Why does it take so long to get good at art?
I mean, you know, I think we all feel how long it takes
and it feels like it's just long for the sake of being long.
But I've done a lot of thinking about this recently,
and I want to share with you what I found because there's two main reasons,
and I think the first one really does sum it up the best.
And that's simply that artists have to know everything,
pretty much everything about everything.
So let me explain an easy term to use as a jack of all trades.
But I think the thing about Jack of all trades
is that a lot of people don't understand that Jack is a very dependable guy.
Like Jack is the guy you call when your car breaks down to just somehow
figure out a way to get it, to work
just long enough so that you could get to the gas station.
Jack knows a lot of things about a lot of things,
and it took him a while to do it.
He's renowned in the little town
for being the go to guy to get something done right.
But there's two other guys here, and I think that we need to pay attention
to them too. There was also Billy and Earl.
Now Billy tries his best.
He's the younger kid in town, and he's not really dependable.
You'll call Billy up to help you with something,
and he might not even show up.
And then when he does, he'll be asking you for where your tools are, right?
So Billy's, I think the majority of people out there.
Then there's Earl Earl, the older uncle that everyone knows,
and he's good at a few things that he's mastered back in the day.
And if that's what you need done, you call Earl
because nobody else will do it better. He's perfect.
He's a master at it.
So when you say an artist or a concept artist
or really any type of visual artist that wants to make
a living with their work, they need to be a jack of all trades.
And that is a lot harder to be even as sounds.
And I've got a few examples to get your head in the right space here.
So let's look at health and wellness, right anatomy.
How does a knee work?
Doctors need to know that right surgeons need to be able to do heart surgery.
You know, if you get your ACL twisted, you need a doctor to be able to fix that up.
But guess who else needs to understand how anatomy and bones and joints work?
Concept artists, riggers, animators?
They need to understand these things, too, because when they make these characters
move across the screen, it needs to be believable.
When you're painting someone in high detail
and some of their skin is showing,
you need to be able to convince someone that that body part really looks right.
Trust me, I know I've been through tons of courses already.
I think I've spent a total of twelve hundred dollars in anatomy courses so far.
And yeah, it's there's a lot to learn here all the time.
The instructors are always trying to remind us about the line
between basically becoming a doctor and the line between, Oh yeah ,
this is basically all you need because we just need to focus on what we see.
I mean, if you look at promos, videos, a lot of the stuff in those videos
that Bronco gets into can sometimes feel ridiculous,
and you'll see some crossover comments between artists and people
in med school in all the anatomy videos out there online.
But let's go to a few more. What about dancing?
You know, animators need to understand
that I will guarantee you that video I did with anchor dancing.
I've done the dance myself.
I didn't need a recorder because I had a video already from TikTok.
But I've done it myself. I had to get the feel.
I had to get the vibe.
Now, am I a great dancer? No.
But maybe one day I might need to get even better
if I want to do any more animations like that.
Now here's one I know about a lot architecture and building experience.
We need to be able to understand how to design a building
that can get people from A to B and do it well and do it simply
and make sure they're safe and engineers or people that we work with a lot
and we have to make it esthetically pleasing
and make it fit with the surroundings and not be an eyesore.
But you know who else also has to do that?
Artists, you want to design a city in a video game.
You want to design a level that is actually entertaining
and makes sense for the player to go through.
You need to understand these things, too.
You need to do your research, you need to get your examples,
you need to get your president.
That's a big thing we do in architecture as well.
What about robotics and technology?
You know, artist sure as hell don't have to understand how everything really works,
but we sure damn have to make sure it looks like it works right.
Like, there's a lot of stuff.
If you look at the stuff
I've done in my robotics piece that I did recently, I reference toys.
You compare some other artists.
It really looks like it'll work like that.
Design actually looks like a real design.
They have to understand it
to some degree to be able to draw that and let alone build on 3D.
You really have to know how to make it work if you want it to look right.
What about cultural outfits and historians who understand that the lifestyle
of different communities across the world at different time periods?
Artists have to understand that, too.
We need to collaborate with them, but we also have to do our own diligence.
And lastly, here's another random example What about makeup and facial
anatomy in aging?
Well, a plastic surgeon sure as hell needs to understand those things and make up.
Artists and people
who design makeup need to know that, but I mean, there are artists, too.
So hey, there's a free one right there,
but also if you do illustration, you need to know that stuff as well.
You know, a concept artist,
I'm sure you can pick up any concept artist
and they'll be able to draw you five to seven different stages of the human face
and different parts of aging because you're going to need to do that
if you're going to draw a family or a character
that grows up in a certain time period within a game or a movie or film,
you know, all these things are things that we need to know as artists.
We have to understand everything at it,
quite a significantly above level than the average person.
We have to develop observation skills to keep up this ability
to be able to look at things and break things down constantly and see things
as they are not necessarily as little symbols that most people see.
We have to learn skills and tools to be able to express this knowledge better.
There is endless traditional media that you can learn and understand.
There's so many different things wet media, dry media, acrylics,
watercolors, oils, pencils, charcoal.
All of these have their own tips and techniques and rules and traditions
that you have to abide by if you want to get the best result
and it takes time to learn them.
There's also tons of software that we have to understand,
and they're getting more and more complex every day,
and there's more and more to choose from.
Not to mention now, if you actually have some coding experience,
it'll only make you a better artist because you can get ahead
and get certain things done that other people can't really do.
And then you can even make your own things like make your own games
and come out ahead.
I have two friends that are in the process of trying
to figure out how to make that work for them.
We also have to learn to understand people and how to reach them best
to be able to tell the stories that we want to tell them.
You know, things like contrast, color theory, shape, design, hierarchy,
composition, all of these things are basically things
that we learn so that when somebody looks at the stuff, we're
trying to make, the animations that we make, the movies that we make,
we want them to be able to see what we see, direct their eyes
to see what we want them to see, understand what we want them to understand
all of those things we have to learn.
And the average person doesn't have to learn how other people think that way.
And lastly,
we have to develop our artistic intuition to be able to express our ideas
and compelling and unique ways that can make it worthwhile .
Because, you know,
if you're just being a printer, we're just rendering things
like a computer, then what's the point of everything?
And that brings me to the second reason why art take so long
is basically, we have to learn where to put our skill points.
We have to learn what build we want to make with ourselves
because the information I just told you is basically infinite.
So the only way to ever make your mark in this world to feel fulfilled,
to not be consumed by the overwhelming amount of information that there is, is
to choose your build, choose where you want to spec your points into
and go from there.
But like I said, that's not as easy as it sounds.
It takes time.
It really is like a video game.
But the one thing that's different is a lot of video games
as you level up skills get harder and harder to come by.
So even if you want to start a new thing, if your Level 100 is going to take you
a long time to get into this new thing, that's not how real life works.
Real life is more like, OK, if you want to learn how to build a house
and you get really good at that.
But let's say you want to start painting,
you're going to make improvements and painting really fast,
no matter how much experience you've already gone with 100 other skills.
When you start out something new, it resets the skill experience points
that add up every time you get a new level and something are specific
to that skill itself.
I will say the one way it is like that in a video game
is you kind of have this period of time where you get these free, easy
skill points where everything is like worth two points, I'd say from ages
zero to maybe five to where you can learn everything really, really fast.
But then it pretty much stays consistent from there.
This is why a lot of people feel like college is such a difficult decision
because, you know, it takes a long time to figure out
what do you really want to do in this world
and takes a lot of actual doing to figure out what you want to do ?
And some people feel like just picking a major to spend
the rest of your life doing is completely ridiculous.
But even though I do agree with that in a lot of ways,
I think it's also a good thing
because one of my friends has told me that in Japan, they do things differently
where colleges and universities are way more general than abstract.
But then you end up with people not really having any useful skills.
By the time that they graduate, and it can be really, really hard for them
to be able to make a name for themselves and pursue something,
and they end up just following the herd and just becoming less valuable
and seeing themselves less valuable.
And that contributes
to the whole other group of issues that Japan has as a country.
So even though you can,
you can look at both extremes, and there's really no perfect solution.
But I would say there is something to be valued.
About choosing something in the beginning and learning from that
as much as you can,
and maybe it'll help you make some money to keep yourself tied it over
so that you can spend some other time figuring out what you really want to do.
So with all this being said, I probably made you a lot more stressed out
and you're actually worse than you started watching this video.
But I want to let you know that basically the hardest challenge
that you're going to have the most important one,
I think at least it probably is one of the most important is being able
to pursue any ways if all of this is too much for you.
Are you going to stop?
Is just because you're aware that there is an infinite amount of things
out there to learn. Are you going to give up?
We don't know anything about the universe and all the different planets
and galaxies out there with respect to all the stuff that's out there.
We basically don't know anything, even with our own planet.
But do we stop?
Do we just give up and say it's not worth it?
No, we so live our lives.
A lot of people like to say, Oh,
the world is such a small place, and I always disagree with that statement.
There's all kinds of amazing, different cultures out there
that I've started to become aware of more and more as I get older
and I'm a little bit disappointed.
Every day is like, I'm not going to be able to experience all of these things,
but then I'm reminded.
It's not like they can either, and I really just have to play my role
just like they're playing their role to add richness to the world.
And that's really what you have to do as an artist.
That journey is going to be unique.
No one's going to tell you the perfect way to do that.
But I think the most successful artists are the ones
who can figure out how to deal with that overwhelming,
absolute, endless amount of knowledge
and still do are any ways to channel that inner child in them
that did art that explored the world, even though they knew
absolutely nothing about it because it, you know, it makes sense.
They're naive.
They don't know.
And once you know that knowledge can cripple you.
But I think that is the journey.
Being able to get up after knowing everything and decide
I'm going to do it anyway, I'm still going to explore anyway,
even though I won't even get to point zero 1% within my lifetime.
I'm still going to try.
So best of luck to you all.
I'm looking forward
to seeing what people are able to do in this next generation, this era of art.
I think a lot more people are going to be creative in my lifetime,
and I will see you all in the next one.
Keep drawing and stay positive. Peace.