Transcriber: Larisa Esteche Reviewer: Dan Meyer
I sometimes feel that the quest for perfection
is destroying the appreciation of the mediocre achievement.
Don't get me wrong.
You should inspire to do great things.
You should set the bar high.
But sometimes,
all this focus on perfection,
it can really kill motivation.
I believe that creating something has value.
Bringing something new into the world
is a rewarding process.
But it doesn't always have to be this grand thing.
Not everything has to be the Mona Lisa
or some genius invention.
I believe that it could be something small,
something stupid,
like "Big Hand Banana Guy."
Or this really ugly unicorn.
Or the Driveotronix 5000.
Together with two of my best friends,
I run an illustration studio
called "Birgers Oterutleie,"
and we draw like this:
one small, strange, mediocre illustration
followed by another strange, mediocre illustration.
And then in time, they get to come together
to become something more.
We're not driven by the quest for perfection.
It's the appreciation of the process.
And we have a word in Norwegian:
"skaparglede."
It means the joy you feel when you're creating something.
And to us, this is kind of a sacred thing.
We have this tradition:
we draw Easter eggs.
And then when we're done drawing these Easter eggs,
we take them to a grocery store, and we go in there and we steal eggs,
and we replace these eggs with eggs that we've drawn.
(Laughter)
We also leave a small note that says,
"Happy Easter! #birgersoterutleie."
It's like a call to action.
We call it "modern fishing."
It's like you bait an egg carton,
and you wait for people to tell Instagram.
And some people do.
My favorite feedback that we got from this project
was just two hashtags:
#birgersoterutleie, #whatthefuck
(Laughter)
And it's fun to make these illustrations
that can be more than just an illustration:
an interactive illustration.
Every year, we attend a ski and snowboard festival called Open Klasse.
And one year we made this canvas,
and we just took it around the mountain,
encouraging people to do stuff to it,
to interact with the illustration.
This year, in the spirit of making an interactive illustration,
we made a wall ride.
We wanted to make something you could play with,
something you could trash
or something that could trash you.
As it turns out, we made a death trap.
(Laughter)
He's okay.
He's alive, he's well, and nobody has sued us yet,
so I guess we're in the clear.
Unless we kill somebody next year.
We do a lot of live illustration at events like this.
We try to interpret and sum up the day through visual recording.
What we do is we talk to people, we listen to the presentations,
and we make our own stupid assumptions,
and then we just draw.
Here, I have compressed about seven hours of illustration into about ten seconds
to show how we work.
Our style is based on quality by quantity.
There are a lot of details here,
and when you create a lot of details, some will be good.
But also, some will be shit.
And my point is that that is okay.
You should not fear the mistake.
You should be able to embrace the mediocre achievement,
and if you are able to do this,
you will be blessed with incredible artistic freedom.
And this helps us to achieve "skaparglede."
Thank you.
(Applause)