Yesterday a college student wrote me asking for advice on how to do what I do. It has been a few years since anyone has asked me this, and once I started writing I found it hard to stop. I think I probably wrote a bit too much to them, so I figured I’d put the meat of my reply online in the hopes that parts of it are useful to someone out there :)
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Advice is always tricky because it’s so easily misinterpreted.
Here are a few too many thoughts:
Whenever you get advice from someone, consider how they work, what they do, and how the advice they’re giving you was relevant to them and their success. Everyone is different, and building a successful career means taking yourself, your styles, your interests, your habits, and what it takes for you to feel happy and low-stress into account. Rarely can advice simply be implemented, but I have found that if I can understand how it helped the givers process, I can map it to my own easier.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Learning new things takes a very long time, and there is so much out there that you (and I) have to learn. Making games and conceptual art is extremely cross-disiplinary, and on top of that, it’s very fast moving, so there’s always more to understand. If you know someone who knows something that could be helpful to you, ask! Thoughtful people are almost always excited to share their knowledge.
Be selfish. Your time and effort are the most valuable assets you have. Don’t grind them down doing things for other people that won’t help move your career in the direction you want to go. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be nice, friendly, helpful, or a good person, but if you set out to do big things and are focused, you will encounter many people along the way who want a part of you, but aren’t willing to work as hard as you are. Extremely gifted students, extremely hard workers, and extremely clever artists, are all actually quite rare once you get out into the real world. It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever take a chance on a job that’s a lark, but it does mean it’s okay to take a chance and quit a job that isn’t getting you what you want.
Figure out what your values are. Finding success in the world of commerce is complicated. There’s a difference between deciding you want to do things one way, and deciding upon values that must be upheld. Most of what you’ll have to do to be successful isn’t anything you could even conceive of now, so deciding on a path is setting yourself up for failure — but values are easy to stick to while you are flexible with everything else. For example, my values are encouraging critical thought, being honest and fair, and not taking myself too seriously.
Don’t be afraid to interrogate your own creative process. Many artists are afraid to dig into their own processes because they fear the magic will go away. But the truth is, once you understand a bit about how your process works it makes the world a lot more knowable, reduces stress, makes it easier to talk about your work, and gives you a bit more control over when and how you engage with working.
Learn how to talk about your work. All of the people who say “your work should stand for itself” are wrong and dangerous. No work stands for itself. All work stands within a context. Some work is explained to us by culture or curators or historians or teachers, so it feels self-sustaining, but the reality is that it is not. By not talking about your work you are ceding control of the accessibility and meaning of your work to others. This doesn’t mean you should be stubborn or become upset when people don’t take what you intended from your work — the best art acts as a lens and prompts questions instead of promoting answers — but it does mean you should recognize language as the most portable and potent way to set up a context for your ideas. Language isn’t always the best way to express things, but it is often the most powerful way to prepare the world for your expressions.
Be comfortable with slumps. Every creative person hits a slump every once in a while, this is a normal part of the creative process. When you hit one, take it as an opportunity to take a step back and learn something new. I hit one towards the end of my college career, and another a few years ago. I took the first one to learn how to make fonts, and the second to get accustomed to the Unity engine.
Be prepared to have a long time where your work is not appreciated (commercially and/or otherwise). The most important and successful bodies of work are often far from cultural standards — the journey to new understanding is what makes them great cultural works. The problem is, when you’re building something so far outside culture norms, people need a lot of help to appreciate it. This help comes from many places- talking about your work intelligently, making a universe of things, and building a community around your work, amongst others.
Build a successful life where you are unsuccessful. Even if you find great success, it can take many years to get there. Being financially stable in the meantime will allow you to take the risks you need to take. There are many ways to do this. The most popular are figuring out how to get lucrative contract work, having a full-time job, having a supportive spouse or parents, or being born with a trust fund.
Build a pile of great work. Some people look at their work as a collection of hits and misses, but that is not the right approach. Everything you release should satisfy your values fantastically. One of the ways I have had the most success in terms of drawing a community is building work where if you like one thing I’ve done, you probably like almost everything I’ve done. If someone enjoyed something I made enough to visit my website, I want them to come away excited about one or more other things I’ve done. Building a pile of great work also can do wonders for building an unsuccessful successful life. Often the work you make will improve your resumé for various contract work or teaching gigs. People rarely get hired to do work they’ve never done before, so doing radical work you love often turns into a side or main business doing radical work you love.
But, don’t be precious. Building a beautiful pile doesn’t mean you should never release things that aren’t polished, or aren’t perfect, or aren’t done. Just make sure you contextualize those things when you put them out so your fans can set their expectations. It’s almost more exciting to learn about a half-broken idea and get to see inside the head of an artist you love than to get only their perfect final products.
Run experiments. Every time you put something out there, attach a few experiments to it. This is an easy way to make sure you’re always stretching out of your comfort zone and trying something new, and it’s also a great way to stay ahead of the curve. Culture is ever-changing and it’s important to always be observing it and using those observations to test new ideas.
Be humble, but always try to exceed expectations. When you accept an invitation to do a talk, or do a work for a commission, do something that’s a stretch, and then do it so well that it looks like it was easy. This can mean doing way more work in a small amount of time than people think should be possible, or learning a whole new technology to do a crazy idea.
Take care of yourself. Get enough sleep. Listen to your body and your brain. It’s okay to take a break or cancel plans. You can’t do good work if you aren’t healthy both physically and emotionally.
Fold when you have to. Every successful business person I’ve ever met has found themselves on the wrong end of a contract at some point in their career. The law is a bully. At some point or another you’re going to have to give up work you love, profits, friends, or all three. Don’t let this drag your career down. Just move on and keep working.
Lastly, here’s a piece of advice one of my mentors shared with me: Only work with people as talented as you are. Don’t work with people less talented, and don’t work with people who are more talented. It’s okay if they’re less or more experienced than you, but you want to be on the same mental level. If you’re going to collaborate on something with someone, you need to be in the same place. If you both don’t have the respect and excitement that comes from working with someone you admire, things can fall apart fast.
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