August AMA: Answers (Patreon)

Thank you to all of the $5+ Patrons that submitted questions! Please take all of this advice with a grain of salt as always.

If you'd like to submit questions next month, pledge just $5 a month (that's less than 2 Starbucks coffees!!) and you'll also get early access to digital art minitutorials!

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 Thorne asks: How do you get yourself out of a rut? There are definitely times or days I feel off when creating art and that the work I am producing isn’t up to a standard that I would like it to be. Most of the time I just step away from my tablet for an hour or for the rest of the day because I feel disappointed. Do you have some advice you could give to help with these kinds of feelings? 

*Every* artist has ups and downs, and every artist has different ways of coping with them. Ruts can happen from a lot of different reasons, and I've found they're the most frustrating while you're still learning a lot early on. Maybe you're struggling to fix something that you see wrong in a drawing, or maybe you just didn't get enough sleep last night.
It's tough to navigate when you need to put a piece down and when you have to power through. When in a fulltime gig, you're making art all day and need to be able to push through some of those moments. That said, rest is essential. When you do get to that fulltime job, I still recommend stepping away from your desk 3-4 times/day (or however feels good for you) to refresh your mind and eyes.

First of all, I'm a big believer in rest. Stepping away from your desk is the right thing to do- get up and let your mind relax for a little bit. If your brain isn't taking a break, then it doesn't count! Doing other homework or playing video games is not a break. Going outside for a walk, making yourself some food, getting some groceries, or other low-mental-effort activities is good for you. Sometimes the problem with the piece you're struggling with will come to you.

Second, I recommend exercising regularly, eating healthy, and taking care of yourself physically. When your energy is better and your body is healthier, so is your mind. I'm able to push through tough moments much better when I'm physically well.

If you're getting into ruts really frequently, I recommend keeping a journal. Every time you get really stuck or frustrated, take a log of what you're struggling with, if you're bored with the piece, how much sleep you got the night before, the last time you ate a meal, and any other important factors. Try to find a pattern so you can identify and attack the common problems.

I've found that art ruts tend to be less and less common for me as I get better at critiquing my own art. I'm the most confident while creating a piece when I can identify what's wrong with it, because then I know I can fix it! Don't forget to step back while you're working and make sure you're not overrendering. Spending too much time wrestling with an individual component can be exhausting, too.

youngizzik asks: Question about the game industry, how many conventions are really just for fans, and how many are for actual folks in the industry? Are there any conventions you especially recommend for folks to attend? As a college student there are a lot of folks recommending that we go to GDC, but I'm just not sure I should spend that kind of money on it as a sophmore? 

Good question! There are a lot of industry events, and frankly, a lot of the biggest ones are actually for fans and/or shareholders. Great networking can happen around those events, but they're often *super* expensive and held in cities that are really pricey, like San Francisco.

There are a ton of other ways to network without destroying your wallet and, to be honest, I recommend these to the average Joe over jumping between conventions and wearing down your resources. E3 is very corporate/fan-focused and GDC tickets *start* at like, $350 for just entering the Expo hall. Should you try going to GDC? Sure, if you can. I've gone the last 3 years and made life-long friends there...but I didn't make them on the Expo floor. I found them in the park and through other friends and while waiting in line for coffee. If you're going to GDC on a budget and you just want to focus on building relationships and meeting people, it's perfectly fine to just get a hotel and not buy an actual pass. There's so much happening in the vicinity of the con that you can have an awesome time without dropping those couple extra hundred dollars (or more) especially when you're in college and already pouring money into your education.

So what are the most cost-effective ways to network?

1. Be active in relevant, professional online communities. I'm not talking about commenting on random Artstation projects- I mean to interact with people where you can have an actual conversation like in forums. Post your art. Ask for feedback. Ask questions about hardware, software, whatever you need in order to start chatting with people. Give feedback and participate in the discussion. When you find yourself frequently talking to the same people, connect with them. I recommend being active on Twitter because there is SO MUCH dev community on there. Twitter has been the #1 social media resource for me to find work and meet other artists/devs over FB, tumblr, and Insta.

2. Go local. Find your closest IGDA chapter and go to their meetups! Even if you aren't in a dev hub city like LA or Seattle, there are always events going on. If there isn't a regular meetup near you, consider starting one! You could be amazed by the community, even if it's small. The intimacy of local events is SUPER valuable in the long run. Having personal, genuine relationships with other professionals is way more important than handing out 500 business cards at a huge networking con.

Most local events are organized through Meetup or Eventbrite, so pop in your zipcode and try to find something new! Reach out to the organizers of the event if you're not sure if it's what you're looking for and ask for details, and go with a buddy if you're nervous!

3. Check out if local studios (if there are any) are hosting events, or if neighboring colleges are holding workshops or talks. Build relationships with the other students around you and don't discredit them, they'll be your coworkers one day!

So... I recommend going to GDC at some point if you can (I recommend holding off until your work is at a professional level) but don't feel like it's the only way you'll break into the industry. Build friendships, be proactive, and focus on the human level of professional connections. That will get you farther than you could ever imagine.

Justin asks:  Ive drawn and done lots of forms of art for most of my life but I've never considered my work to be production-level. I tend to draw very fast and have lines that aren't too crisp. Would you recommend a change in technique or just layered refinement of sketches? Also, since digital art is new and weird to me, what brushes would you recommend to start with? I always just grab the round brush at like 4pts because I'm a n00b but I'm sure there are better things to use for what I want, and pros and cons to all types of brushes. 

Brushes were a big topic in last month's AMA, and I included an exercise for creating cleaner lineart in there too. The tools that we use are really important, but I highly recommend thinking of brushes as shortcuts. At the end of the day, I really love just sticking to the hard round brush for lineart/sketching/blocking in color, then using this chalk brush for rendering. The size of the brush depends on the size of the canvas. I never work under 1500 pixels on either side and I keep my hard round brush in the 4-8pt range for clean lineart. For sketching, I use a larger brush so I don't get caught up in details too early. Always work from big to small!

A quote from last month's AMA regarding how I build up my brush library, which I generally only keep to about a dozen brushes or less: "When I'm painting and I realize it can't do something I need to do, then I find a brush that can. I grow my brush library very slowly and I do it on demand, not supply. 95% of my work is made with that free chalk brush, plus the default hard round brush and soft round brush in Photoshop. The rest is situational."

spooks asks:  Could I ask for an explanation on painting water? Specifically, lit water -- there's a way that artists seem to convey translucency and colour filtering through it that I can't quite get my head around. Thank you! 

The #1 thing to do when you're not sure how to paint something is to find someone that has done it already. Research! Find references!!

Painting underwater (I'll admit I haven't done it much so take all of this comes down to a grain of salt) is best communicated by color and certain light patterns. Underwater photography, without filters or artificial lighting, is very blue or green. Warmer colors, especially in deeper water, is absorbed so the cooler tones are the only ones left, so if you're painting something that's very far below the surface, then make it more green! (Here's a really good article that describes how color works underwater.)

Another thing to try is to paint caustic effects. You can see this underwater on the bottom of a shallow pool, or reflected up onto the bottom of a boat or dock. They're the dancing light stripes that very clearly communicate that light is interacting with the surface of the water. They too only can be seen a few dozen feet underwater, so if you're painting a deep sea creature, you'll probably avoid them...but if you're painting something near the surface, they're very clear. 

I hope this helps!!

Woozel asks:  Honestly, biggest question I have, I see everyone doing digital paint with linework and then suddenly it vanishes. Is it that you only have it on the top layer and then render the shadows? 

This really comes down to workflow. A lot of artists will paint under their lineart and just slowly toggle on/off their lineart layer until they don't need it anymore, or they'll slowly turn down the opacity until it's almost zero as they're rendering underneath it. It really just comes down to using the lineart less and less until there's enough information in the rendering layer that the lineart isn't needed as a guide anymore.

I personally like to actually paint on top of the lineart. In the beginning of a drawing, I'll make my sketch layer, then my lineart layer on top of that. I turn off my sketch, and create my flat color layers underneath the lineart. Once I'm happy with the flat colors and values, I'll then paint on top of everything. It's just how my workflow has evolved, I like how the dark lines kinda peek through the painting :)

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Thank you SO MUCH to everyone that submitted questions and were Patrons this month. You're all making my life so much more flexible and reducing my stress like crazy by being a part of this big adventure with me. Have a wonderful August!