i gotta say you guys i kind of feel like i look like a garden gnome but i'm really
enjoying this look as of late hi everyone it's King Kogi aka Martina aka King Kogi which one
comes first no one's sure in 2021 i shared a video about how i was going to start creating
a cookbook since then i've been puttering away at it and as i promised in that video i didn't
want to show you just like an end product i wanted to show you these steps in between
about how it takes me to actually get there my reason still being i think in this current day
and age we're kind of like flooded with tons of amazing artists and amazing creations and
it can make you feel really low confident like you don't even want to start a project because
you're like how can i do anything this good how can i create anything like this and it can
feel quite intimidating but i can assure you if you were to see the behind the scenes of people
learning fumbling their rough drawings their stressed out moments their moments of being like
why i'm a horrible artist i think you'd feel a lot more confident enter Martina allow me to be the
person that you watch fumble however this video is not about how i fumble and fail it's about how i
plan for a long term project i've got around six Martina Methods that i'd like to share with you
and i'm not some kind of professional planner i hope you can get something out of them and you can
get started on doing something new it's a fresh year everything ahead of us is fresh depending
on when you're watching this video you're watching it in like December 2022 it's almost a fresh year
know your unhelpful environments when you first get started at tackling a new idea or a project
you really need to be in a good mindset you need to know themselves
some things can put you in a really short mood and cause you to lose focus or even the goal that you
want to do and you just just give up here's what i mean roll the footage other me so on some days
i can happily go onto instagram in the morning and i can browse i love to browse people cooking
i find it really inspiring it gets me hyped and then i want to cook something new i want to
grocery shopping the same thing for youtube videos and cookbooks if i watch other people cooking
i get really excited and i'm like i want to cook something too but if it's a day that i plan on
drawing instagram is not the ideal environment for me i'm actually pretty low confident about
my drawing skills when i see all the other amazing illustrators and drawers out there
i really just feel crap and i completely like lose my mojo and it is not a helpful environment for me
hence the whole no thine self now i can watch something like bullet journaling or people
drawing live i really enjoy i think seeing the process of beginning to end it doesn't
make me feel so i don't know like hopeless and stupid for some reason but for me personally
i understand that instagram can be a helpful environment depending on what i need it to be
and it can be a super unhelpful environment if i need to do something like get hyped up for drawing
another helpful environment for me is being in a cafe i love editing or drawing or doing
other things like that that are creative in cafes but i have to have headphones
if i don't have headphones i can find it a lot more distracting like i can't get into the focus
so being in a cafe can be helpful but i need to make sure that i have my headphones with
me in order to have the correct music on some music is really distracting for me i can't focus
other music is really really good for me to get into the groove helpful so i know that itself
a cafe with headphones and the correct music is great for me to get going while my sister
has said if she tries to read a book in a cafe she finds herself really interested in people
watching which i also love to do and she can't actually read her book so that's an unhelpful
environment for her to try to finish that goal when we were in university i would go to cafes
to study with certain music on it would help me focus well going to like a quiet place like a
library would make me feel super sleepy and bored it's like i needed people around me
to get me inspired to do things but not so much that i can hear them and listen in knowing thine
self and understanding yourself what is a helpful and unhelpful environment is super important
and now here is a word of warning it is very easy to get influenced by other people's opinions
as to what is helpful and unhelpful i have had many discussions with people about things like
the morning there are some people who just get up early and they go for a jog and clear their mind
and they feel like i'm so focused and they can get tons of work done and it's disgusting and i hate
you just joking well for me i tend to be a kind of night owl it can be very confusing to some people
that i get energy in the evening it's like i'm mopey and sluggish throughout the day but then
in the evening i sometimes get a lot of energy i'm ready to like write or be creative or film
that's just the way that i am and i had to accept that about myself instead of trying to force
myself to work at a particular time of course i'm not talking about your job i'm talking about a
creative project that you want to take on that's something that you're doing on your free time so
whether it be working on the weekends and you've got midweek free or you've got to work during
the midweek and you've got the weekend free you need to figure out what environment what time
of day is helpful for you and if you're a filthy early morning riser please don't judge my night
owl routine thank you so much part of my method to getting my project finished is taking notes
some people will purchase a notebook and they will kind of fill it out beginning to end not the case
for me i don't know what it is i just know things self i will have a notebook i will fill out maybe
three pages maybe eight pages maybe maybe half of it and then if i have a new idea for something
like i want to work on a cookbook i can't put it in the same notebook i don't know why i don't
understand it i have to go get a new notebook and that's why i usually buy things from the dollar
shop because i'm not gonna spend sixty dollars on some beautiful leather cover book which i'm never
gonna fully fill out and then sometimes i go back to the other notebook because i feel like oh that
notebook is my notebook for writing recipes but that notebook is my notebook for like taking notes
on things currently i have like five notebooks on the go i think ideas and creativity it's kind of
like a flowing river right it's like constantly moving and every once in a while something will
bubble up like a fish farting in the water and if you don't capture that it will wash away down the
river never for you to think of again it's like a really good fortune cookie analogy isn't it but
for real i'm sure there are tons of ideas you've had or goals or like something you wanted to do
but if you don't like write it down somehow it's going to be gone i'm a pen and paper kind of gal
you may not be know thine self perhaps you enjoy taking your thoughts and writing them digitally
some people prefer the feeling of typing things out onto notes
i can do that in my like second stage but in my initial stage i need to kind of write and
flow maybe draw doodles in the borders this is how i kind of remember or form what i'm doing
i think the creative stage is a very delicate stage maybe i'm just like a delicate fragile
already person but it needs to be really like whatever's coming out just take it
put it out there's no danger right there's no danger in writing out creative ideas you just do
it don't smush them out by logic or confine them i consider the pen and paper stage of planning
something that you should be planning kind of like big and not narrowing it down creativity can be
really killed super fast by being like oh this won't work and then you kind of feel hopeless
and you're like well then forget it you can trim it down later so if you have an idea like you're
like i want to make a video game for a phone let's say you've never made a video game you
don't have a code you're not a graphic designer whatever don't think about those steps yet your
book or on your computer or on your phone wherever it is that you're enjoying your flow you write it
out i want to make a video game i want this video game to be about pigs and like the pigs can fly
but like only when they have enough candy in their hearts does it help them i just made that up you
write that down then either on the same day or on a totally different day you look at it critically
that's the time period for you to go okay well what do i need to do to achieve this not when
you're coming up with the idea so now you want to look at the stuff that you've thought out that
you want to do that's when you can start applying your kind of logical stage to it and you're moving
out of like the method stage and into like more planning you might need to take a course to learn
how to do it you might need to read a book you might need to hire somebody so it is excellent
timing that i get to say thank you to skillshare for sponsoring this video i am currently taking
a bunch of courses on skillshare for the goal of completing my cookbook so last year i took
a lettering course on skillshare because my lettering skills suck and they are definitely
better after this course so if you don't know already skillshare is an online learning community
and it has thousands of inspiring classes so basically skillshare combines video lessons
then there's class projects hands-on feedback and you have these little short lessons that can fit
any schedule the topics are like illustration design photography video editing freelancing
music production and more and the first 1 000 subscribers to click my link in the info box
will get one free trial month of skillshare so the class i'm taking is called the style class work
out your illustration style in a daily project and it's extremely helpful because it's basically like
having a lecture from an art professor i didn't go to art school so i'm really lacking kind of the
foundations and understandings of how to organize my brain and thoughts to create something like a
cookbook because there's a lot of moving parts so i'm really finding this extremely helpful i hope
you guys get a chance to take a course if you can i mean give it it's one month so hopefully you'll
be one of the 1000 to click on this link but yes taking courses and and changing your skill level
is really important and part of the long project plan you can instantly get good at something
interestingly tom frost he is a canadian illustrator i didn't know that he's in vancouver
bc and what's really crazy about this is that when i was back in canada i went to canadian tire with
my mom and we bought like christmas crackers and they were canadian designs like they were really
cool and on the outside of them there was like these little um canadian people like a canadian
santa and like a hockey player and stuff and i love them so much that i kept the cutout this year
so it's literally tom frost's design i had no idea so it was so crazy because as i'm taking
this course i'm like this is so familiar and i'm like wait a second on the back of his wall he has
designs and i like rushed over i took this off the christmas cracker to bring it with me i like this
design so much organizing your likes and your dislikes so i've talked a little bit about my
methods i've talked about my courses and now i'm moving on to some of my favorite apps and tools
that i'm using i find pinterest to be a very good tool to use for distinguishing things that
you like and you dislike understanding what you really dislike and what you like will help quicken
up that's not a phrase is it will help quicken up the process make the process faster will help make
your thinking and design plan process faster than the sentence that i just said so for example i
have a particular color palette that i use the aquas the blues and the purples
of the whole king kogi world help to limit me and also speed up my decision making process
so i like pinterest because you can kind of organize your likes and dislikes really easily
it's upgraded a lot since the last time i used it which was like i think in university and i'm like
i'm done with pinterest but now you can make these little like pinned boards on your phone
or on your computer so for example let's say i'm working on a cookbook i need to think of different
border designs i need to think of different examples of a comic book page i just wildly
go through and go like oh i like this i like this i like this and when i don't like something
that's equally as important and this will come up later on when i look it over whether you're
making a book or drawing or planning to make a new website or to start a blog or to design
a shirt or to make a new beer label or to sew whatever it is you're gonna find it on pinterest
organizing grand scales with digital whiteboards so miro is a really helpful app that i use it is
a digital whiteboard and the reason why that's fantastic is because you can put it on your
phone on your ipad on your computer it can come with you anywhere you go and it's good for a
collaboration so if you've got friends that you're working with or colleagues that live
in a different part of the world or in a different time zone they can log on and use the same
whiteboard as you like they can add to it while you're sleeping so i use it to organize a lot
of things on my projects um when it comes to the likes and dislikes this is a good time for this so
you kind of put all your stuff together you take all the things that you like
and you lay them down and then you go well why do i like this well i like this because
the color is really smooth looking or oh i really like because i like polka dots or
i really like this because it's quite crispy and clear you have to think about why you like
something and equally take a couple things that you don't like and explain why you don't like it
you know like i don't like this shade of orange or this feels really crowded or i don't like the way
this is too realistic like whatever it is you have to kind of figure out why you don't like something
then you can actually look at everything and it starts to narrow down the things that you want to
do the colors that you want to use the patterns that you like the way you like your animations
to look whatever it is it starts to narrow it down it's like almost like the reverse like
looking at the negative stuff helps bring up the stuff that you want to do they both work together
physical whiteboard is great as well you can have a whiteboard in your home or a magnetic board and
you can like you know pin things up but because i do a lot of stuff in the digital world like
screenshotting things and looking at ideas and taking things off my phone it's like a bit easier
to organize it all there so lots of people ask me what i use to do my designs like whether it's
you know kinkogee stuff or my shirts whatever it is i've been doing i use an app called procreate
it's a digital illustration app depending on where you live in the world it costs about 10
to 15 which i think is a pretty good deal it's not yearly you just buy it and it's yours lately you
might have seen those little tiny gifts or gifs depending on how you say it if you're a monster
i'm gonna write a whole kids series about people that get up in the morning happily willingly don't
drink coffee or tea and say gifs and it'll be like a really scary book for little kids
it's only for apple products so if you have android i am sorry i'm sure there
are some other things out there which people will probably share in the comment section please do
it's pretty simple and it also has a lot of like tricky and sneaky
little things that are super helpful like if you're drawing an arch and you hold down the
pen and you don't move it it will smooth it out into a perfect shape this is super helpful for
me because i draw a lot on the trains or in a bus which means when i'm drawing it'll be like
and i hold it down creates the arch for me perfectly there are a ton of tutorials on
skillshare lots of classes to teach you how to use procreate so if you've never used it before
i recommend using one of the procreate classes on skillshare i've already checked out a bunch
of them and they are mega helpful the very last thing i'm going to talk about is accountability
so when i put out that video around eight months ago talking about how i was going to make a
digital cookbook that was actually one of my steps that i do in long-term project plea planning plea
planning when i plea plan i like to put things online or announce them or do something that
will make me feel horrifically guilty haha just joking but not really i was raised catholic
i have to make sure that i'm accountable for what i said i was gonna do and you guys have
messaged me in the inbox and been like you know oh martina like when are you gonna put your coat
book out or i hope you're gonna do your cookbook and i'm like i can't forget about my cookbook
i said that i would do it i'm gonna do it so i'm gonna do it now okay you may not have a youtube
channel and that's okay you just need to take your idea or the thing you wanna do and kind of make it
a semi-reality so accountability can be telling a friend about it okay you say to your friend
oh i have this idea that i really want to do you can tell a family member you can make a new blog
from scratch and kind of show the process of what you're doing you can talk about it you can be like
oh man i'm sucking or this is horrible or i fell off the wagon whatever it is join a community tell
your online community about what you're going to do people will help cheer you on encourage maybe
check in with you you can even open up a brand new social media account just for that project
it doesn't matter if you have followers or not the idea is that you're trying to like check
in and put something out in there whether it's the process or the growth i've run across so
many cool instagram accounts where there's only like 10 pictures uploaded but it's the person
drawing on paper and then they're kind of getting digital and you look at it and you're like awesome
like look at how they've grown already and you can also have private accountability you don't need
to tell other people you can have a little book once a week you can check in with yourself what
you're doing you can have a calendar and you can say you know this friday my goal is to research
beer labels right and you put it onto the calendar and in the next week my goal is to you know go on
pinterest and organize a bunch of different beer labels that i like if you're planning on making
you know beer label company or something so you can have personal accountability which helps you
kind of stay in check with the project i think blackboards and whiteboards and calendars are
super awesome for this there's something really satisfying about checking something off or like
crossing it off your list so i hope i've given you some insights into how i start to tackle something
like a big project for the methods we've got know your unhelpful environments know thine self
taking notes which include writing down big big big ideas and letting them just grow before you
look at them logically then for tools we've got things like Skillshare taking courses which will
help you become more confident and unlock much more creativity and then we have apps we've
got like pinterest mural and procreate which can help you get organized and help you design things
making something bigger often requires a lot of little steps and it can definitely
be overwhelming so i really hope this helps out if you'd like to watch someone flail
as they make their tiny project bigger head on over to King Kogi that's my personal youtube page
i'm going to be live streaming some of my sessions for my creative cookbook with hopes that you guys
can tune in with some of your projects so we can keep each other accountable right
if i'm going to live stream i will let you know on all my King Kogi platforms so King Kogi on
instagram on twitter and on my youtube page i'll send out messages come on join me and let's get
started on a project for the year thank you again to Skillshare for sponsoring this video i will
continue taking my courses and i hope you guys get a chance to go to the info box and click that link
because it's only for a thousand people see you guys in the King Kogi kingdom we're gonna keep
keeping it cool and yes i will continue to dress like a gnome a fashionable hip-hop gnome you