That no one wants to hire someone who just draws very beautiful. Those people stay working, posting their artwork on the internet. A lot of people go oh, that's really fun, or that's really interesting. Oh, beautiful colors. But if it can't serve a purpose, then you're not gonna get hired. It's, everybody who gets a job, I always explain it's because they looked. When you do storyboards, the people who get hired for storyboards, are people who can compose within a box. If you can't compose within the box, it doesn't matter how good your action is, or how good, you know, you are rendering things in forced perspective. None of that matters, because if you can't compose within the framing of a shot, then nobody is interested in hiring you. And the same with design, if you can draw a lot of like weird concepts, and you have a great imagination, it's going to help you become a great designer. But it's not going to be the reason you get hired as a designer. The reason you get hired as a designer is that you're functional. That your work can be translated to be handed off to somebody else, and that's whether you're working in traditional animation or video game stuff. It has, a designer's work is always passed off to somebody else. I guess anybody can learn from this advice. But one of the first things I do when I go apply for a job, I ask, see if there's anybody else around who I might know, or might be able to even look at their work. And then I kind of figure out what's this all about. The reason I have so many books in my house, is because when you work as a designer somebody will say, I like Ronald Searle, or I like Mike Mignola. Oh. The basic artist, the artist I think who doesn't get the work, goes, oh, okay. I'll copy Mike Mineola. The artist who gets the job doesn't try to copy Mike Mineola. They copy Hugo Pratt, John Curry. A little bit of Mobius, maybe you look at the layouts of. All the stuff that Mike Menola is looking at, if you do that, you kinda get a better idea about where the underlying part of the design. Cuz so much of design too is, unfortunately having to match a lot of different styles. And a lot of design too, is you're gonna be working for people who are pretty terrible communicators [LAUGH], a lot of directors. Don't know what they want, they just know what they don't want. So they'll make you draw a lot of stuff. My bigger frustrations in design, have always been having to dumb something down, or to change something that I have such a clear vision on. I see the character, I know it's the right choice, but you do have to do it. Always. Cuz unless you're designing for yourself, you know, you're designing for a client, always and the client has the say. And it was sort of like something you were imagining, which is they want to be part of the creative process too. And a designer's a weird thing. It's such a specific job to have, but at the same time it's suppose to be a collaboration. [LAUGH] But it feels so isolating in lots of ways. Where you're just like, and like you're alone all the time. You're thinking about. You know, you're just, you've lived with it and then you have to share it afterwards. And that part of it, it's like, it goes against the collaboration, because you can't sit down and collaborate with the design. It just almost never works that way. You can sometimes get info before you start a design with a client, and that helps for sure to figure out the perimeters of where you can go with the stuff. But, for the most part it feels like you're alone, and then all of a sudden you have to collaborate. I'm editing part of it. [LAUGH] The finale, I think. Like, I don't believe anybody is made for any type of job. I believe you can learn it. There's skill sets. People will tell you, like, you either have it or you don't, but it's not true. That you have a certain skill set as an individual that will make it like your designs, very unique and very interesting, if you embrace it. But, everybody can learn this stuff. But then you're like, the part of it is like, that's crazy is that you can do this forever. And you're still like, why am I still learning something? At this age it can be so frustrating sometimes, where you're just like man, I cannot believe like, how much more I still have to learn in this field. You know? I think about it all the time still, where I'm like things that I'm thinking about right now are very, like I was mentioning, comic strips stuff with. I feel like right now in design, everything's so Japanese influenced, that I think wait, you just look at trends that are happening, and you go, oh, that's gonna end. It's gonna end and people are going to be caught off guard. What's the next thing? And I get obsessed with trying to figure out what's that next thing. And I mean I dont' wanna unveil it on tape what I think next things are, cuz I'm still in the process of leaning it. But it's so much of design too, it's like it's anticipating what could be happening next. So, like a lot the stuff I'm having to constantly teach myself new tricks. Right now. So, I'm looking at a lot of stuff that is in opposition of what's currently happening. And I'm practicing that stuff in my off time, to have a job in the future. I've been fortunate enough to be a designer for, since 2003, so over a decade at this point. And it's very sad. Because a lot of people don't get to do that. They come in and they have a certain skill set. But they don't adapt to the current situation. And I'm always telling my friends, don't get caught up in this thing. Don't become so great at just doing this one type of design, and then you know, when it goes away, all of a sudden now you go away with it. You have to learn the principles. You have to be adapting all the time. It's always so much work and so much challenge. But I think the people who, If there's anyone who's meant to be a designer, it's the people who really like those kind of challenges. It's the people who really enjoy getting up every day and going like, oh. It's like a detective. [LAUGH] Like, how do I solve this problem today? Like you kinda have to believe that it's important and that. You know, I always also tell people that to be an artist you kinda have to believe that you're better than, like, 90% of the people who do it already. But that you'll never be as good as the ten percent that you look up to. It's kind of like that's the mentality you live with as a designer. You're sort of like, oh I'm good at doing this. Cuz if you didn't think you were good at doing it, you couldn't show up every day for a job doing it. But you also have to like think you suck enough to make sure you keep staying hungry and keep practicing.
