Sept 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. I apologize that this one is a bit late. It's been a hell of a mental health month.

If you'd like to submit questions next month, pledge just $5 a month (that's less than 2 Starbucks coffees!!)

~~~~~~~~~  

spooks asks: wrist pain — is it just a fact of life as an artist? is it worth/plausible to take those 4-6 week breaks for something like tendinitis? or I guess, more specifically, would any workplace be understanding of that or is it just a fact of life?

Wrist pain is the bane of artists everywhere. I'm stretching my wrists now just thinking of this. 

It is definitely worth taking extended breaks when possible, but if you do so, it's important to consider the other things you do throughout your day that flare up that pain. Taking a break might not be super effective if you're also triggering that ache by typing, playing games, or doing repetitive motions on your phone. 

Whether a workplace is going to be sympathetic or not is entirely situational, but if you're experiencing pain, I think it's better to let them know earlier rather than later. At the very least, a good team lead will be understanding and try to be aware of if it's affecting you.

When I'm working fulltime and experiencing wrist pain (always), I recommend doing stretches before you start working, then doing them once every 1.5 hours or so throughout the day. I also often keep a mug of warm water/tea/coffee at my desk that I can press my wrist against when the pain is really bad. I find that helps with relaxing that muscle, at least for a little while. This specifically has gotten me through a lot of the rougher days.

Hope that helps! If anyone else has ideas for combating wristpain, especially in the workplace, share below!

Sarah asks:  I have several if that's ok? I might also present these on the discord but would love to hear your thoughts. (I HIT ENTER TOO SOON)  How do you get your ideas? Do you thumbnail or write it out beforehand? How rough do you go with them?  How do you work with color? Do you make palettes before hand or do you make it up as you go? How do you recommend we study it?  

I'll answer these in the order they were asked!

Ideation is a skill within itself that requires time, practice, and developed workflow, and patience. I find ideation at this point in my life to actually be harder than rendering because it requires so much more intentional mental effort. Once you know how to render, you can set yourself to auto-pilot, but the design stage just doesn't work that way more me. 

When coming up with ideas, it's important to focus SPECIFICALLY on developing the idea rather than coming up with pretty, cute thumbnails that'll look good in an Instagram picture. It's tempting to focus on making them all clean and refined, but that's not *really* the point of thumbnailing. You've gotta stay loose and just throw spaghetti at the wall until certain aspects of your thumbs make you go "hey, I like this little element of this idea" and then refining upon that.

So... how do you come up with a cohesive design with strong theming/personality? First of all, having a visual library helps. I've recommended this before and I'll do it again! Have a library of references and inspiration that are organized and easy to scroll through. I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest (credits often are lost and it's hard to find the original artist) but their setup is great for this purpose.

Here's what I've found to be absolutely necessary in my exp for creating a good design: when I have my prompt, before I start sketching, I write down a list of relevant words. Maybe I have to draw a small forest creature. Well, okay, I could just jump in and start doodling some ideas, but I find that I get better results when I sit down and start that word cloud. 

What other relevant aspects could I inject into my design to make the context read clearly? "Mushroom, squirrel, moss, old wood, sparrow, bat, leaves, autumn leaves, deer antlers, woodpeckers, raccoons, pine trees, birch trees..." It gets the ball rolling. Maybe in your own mind, you're already able to picture some ideas just based off of reading that list. 

This helps me come up with thematic elements to pull from and makes the design stage more fun because I have specific tools to use instead of flopping around and hoping something sticks.

TL,DR: get prompt, scroll through inspiration, make word cloud, THEN start sketching. 

Re: color.

Any time I try to just make up a color palette all at once, I fall on my face and get frustrated. I recommend reading this post about Choosing Colors. To summarize: I pick a single color that I know I want my design to have and then choose the rest of the colors based off of that. In general simplicity is key, and looking at color psychology blogs by interior and graphic designers can help you determine what that first color should be. 

Is the character mysterious? Maybe make that first color purple, then choose colors that complement it. Is the character heroic? Start with blue or red or yellow (you'll find MANY hero designs stick to the primary colors + black and white). Then choose everything else based off of that initial color, but don't be afraid to tinker with that first one too!

Everything is relative. You don't just magically know which exact colors will be great in a design, like building the foundation and walls and roof for a house all at once. Lay the foundation (that first color) and it will guide the placement of the walls and the roof. It's much easier this way! This is absolutely not the only approach to color, but it has helped me out a lot.

Drewzelle asks:  Hope you've been doing well! I've got two questions this month!  1) My skills/passions are very focused on art and content created for/during pre-production, but I want to be able to work a full time position for a small studio, not just freelance or contract. What are some skills (art or otherwise!) that you might suggest developing so I can continue to be useful to a team once pre-production is over?  2) Something that I love about your art but feel I struggle with in my own is how your forms have such a sense of dimension and defined edges. Do you have any insights to share about how you achieve that in your art?  Thanks again as always! Keep up the awesome work~ 

I'll answer these in the order they were asked:

1) This is a great question. Basically: anything that you can do at a professional level is in your favor when trying to work with a small studio fulltime. I made a post previously about great 2D art skills to have, but I want to elaborate a bit more here.

When trying to work at a really small studio, it can be a bit difficult to find a true fulltime position. Being able to wear a lot of different hats is important, but I think it's also helpful to be open-minded regarding what can lead to fulltime work. I recently worked with a studio as a freelancer for about 14 months parttime. I was just doing concept art for them, but I was at one point asked to work on another project that their company was working on, which would have extended my time with them. (I said no because I was already committed to other things, but this is an example about how a freelance contract can be longer and branch into other opportunities.)

Some other skills to have on top of concept art:

• Art direction: the ability to manage other artists, seek out folks to contract (requires strong soft skills + network)
• Creation of in-game art assets: UI art, 3D modeling, texture art, VFX, etc
• Being comfortable working in unreal/unity to import/implement art assets
• Graphic design: being able to design merch/web assets

2. Conveying form is heavily intertwined with the use of light and shadow, as well as strong use of shape and line. Practicing form lines and contour lines is a great way to practice drawing with more volume, but it's especially important to consider light when painting believable forms. 

Consider the depth of your subject, too. If all elements of the subject are the same distance from the viewer, there are less opportunities to convey rich forms than if the subject stretches from close to the viewer then farther away!

Wren asks:  What with the amount of hours that go into the bookkeeping end of a freelance career, how many “unpaid” hours do you work a day? 

Uhh a lot. There are days that are just spent doing bookkeeping and waiting for client feedback. It can vary heavily though- sometimes I'll be working from 9AM to 8PM with only a few paid hours, sometimes I work 9 to 5 with all hours compensated. I try to have 25 billable hours each week, thankfully this is flexible due to things like Patreon. But I'm pretty much working from 9am to 6pm every weekday in some capacity, and some hours will happen over weekends depending on deadlines or overlapping tasks.