually, like I mentioned, when I just first started the importance of showing up, I can't tell you can all look back at certain points in our life where we've met certain people. Whether it's someone in a job opportunity, a person that we're in a relationship with, whatever it may be, we just showed up at that certain moment and we can over call something like that. And that was for me. I was always showing up everywhere that I went and there was a cartoonist society association in San Diego. And they would have guests because every month. So I showed up and I would always bring my portfolio. That was number one. Always just ready to show my work to someone just in case. And I would show my work. And again, I got a lot of rejection. I didn't, this was before the term ghosting and everything else came around. But I was ghosted a lot all the time. This was before the internet, everything you told people you call them and people wouldn't call you back. And I showed up at a meeting one time and there was this storyboard artist who worked at Warner Brothers animation doing story and storyboards on a show called Tree Kazooie. And I showed him my work and he said, hey, you're pretty good. And a little rough. You know, just go go back and work on it just a little bit more. And that stuck with me. And he just said, just when you're ready, keep in touch. Keep in touch. I like that. Keep in touch. And that's what I did. And I kept in touch with this guy and eventually I called him. I worked my ass up for a year, just going to life drawing, just drawing, just whatever I can, just finding books, copying stuff all the time. And I reached out to him and I said, hey, I love to come up and show you my portfolio. He invited me up to Warner Brothers. And then he took my portfolio. I don't know how things work but they're so mysterious. It's a magical and beautiful in so many ways, but that week when I was there they had just fired their character design and they were looking for a character design on the show called hysteria, which was back in 1997 and they saw my work and they liked it and they gave me a test and then from that point that's what got my foot in the door and then every time from there on again I was always showing up. Anytime there was a gallery exhibition, anytime there was a guest speaker and that's the most important thing that we all have to do as artists. It's not just about going to a class and working and trying to better. You go to hear what people are saying, what people are trying to tell you, what people are trying to teach you and through that you just start to hear things. One of my favorite things to do today is still watch documentaries. I love learning from different people in their experiences because it always sparks a different kind of interest for me. All right? So that's kind of how my career started and from there just helps skipping and jumping from one studio to the next. Again, always showing up and that's the most important thing in animation. It's networking. Again, you meet people and you hear people say things. You know, you want to, my dad always told me you got to keep your ears in your eyes open and your mouth shut. And I was one of those things. I'm always kind of keeping my ears eyes open and just asking people questions and being inquisitive and that helped me get from one show to the next show and that's another really huge part of it. I just want to, I just threw on this up here. I think it's very important. Things that I'm going to share with you today, take notes, right? Because if you don't, I promise you it's in one ear out the other and you'll forget. And what I want to share with you are just some real business practices too. Again, as you're getting yourself into this right mindset to be a martyrs and this journey that we're all on and going through. Well, this is a great philosopher. His name is Earl Nightingale that I really love. And he writes, he says, "We become what we think about most of the time and that's the strangest secret because and that's what it is. We become what we think about. If we think that we're going to become a good artist and improve ourselves, we will. If we keep telling ourselves, I'm no good, I suck at this. I'm never going to get any better." Well, you're like, "Your wish is my command," so to speak. This is going to be the reality, right? You're putting this forward into your head all the time and every time I meet artists so often, look at their work and say, "Hey, that's pretty good." Man, it's all right. It's not so good. It's coming back. You know, and you know, there's always self-defeating and we don't have to be the self-defeating artist. We don't have to do that. Even though you suck, tell yourself, you know, and just really, that's the bottom line. It's just so important, again, just to have that mindset and philosophy of this as you're moving into this. There's a great book that I read is written many different books. This philosopher is named Arson Sweat Marden. He's written so many great books on philosophy. One of the things that stood out with me is where he said, "The castle in the air always proceeds the castle on earth, meaning you've got a dream, right? Whatever we dream about, whatever we think about, we can bring about, right? You guys have probably heard that saying. It's just very important to think, you know, imagine where you want to be. What it is you want to do. Do you want to create your own intellectual property? Do you want to make your own children's books? Do you want to get what is it that you want to do? I met an interesting person already. This meant a lot of interesting people this weekend, but this one girl that came up to me. That she was doing, I don't even know she's even in this room, but she would go by Pixar, and she was doing chalk chorings on the ground of all the Pixar characters, these beautiful illustrations. And just by doing that, she created, got noticed. And from there, she ended up getting just people, the news station interviewed her, and it kind of moved her career. I met this other artist who, when he was, he was going to school, and the Pixar team came to his school, and he took all his artwork, and where did he place it inside the bathroom? Because he knew, all of them had to go take a piss. And they took his artwork, and he actually got some work, and he ended up working for Pixar, and just working through there. So, again, it's about being creative. It's about putting yourself out there and just doing something different, but most importantly, it's about dreaming, about what you want to do, what you want to be, and I encourage everyone to make sure you start your own YouTube channels. Just get that thing going, because in collaboration and everything is just so important, times of changing, and the studios are not doing as well as they used to, but what's happening is as is rise in the indie world, and you guys want to be a part of that, and don't neglect that. Tomorrow, I'm going to panel about recruiting, but what I want to share with you, just with that, I always tell my students all the time, stop waiting in line. And I was recruiting, that'd be anywhere from 700 to 2000 portfolios for one position. I was at Disney recruiting there. So, there's a lot of people, so don't just wait in line. You've got to have multiple campfires, work on different things. So, you want to act, and what is acting that's, you've got to aim, you've got to create, you've got to collaborate, and most importantly, you've got to believe in timing. Timing's the big thing that unfortunately all of us have gotten screwed over, because the internet, everything is so quick, so fast happening all the time. It's not like it was in the old days, really. It's just like you get to it, when you get to it, you move through it, but we're in this society now, where everything is happening all the time. And if, you know, so we don't believe in the timing, and that's what's so important, we just got to believe if we're putting in the hard work, if we're doing the things that we want to do, again, in time, it's going to happen. It's not going to happen overnight, so just very important. Right? So, something that you've got to do with your passions and strength, it's very important to write out things that you love and that you're passionate about. You need to ask that question. I ask people at the time, so what do you want to do? So, I don't know. I don't really know. You don't want to have that question, because then it's too evasive, and you're not going to get to the area that you really want to get to, so it's getting very important just to write those things down. And you've got to write out your strengths. What do you really, besides what you're just passionate about, what do you stress? What are you, are you a good communicator? Are you really good at telling stories? Are you really good at painting? Are you really good at character design? Are you really good at marketing? So, what is your strength that really try to write that down and put that because you can move yourself into that place, all right? And then the other thing is, you go to write out areas of your weakness. One you suck at, one you know good at, right? So, having that awareness of things that you'll weak at is going to help you get to that point of just strength. I just want to mention a lot of times in character design, a lot of you that want to do character design or animation, a lot of weaknesses are just even drawing hands, right? You'll know that, right? You stick the hands in the pockets, the hands behind the back, and you don't want to show it. So, these are weaknesses, you're going to identify for yourself and just really put that into action. Challenges are the spaces advocating for themselves, self-promotion, expressing achievements and skills. I think, again, one of the things now, it's not just about showing up anymore and getting that job. You're going to have that strength. You've got to be able to, you've got to build that confidence within yourself. People like, confident people, you do, and you meet people. You want to meet that person who feels confident. You know that they're going to help you out. They're going to hook you up. And I think having that sort of mindset is very important in self-promotion, we all are going to have to do it now. And again, we're living in different times in a different world and you better start getting good at self-promoting and sharing your work and putting it out there, whether through Instagram, you know, LinkedIn. Make sure you guys have a LinkedIn. If you don't have a LinkedIn account, you know, it's so important just to see what's going on and putting yourself out there. I think it's important for you just to write down your accomplishments and be able to express them, you know, to people. That's one way when you meet people. And basically, someone says, "What do you do? What have you done?" That you can actually say, "Well, I accomplished this and I did this and they can hear that instead of, "Oh, I don't really do much. I just sit on my play video games and blah, blah, blah, blah." You know, watch TV. You know, you don't want to be, you want to be in that realm. Okay? You got to seek feedback to identify your strengths and weaknesses, never be afraid to seek those feedback. And this is what these sort of conventions are good for. Again, you get nervous, right? You got to like, "Oh my God, there's that artist and I'm just been a fan of. I don't want to go near them." But, you know, this is your opportunity to just have your stuff organized. Don't give someone a cracked phone, you know. Don't have everything. Well, my stuff is have a limited amount of artwork and just go up to someone that people just say, you know, wherever, even when you're networking. Show different people that you're meeting here. Hey, what do you think of my artwork? And I stopped sharing my artwork with my parents when I was 18 years old because they always said, "Oh, wonderful, I was." And how great I was. I wanted real criticism. I wanted real feedback. And even your friends are going to tell you, "You do, you're awesome, you're so great." So, again, just take that with a green of salt. Your friends are very nice. There are friends, but this is why it's important to just to make sure whenever you have an opportunity to show someone else your artwork, make sure that you do that. You want to build confidence. How can you do that? It's just by joining groups. There's groups. I don't know if they, you may wear it, you guys, if you guys are probably heard of a group called Toe Smasters, which is out there, or taking the improv clogs. Putting yourself out there, you know, that sort of practice will help build your confidence. The number one biggest fear that people have, it's the craziest thing, but on this and it is public speaking. People are scared to death of public speaking or raising their hand. When it comes to questions, any questions, oh my God, I don't want to raise my hand. What if that person thinks I'm an idiot? There's all these things. Again, there's a sub to saying, what other people think about you as none of your business, right? It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of you. It's none of your business. And unless they have the cajoness to come and tell you to your face, then it doesn't really matter. But that's the idea, right? So just you've got to get out there and practice just talking to lots of people. All right, so challenges, artists, faces, problem solving. So it's just breaking down problems into bite-sized pieces. I kind of like to say all the time, piece by piece will bring you peace. We don't have to do everything all at once. Just get started. Just when I was publishing and making my own books, I committed, I'm just going to make one page a day. If you guys are working on your own comic books, if you're doing your own, whatever it is, just focus and just try to get those little challenges met. Because otherwise, it's extremely overwhelming. If you go, oh my god, I'm trying to create my own I.K. My own YouTube channel, my own content, my own comic, well, it's going to take so long and you start to create all this madness in your head, as opposed to, let me just get started. And like Nike said, just do it. You got to just be in that frame of mind. Right. Ability to collaborate and ask questions. You're always going to be collaborating with people, even when you're working in the animation industry, working in advertising, whatever you're doing. So start doing that now. Find those friends. That's the most beautiful thing about school and college. It's for people to start meeting up and have met a lot of students here this weekend who aren't telling me of all the collaborations. There's three or four of them on a team and they're making their own intellectual property. They're doing their student film and they're getting that started. And that's it. So you want to do that. And then you go to adapt once you've effectively assessed your current problem. So you're going to look at your overall, what is the problem that I'm facing out there? What is it? What am I dealing with? What's kind of stopping me? But you go to adapt. It's all about adaptation. Whatever it is, we're going to be facing problems our whole life. It never ends. It just never ends. It never ends. You're always going to be dealing with some problems and somewhere or another. How are you going to assess it? How are you going to adapt to that, which is very important? All right. So challenges on this face. There are many stress factors that are going to occur. So looking at experiences is learning what opportunities are not failures. That's a big one. It's just like everything that you do. I've never been-- I just don't believe in failure. I just don't. I try so many things and I haven't succeeded in a lot of things. But it was an attempt. And I tried it. And I got back up and I did it again. And then if that didn't work out, I tried something else. And I'm always just balling and weaving, going up, down, and all around and just trying to find a solution to whatever problem that I might be facing. And sometimes it doesn't work out. And that's OK. It's not a failure. At least you're going to look back at it and go, you know what? I tried. There's nothing going to be worse for you in this life than regret. Nothing worse than regret. You don't only get to a certain age and go, why didn't I just try? Why didn't I just do it? Why didn't I just ask that question? Why didn't I just put myself out there more? There's something-- if you guys I don't have it here, but check it out, it's the top 10 regrets of the dying. You guys can look that up on YouTube. And there's a science to it. It was a hospice nurses put together the top 10 regrets. And when they were dealing with patients that were on their last breath, and all of them were saying the exact same thing. So it's an awakening. You wake up and go, wow, OK. A lot of it is really profound in many ways. You've got to take care of yourself. Physically and mentally. So this is very important to be able to give yourself breaks, to put yourself out there. Do any forms of exercise that you want to. If you guys just go on walks with my dog, that's enough for me. It puts me out there, right? But there's something that I need to mentally do for myself to just get up and walk away and not get so stressed all the time because it can be extremely stressful. Again, especially if you guys are a lot of you guys in school, with all your projects and everything. But you've got to understand, too, when you're in school, sometimes you have that ability to work a lot. You have a lot more time to work on something. You might have, hey, you've got two weeks to finish this assignment. But in the real world, you've got one day to get that done, meeting those deadlines. So it's very important to build yourself up and make sure you get taken breaks, get up and take breaks and find those hobbies. Surround yourself with supporters, people surround yourself with those friends, those people who are going to encourage you. I can't tell you, I don't say I got rid of a lot of friends in my life, but I definitely did dumb friends in my life who just weren't supporters, who weren't encouraging. I had many girlfriends who weren't encouraging. They're always drawing. Why are you going to draw? And it's just like, this is what I do. This is who I am. And eventually, luckily I found my wife and she was all in. You know, loved what I do. So you've got to find those people. And not anyone is going to be a supporter of what you do. But you've got to find those people and hang around them. I love this saying, old keys won't open new doors. So your ways of thinking, your old thoughts, it's not going to think of fresh things all the time. New ideas. Keep coming up with new solutions to problems and try different things wherever you can. I believe I've been my own boss since I was 18 years old. I'm 52 years old now. But it was something that really just kind of carried me through life. And a lot of that came from my parents' work ethic. Just coming, we were-- we came from-- move from England to America when I was very young. And we started a whole new life. And I watched them what they did. And they became real estate agents. And I just saw how hard they worked all the time. And that was really helped me. But making a living as an artist, you kind of have two options here. You really do. You take in the red pill or the blue pill on this one. It's just like, are you going to be a freelance artist and your own boss? Is that something you're going to move into? Or you're just going to be a studio artist? It's something that you kind of got to decide. And there's the time where again, you can definitely be both. Not been both throughout my life. But you really got to-- sometimes people, they just want to be told where to go, where to show up. Just tell me where to sit. And that's what I want to deal with. So you got to ask yourself, is this something I'm willing to get into? Do I want to freelance? Do I want to send invoices out? Do I want to go through that whole thing? So we're at the side. I right here, just we get stuck when we compare. That's one of the biggest things where I see artists really struggling a lot because of comparison. That guy is so much better than me. And this is why I'm not going to post on social media because this person is so much better. And this is what you want to do is just try not to do that. You just got to tell yourself mentally. You're going to stop comparing myself to people. And I just going to do my best. And I'm going to be my best. And I'm going to work on the things that I want to work on in order to improve. And that's what we just kind of really have to do. This was my very first-- when I started my business at 18 years old doing private parties. And I just made this, again, horrible characters. We were looking at them. But it worked. And this is when you used to-- I used to send it out to all these party agents. So they got all these people who are agents. And they sent up parties. And they were the hire me to do weddings, bar and butt mispers, just corporate events and everything. And so at 18 years old, I was making $75 an hour for doing gigs. You know, I usually do three hours to five hour gigs. And I was just starting to make some good money doing that. So one of the most important things that we all have to be is be prepared. I actually became an Eagle Scout. And I think Scalim was one of the greatest things I ever did because it taught me a lot about sending goals, getting those merit badges. And that's what it is for ourselves. We got to be prepared. You got to be prepared with a website. Make sure you have a website. Make sure you have just some promotional material. Make sure you have the business card. Sometimes I'll just ask people, just, hey, do you have a business card? And they're just kind of like tapping around. I was like, you don't have a business card. Just tell me you don't have a business card. But you know, you got to be prepared. I think it's just a very important thing. And be prepared even to know your pricing. How much are you? How much are you an hour? So there's different rates that you want to charge when you're moving in this illustration world animation world. You want to know your hourly rate. You want to know your daily rate. And you want to know your weekly rate. So those are the three rates that you kind of want to know. And be prepared instead of what someone says. So how much are you day rate? You're saying, you don't want to be the-- hmm, person, you know, because then there's no confidence in that. Again, you got to have passion. You got to know what it is that you want to do. You got to find that passion in that area, whatever it is that you're interested in. Just try to discover what that is. And you know how you're passionate about something or not? Is it something-- if you're passionate about something and it goes horribly wrong and it doesn't work out, and you just quit and you're just done, then you know you're probably not as passionate about it as you thought you were. When you're passionate about something, you will find a solution. You will find a way to make it happen. And I think it's very important just to understand what that is. You got to build your skill set. There's no beating around the push on this. Everyone can see it. There's no hiding it. What I see or what I saw definitely as a recruiter, a lot of people were hiding their skills. Their ability. thinking that they could color and paint and render their artwork. Meanwhile, the drawing was lifeless and missing and there was all the drawing aspects of it. There was no foundation. So you can't hide your artwork just by becoming a great painter and try to color. And again, if that's what you want to do and just be a painter, you know, background color stylist or whatever you want to do, background painter, illustrator in that realm, just you can work on that. But you've got to build up your skill set. And how you build up your skill set is by the practice. How much practice are you putting in? How much practice are you willing to put in? Again, what's more important? Just binge watching, breaking bad or you know, just, you know, what are you doing? So you just got to just start thinking about setting those times for yourself to put in that practice. And it's not about just practices and about, oh, I just did this for eight hours today and I worked really hard. But you know, five other days out of the week, you're not doing anything. That's not real practice, right? So real practice is even if you could just put in 10 minutes a day on something, hey, I suck a chorn hands. Let me do 10 minutes a day, just chorn heads. You will see yourself rise. And this is why it's just so important to having awareness of what you're trying to do. You have to have the vision. Know where it is you want to be. Where do you want to go? Where do you try to achieve? Again, that's the top priority here because once you know where you want to go, then the internet can do wonders for you. All of a sudden, now you know what questions to ask the internet and you can just start guiding you. I want to try this. I want to do this. I want to set up there because you know why? Because everyone else has been so many people before you that have done it, you know, before and that's what's just very important. The next thing is persistent. You've got to be persistent. You just got to keep going. You got to keep trying. And I say this in the animation in a world especially with portfolios, it's very important to be persistent with recruiters, right? And it's not about you don't want to be a pest. You don't want to be that person that every man and age, and you get it, if you get it, take a seat, and you see what you think, you don't want to do that. But if you reach out to a recruiter once every two weeks, once every three weeks, it's OK. I usually say about three weeks. Once every three weeks, you can follow up. Do follow ups. A lot of people, they just send something out once, and they just wait all I didn't hear back, they rejected me. And that's it, and they move on. They just give up, right? So we just don't want to give up like that. Patience. You've got to have the patience, right? We know that just getting better in our artwork is just going to take a long time just to get to where we want. But also just waiting to hear back from people. Sometimes we can start creating that story. And like I mentioned, I've made many problems in my life, many of which have never occurred. They say, oh my god, they didn't like my artwork. They hated it. I was horrible, and then two days later, they respond to you, like, oh, thank God, you know, it's just-- but then for two days, you stressed yourself out for no reason. So it's important that patience and the courage to put yourself in situations that are comfortable, that are scary, that are dangerous. Oh my god, look at that person over there. I don't know what to say to him or again, you might even just be trying to ask someone for a raise or anything else. Yeah, it takes courage. It takes courage to raise your hand in front of a whole loop full of people, right? These are things that you can start putting yourself through these tests and start to build up that courage within yourself. Now, I don't know if you guys have ever seen Susan Boyle on this "Grinscott Talent," but it's fascinating, right? You watch her and talk about confidence. Everyone just laughed at her, just like, oh my god, look at this. Weird, real coming out here, doing all her crazy stuff and antics, but she had confidence. And she came out, and she won the whole thing, and just blew everyone away because she had such a beautiful voice because people will judge books by their cover. That's just the real-- unfortunately, this is the society in the world that we live in. So this is something where, but if you're confident, that goes just a really long way. And concentration. You've got to have the concentration. You really just got to make sure that you're paying attention to what it is that you're trying to do. What do you trying to achieve? What do you trying to make happen for yourself? Stop worrying about, oh my god, I got all these 50 million laundry-less things on my mind that I got to do. Just if you have that certain illustration, you're trying to do focus on it, right? It's all about getting focused and concentrating on these things. And I can never decide which one to use on here, but they're all great cartoons and photos, but just never give up, right? On what it is that you're just trying. I love that cartoon on the bottom left there. Again, so close, and we get there often, right? So close, and we gave up because we tried something, but we didn't give it enough time through there. This one of my favorite quotes is your effort to terms your outcome, right? So how much effort are you putting in? And that's going to determine where you end up. And if you're not putting in that time, who are you to blame? So try not to fault other people if you're not putting in that time and effort. All right, I just want to share with you guys 10 steps to becoming an entrepreneur, because I think in this day and age, and knowing where the animation industry is right now, unfortunately, and the sort of, the humps it's going in, we can't just focus on our work anymore. It's a main factor of it, but we have to be entrepreneurs and those artists that are going to show up and become entrepreneurs, are ones that are going to start succeeding in this. So again, you can't do what you know your strengths, what you enjoy, what excites you, what gives you satisfaction. Start there. That's the first step in doing this. portfolio preparation. Make sure that you're targeting your work towards the job that you desire. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of people don't even know what they want. So their portfolios are a mix and match of everything, and there's no voice. And it's very important for you just to really find that target for yourself. You have to have a website, a builder website, with a storefront, right? Start selling your original all work. Start selling your comics. Start selling your paintings. Start selling whatever you can. Just again, this is that era we're going into. And even if you look at everyone in this room upstairs, just selling all that own stuff. This is what it's about. And there's more and more conventions popping up every single week, everywhere. There's hundreds of conventions all over the world where you can partake in and participate and start seeing what your audience is, right? Just by going out to a place like this and setting up a table, you get to see that audience. And if people are reacting to what it is that you do, and what they like, what they don't like. So that's a very important thing. You've got to have those business cards. You've got to have one sheet. And a one sheet is just like a promotional card that may be showing you all work or something on there. Just add some of your all work design so that people can see what it is that you actually do. Again, you want to have that website and even build, make a logo for yourself. But you just about building a brand. Creating products to sell. Artists and non artists, my spine value. Make sure you love and enjoy what you're creating. And this is what it comes down to. Art is value. And people find value in your all work. And if someone looks to your all work and says, I really love that. What are they going to do? They're going to make that purchase. It's everything. From everything. People, everything be by is because we value it. I want to buy that certain car. That certain color car is because I value it. It's cool on that house. So that furniture, that shirt, or those shoes, is because I find value in it. And so therefore, I'm going to purchase that. So what you're trying to create as an artist is a product that you love, that you love creating. That someone else is going to buy, where they're even a client or an animation studio or that individual person. So something that's very important to do. Social media, again, we've got to have social media. This is the day and age we're in. You have to have that Instagram account. And I set up those link tree bios, right? So that you can have that link tree that sets up and shows you just a bunch of other different sort of things that you're trying to sell or just put out there. Make sure that you're posting often and don't be afraid to promote. And make sure if you have your LinkedIn, you're going to keep that LinkedIn updated. And that's very important. Again, every artist I think should have a LinkedIn page. Just show that there on that professional side. And the marketing promote what you're offering. Advertise where it's possible. Boost posts, even if possible. Sell online. Go to street fairs, conventions, direct to clients. Short-end events, talks, research, you competition. These are all the things that as artists in this new era, we have to do. We've got to put ourselves out there. And there's nothing better than starting local. That's how I started. When I started my whole drawing path before I started doing caricatures, I was living in San Diego. And I'd go to all the local stores. And that asked them if they needed an artist for something, a logo. I even painted windows at Christmas time. I went around. I saw other people were doing that. So I went to the store and bought paints. And then I went in my neighborhood and said, hey, you want me to paint a Santa? You want me to paint a snowman? Whatever it is. And I built up my own work and made it all possible from there. Timber-- OK, OK, OK. I'm going to have to finish this. And then I'll take some questions. Pricing, I mentioned that. Established your daily hourly and weekly rates. Financial, right? That's the thing that scares artists. Well, money. Finance, I don't want to talk about that. But you have to do that. Otherwise, otherwise, if you don't talk about money and understand money to be honest with you, people are going to keep taking advantage of you. And they will. Because people go hard to sort of dime a dozen. They don't really know business. They don't really understand things. You got to understand that and work with it. So setting up a DBA, which is doing business as a account, create a business name, use invoicing programs. If you're ever invoicing, should that you're a professional out there? safe for taxes, that's a big thing pay your taxes. And you know, set up investment accounts, honestly. If you could just, just even if you got $10 a week, and if you could set up just an investment account of some sort, I promise you there's a lot of young faces in here, it's going to do yourself a favor. I luckily started when I was 18 years old. I just started putting little bits of money away and eventually got me to the point where, you know, it worked out where I could buy a house and I could do different things. So again, it's very important and don't be afraid. Be persistent, research, follow through, follow up, connect, reach out, show up. These are more very important things that are going to take you to that next level. Again, there's a lot of business sort of mindset stuff going on here, but if you're not doing it, you're going to look back in the rear view mirror and go, dang, why didn't I start back then? And that's the big thing for me was, I never want to look back five years from now and go, why didn't I start that five years ago and I told me to do that and start that, right? That's what's going to happen. So you want to make sure that you put this stuff into action and start now because the future happens quickly. We're moving at a rapid pace here. Before I take some questions, I just want to say something that was really stood out with me that I want to share with you was John Bon Jovi from Bon Jovi said when he was getting the Rocker World Hall of Fame award. He told a story about his when he was 18 years old and his guitar teacher told them, hey, John, you're good. You're not that good, but you're good. But you got to decide are you in this for play or are you in this for keeps? But is if you're in this for play, just play around, play occasionally, go to the beach, shoot some girls, play guitar, do your thing, but then if you in it for keeps, you know what you're going to do and what's required to do. You got to just work on that guitar until your fingers are just ground to the bone and just make it happen in that realm. And that's what he chose to do and he committed. I'm in this for keeps. That's what I want to do. So I encourage you all to think about that. That as you're moving through this universe of art and this art journey is just to decide for yourself whether you are just in it for play or if you're in it for keeps. You know, a very important thing to remember, okay? So with that said, does anyone have any questions about anything? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So did you struggle with drawing? Or did you have those circles? Yeah, no, I always struggled with drawing. I was again, I showed to somebody, even have some other artwork that was just again so bad. I always struggled. It was never not a struggle. And eventually though, I built up my confidence through just drawing. I started going to life drawing where I neglected doing that for so long and it wasn't until I was 18, about almost 20 years old where I said, we know I really got to commit to figure drawing and that will help build my confidence and help build my line work. And then by doing live caricature, really help build my confidence because I had to hit lines just straight away. But yeah, it never came naturally. And that's we got to remember, you know, it's very few people are truly born with the gift. Yeah. And sorry, yeah. You were talking about how if you wanted to mean the images or ways you wanted to be in the front of the studio. I just wanted to be in the front of the studio, but how do you keep it making the father in the middle? Yeah, why are you in there? One of my philosophies and rules is the 80/20 rule. And the 80/20 rule for me is even when you're working in a studio, give them your best, do your best, but really it's 80% because you have to reserve 20% for yourself. When you go home at night or whatever on the weekends, whenever you can work on your own independent thing, you have to do that because they say that because so many artists today have put all their eggs in one basket working at these studios, and then the studios lay them off and they have nothing. So you have to work on your own independent stuff, even if you are going to be working as a studio artist. If you don't, you're going to really regret it. Yeah. OK. Anyone else? Yeah, go ahead. That was a lot of us right here, but how do you do it? Burn out. Yeah, burn out is one of those things where, for me, it's all just about taking those breaks, getting up as much as possible and just realizing that if I don't complete this or really finish this, what's the worst that's going to happen? Can I give myself this extra little bit of time? And you're going to experience it, but just know that it's oftentimes temporary. But don't do it to the point where you get yourself sick and just so bad. But I think it's very important just to get up, do something completely different besides R. So what is that other passion that you have? Maybe it is just a walk or getting out or going to the beach or going to the park or doing something else. And that's how you do it. We got to make room for ourselves mentally, for sure. Yeah. Any other questions? No, I've kind of-- oh, go over here. That is-- You have ended up a lot of fun. No more words. All right. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, I mean, I think we all know our kind of limit on how much, when you're drawing, you can start to get that completone wall or something. Again, this is self-love and for yourself to know that, did you need to get a brace? Maybe I should start now, get that brace for my head. So I need to see a chiropractor. I would go to a chiropractor every week just to have them just mess with my hands and do that. But yeah, you want to be very careful with that in your eyesight because this is our livelihood. So do anything preventative in the beginning that you can. And if you get to that point where it's hurting so much and so bad, you better act on it quick and don't procrastinate. Don't wait on something like that. But again, it's all just awareness and the self-love and self-respect, you know, if it all comes with it. OK? Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, I think so. The question was, if you get into that artist's rut where you start hating everything that you're drawing, how do you break out of that? One of the best things that I did and always done was start finding that artwork then really inspires you and trace it and copy it. Copy other people's artwork. That way you kind of take all that pressure off of yourself and now you get into learning mode. And now you're just going on top of someone else's artwork and use your fundamentals. OK? And they're starting with a circle. They've got the eye line, the center line, to start building up your drawings from there and allow yourself to trace and copy other people's artwork because it gets you out of your own space and your own head. And that was really one of the greatest things that I ever did throughout my career to get me to where I am. Because as an artist, I'll be talking about this more tomorrow. But you have to be extremely versatile if you want to get into the animation industry. And you build up that versatility by copying other people's styles and other people's works. So that way you become this chameleon and this ability to do that. So that's something that I would do just to give yourself some relaxation time and not make your head explode. OK. Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah. So the question is, how do you kind of curate your portfolio so that you have a voice and you're not all over the place? The biggest thing is just, again, identifying who you are. What do you want to do? Do you want to be a background artist, layout artist? Do you want to be a character designer, a pop designer? What area do you want to focus in? And then you have to show just in a range of styles. So let's just say on the character design front, you want to show preschool style. You want to show like squash a stretch, like sponge bobby type style. You're not putting in fan art. You don't want to put in fan art. But you're showing that you have that sensibility. And that's what's going to make it stronger. Because all the studios want to see that. As a recruiter, we had to see it. If we just saw one style, you were pretty much out. You just, again, there were so many portfolios. And if all we saw was just that one look, move to a side straight away. You didn't even get an opportunity. So that's why you make yourself stand out. Yeah. One more question? OK. How do you talk about a little bit, like, becoming a more out of our own aid and moving out of your parents? Are there, like, another instance or, like, a criminal moment that really solidified it? Or are there-- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, for me, just because I had no degree, I had nothing else to fall back on. So my philosophy was I can only fall forward. And there's no falling back. There's no plan B for me. So that was it. So my mindset, if I don't become an artist, if I don't do this, then what am I going to do? Just work, retail, or something for the rest of my life. And I knew I didn't want to do that. And I knew I never wanted to wear a suit. I didn't want to wear a suit and tie and show up to her. That sort of business so work. And so that was it for me. It's just like there's no turning back. There's no other way. And I think, again, it was the best thing. It was tough love. But it was the best thing my parents did for me to move me ahead and just keep forging. And that's all I ever just kept doing. Yeah. All right. All right, guys, thanks so much for coming up. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]