Monday, May 11, 2015

One of the Addictions

So for this week I wanted to touch on Personal Projects.

I'm going to take the advice given to me by Jake Parker (http://mrjakeparker.com/).  He did a workshop for my club last semester and it was amazing.  I don't know if he's talked about his Five Addictions of Successful Creatives on the web yet, but it's fantastic stuff (it might be on his youtube page:  https://www.youtube.com/user/jakeparker44).

One of the addictions is creating personal works or giving yourself personal projects.  The reasons why this is a good idea?
  • It's a creative outlet
  • Helps to focus on skills that need focusing
  • Helps to figure out what you're good at
  • Gets you exposure which leads to actually getting paid for stuff (imagine that)
So a couple months ago I decided that I needed to start a personal project.  Mainly all of the artwork that I've done has been for school assignments, and while my teachers are pretty fantastic and they can give out awesome homework (when they're feeling benevolent), the assignments are what they want us to do, not what I want me to do.

Now back to Jake.  Jake gave some guidelines for personal projects.  The first one is:

          Give yourself constraints: Give yourself a deadline, limit your style and subject, use one                                medium.

Now back to me.  My brother-in-law is creating an RPG and he wanted me to illustrate it (everyone knows that family is cheap labor).  I decided that this would be my first personal project since I don't really count this as an actual job.  That being said, I wasn't able to start until just recently (hooray, finals are over!)

So now I've started.

Just downloaded Painter and I'm ready to go!


The second guideline is giving yourself an Accountability Partner.  Someone (maybe even more than one) to keep you on task and remind you when you're self-imposed deadlines are coming up.

For me it's my sister and brother-in-law and myself.

The third guideline is making sure your personal project is actually worth it.  Is it going to bring in more business?  Will it help you overcome some technical problems you're having?  Or are you going to shove it in a corner of your closet and only bring it out on burning day?

It's more challenging than I thought, but it's still pretty awesome to be doing it.


And the fourth guideline (and in my opinion the most important) FINISH IT.  You started it, now you've got to finish it.  Don't let it mold away on your desk, you finish that puppy and show it to the world.

There's just something about doing what you want.  You don't have to worry about school, bosses, or whoever breathing down your neck telling you to redraw that landscape for the tenth time.  Personal Projects can be liberating . . . and they can also lead to some serious dough.

Till next week.

- Alisha

P.S. If you want to see my reference for this project check out my Pinterest page.  It's pretty awesome. www.pinterest.com/ajon3338/earthhewn-dwarf/

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Well, the laptops lead to even more dough and then you can get new laptops. It's a cycle of life.

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