Because it is nighttime, they have dimmed the lights & now the children

Must sleep, swaying their dark

Sea tumble hair among the surge of white sheets. Their mind a latticework

Of imagination & shifting constellations.

Parents have unrolled & loosed from their plastic day. Tomorrow’s

Soccer game & acting class

Secreted away behind the firmament of adulthood that separates

The child from themselves

The evening’s ritual, teeth combing & tongue champing before the mirror,

The inhaler & the pill is over.

The long back, down, up, forward pageantry of the child’s parading

To bed, is over.

The parents drift past the door of the daughter whose Lululemons, towels, 

paint tubes, small canvases

& stuffed animals lay sea tossed among the furniture, walls & floors 

& whose wild hair waves

& breaks against her mother & past the door of the son whose girl-heart & play, play, 

play betray His father’s good 

intentioned plan to form a man with his bare hands, with thumb-s...

One of the universal laws of humanity is that any act of creativity or creation will be met with an equal and opposite reaction. We call this resistance.

Steven Pressfield has talked at length about resistance and has done amazing good for artists everywhere. In his words, Resistance is “experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”

The experience of resistance comes in many forms. It comes as a feeling of pain or doubt or insecurity or even confusion in our creative process -- a crippling confusion that leaves us unable to decide or finalize a decision.

The most common place in which we experience resistance comes when we start to finish a work.

When all the detail starts to come sharper into focus ...

Have you ever started a project and then... just fizzled out... never finished it?

I know I have. Tons of times. Sometimes, no one noticed. Sometimes, everyone noticed.  

Over the years, though, I've learned one simple truth - It's a game.  It's a game I call the Confidence Gap. 

There is only one way to win it.  Stay till the end of the video below to see how:

Let me explain this a bit.  It all starts...

PHASE ONE: THE DREAM

As a creator, you think big and dream large. 

You aim high, excited to face any challenge standing between yourself and your Dream.

You study. You learn. You train. You practice...

... but then... 

PHASE TWO: A CONCERN DEVELOPS

You start to develop some Concerns. You think:

'Did I choose the right career path?'

'Why didn't that person like my work?'

'Do I know enough?'

'Am I using the wrong software?'

PHASE THREE: THE CONCERN BECOME A DOUBT

Before you know it, these Concerns become Doubts. Suddenly, you're thinking:

'I think I chos...

Reason number 1 that it sucks and by "It" I mean this life as an Artist, as a Creator...

The reason is that we have locked ourselves into one of the two different modes that we need to operate in as Artists.

We've locked ourselves into dreamland where we focus on the big picture...

or We've locked ourselves into reality where we focus on the How, the tools, the techniques that we "think" are important...

The key, though, is to learn how to jump between these two modes..

After all, skill is not enough to satisfy an artist and dreamland is just dreamland unless you have some skill to make it happen.

Want to break through your blocks?

Join me for the ArtistX challenge here:
https://www.ryankingslien.com/p/artist-x-challenge

The single biggest mistake I see artists making today comes down to one choice: Quantity over Quality.

Most people worry about HOW LONG it takes them to make a piece as opposed to HOW GOOD the piece is.

I understand this. Time is something we can control. Quality does not often seem like something that we can control.

Tell me, is there a story in your mind that sounds something like this:

If I can do this faster then at least they'll see that I'm quick even if my artwork isn't "good" enough yet.

I understand this story but this is a mistake. It also sets you up for long-term failure and disappointment.

Getting Faster Is Not Getting Better
Recently, I had an interview for an artist, named John, who was interested in taking the Character Artist Boot Camp. John was working in the industry already at a company that created 3d prototypes. His job was to turn a design into a 3D printable model as quickly as possible.

When he first started the job, John loved it. Every day he was workin...

Sometimes the things that are going to hurt you aren't always obvious. Sometimes the people taking advantage of you aren't always dressed up like villians.

Sometimes the people that are taking advantage of you are simply trying to take care of themselves. They're not thinking of you.

If you lead with your heart, like I do, this is a problem. You sympathize with them. You might want THEM to be happy but you've been down this road and you know that YOU won't be.

The Late Fee
Just the other day I got an invoice from a social media marketing assistant name Claire that had in small print a late fee for $75 A DAY with some arbitrary due date.

To add to the problematic nature of this, emails are contracts in today's law. If I did not catch that I could have been liable for hundreds of dollars in extra fees for a job that cost $350.

At first, I was pissed. Wtf?! What did I do to this person to desearve this dumb ass notification. Who do they think I am?

I took it personal. I lead with my ...

When did you first start saying no?

When did you first start saying no, I’m not good enough; I’ll do this.

I’m not an artist. I’ll do this?

When did that first happened? Because you know when you were younger, when you were a kid, that was not happening, right?

But at some point you had a “realization” that this was not gonna work they way you dreamed and you’ve got to change course.

Maybe a parent talked you into it. Maybe something in life happened and you weren’t on the path that you really wanted to be anymore and so you started to say no.

No, I won’t pursue this dream. I won’t pursue this passion. I won’t pursue this thing because...

… I don’t have the skill. I don’t have the ability. I don’t have the power. I don’t have the resources. That’s a big one, right? I don’t have the resources. I didn’t go to school for this. I gotta go to school for this.

So tell me in the comment here, when did you first start saying no?

Now, tell me what would happen now as an adult, as someb...

I used to think my drawings had to be perfect, good little children who would never embarrass me in public.

So, i was pretty stern with them. I yelled. I screamed. I said bad things to them... Hoping that they would mend there childish ways.

And I almost lost them.

I still remember, the moment when I saw, clear as day, how my tough love approach to my art isolated me from my own gifts.

To me, now, it's never a question of skill. Just like it's never a question about money.

Make money. Learn skills.

Don't focus entirely on money. Don't focus entirely on skill.

Do the work but don't become the work.

Remember, why do we do this?

Is it to be loved and adored? Is it to have fun? Is it to chase that elusive joyful feeling of creation?

Whatever it is, the way you do it should be filled with love and kindness towards yourself and your art.

We are the ones who build the walls in our life and we are the only ones who can smoother the fire of creativity inside those walls.

Have you ever felt something in your life hollow out? Just not have the same joy?

I've got the house to myself tonight. Sonia and the kids are having a sleep-over at their Uncle's loft in DTLA and this just isn't a home without Sonia's laughter or those beautiful, screaming kids with their fights, their laughter, their hugs.

The house just feels a little bit like a shell of itself, really. Not a house but just a room.

It got me thinking about an email I got today from an artist. He didn't feel the joy anymore in his art. Is this permanent? Will I ever feel that joy again for my art, he asked?

Today my house might feel empty and hollow but tomorrow the kids will be running around laughing their heads off. I miss them now but I know this is only temporary.

When we loose the joy of creating, though, it can feel like it is never coming back. I had that feeling. I do not like that feeling.

But if my house can go from a place of joy that is filled with life to an off-strip las vegas ...

Creating a full-length animated movie could be as complicated and as expensive as creating a live action film. Sometimes, it is actually more expensive to create an animated film than a live action film. An army of graphic artists, animators, writers, voice talents, and cinematographer is necessary to accomplish a movie project. Many people are involved in creating just one animated character. Even live actors might be necessary for the motion-capture characters. Realistic movements and emotions of animated characters in many 3D movies are made possible by motion capture. The physical movements like walking and facial expressions are digitized and manipulated to create realistic characters that could be humans, aliens or monsters.

Before the making of an animated film could actually be started, the initial pre-production steps must be initiated. Regardless of the length and complexity of an animated film, it undergoes the basic preproduction steps that can be summarized in the general...