Friday February 7th Inspiration

A quick update on myself: I am currently taking a 3-month break from editing full-time in order to concentrate on taking three simultaneous classes at Concept Design Academy. The classes are Intro to Digital Painting with Jason Scheier, Intro to Story Development with Louie del Carmen, and Figure Invention for Animation with Toby Shelton. I had the first sessions of all of these classes this week, and my level of excitement for this semester cannot be overstated. Each teacher is a phenomenal artist (and also, coincidentally, all current Dreamworks employees) and the skill level in each class is intimidatingly high, with a majority of the students already being working story artists in some form. I feel nervous, excited, but most of all, ready to dive right into new challenges.

Today, I thought I'd feature a little inspiration, brought to you by my reddit addiction.

I was thinking earlier this week about how glad I am that I started this whole process a year and a half ago. I'm not going to lie, it's been a really frustrating year and a half. My relationship with art can get pretty unhealthy when I'm not performing at my own high standards, which is 99% of the time. I've poured a lot of time into it, time I could've been spending doing anything else, reading, watching TV, hanging out with my friends or Dave, playing videogames. And yet - I'm able to stand here today and feel I've improved, ready to take on these more advanced classes and move up a rung in my ladder of artistic challenges. So:

^ This is a favorite phrase of mine to repeat to myself.

And finally, this video.

I watched this today and had one takeaway (besides stunned amazement, I mean): you can either be the person drumming... or you can be one of the spectators, momentarily distracted while they do their shopping. For my entire life, I've been a spectator: living my life mostly through consumption, of food, media, products, while admiring the few content creators who put themselves and their skills out there for others to enjoy. And now I'm trying to be the drummer. Wish me luck.

© Gina Florio 2014