i disagree with less to learn. i think at 40 i've learned more as of late than i did in past years, thnx covid. but i am also at my most productive i have been in ages.
kudos for your music endeavors! havent tried that one yet. luv u M
The Pete Best of internet animation
Age 27, Male
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Is there anything you did to get to be more productive, or did it just sorta happen? Also thanks for reading my wall of text Luis!
@Luis @Emrox sorta happened. I think i forgot what a giant missing piece was created when we were quarantined and i couldnt do any of what was the centerpiece of my lifestyle. Travel, goto bars, meeting new people. So being on my own so much, i gravitated to online life and this website and making stuff. So it was kind of good in that way.
RE: 2. "Younger people just pick stuff up a lot quicker."
Sometimes.
I'll get extensive b/c I know you like to read and dive deep
1. When I was on my neuroscience hobbyist reading kick, I read about Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Search 'Assimilation vs Accommodation' - "By the time most ppl are 5 years old they have accumulated ~80% of the vocab that they'll use for the rest of their lives." Assimilators are rigid, B/W thinkers, inflexible. Where as accommodators create new space in their minds to allow new information. Assimilators relate new concepts to old ones, eg: "Same shit different day", "reminds me of X", "the sequel was the same thing as the last one".
Creative ppl typically are accommodators and a special bunch. You're one of them (don't let that go to your head).
2. The brain doesn't even finish developing until around mid 20s, 25 or so. Theoretically, you are now equipped to reach even greater heights
Its great you're trying new things. Good luck MARTY
Thanks Tyler! I hope all is well. I looked up assimilation and accommodation, I think I get the idea. Any recommended reading from ur neuroscience kick?
Im great, thanks! Hope you are well too :)
RE: "Any recommended reading [?]"-
Its a DENSE subject.
IMO, the best/most relevant and applicable entry to neuroscience w/ modern, real world examples is:
I find it particularly interesting with regards to how the brain interfaces with technology (which is also tactically useful for us online creators)
Read it and see if you want to dive deeper later
Cool! I'll check it out
I was already a big fan of your animation work for a long long time, and I gotta say, since most of your public stuff (that I know of, lmk if I'm being kind of a big ignorant idiot) became animation work for pencilmation I've cultivated a feeling of "he's better at the animation thing everyday, but I wonder what he'd do with more time and no restraints as personal work" towards you. I know this can sound kinda shitty and brash but hear me out. I swear I believe I have something nice and constructive to say.
I listened to 5 albums from your bandcamp over the past 2 days, I am currently halfway through Beachwave and decided to write while listening to it, it's a pretty cool experience I'm having. There's a lot of chaos, some explicit experimentation, and some stuff that sounds absolutely genius to me. I've been on Newgrounds for more than a decade, and I've always thought most of the audio portal felt a bit... same-y, like there's only "electronic" and "metal". There's a lot of good and awesome musicians and producers, but I feel most of it is electronic music, with a classic video game music vibe to it (which is great in itself for sure) but I miss the EXPERIMENTAL soul that permeates the flash portal(outside of the usual waves of pop culture parodies and hentai of course). I've been finding some cool singersongwriter stuff here, lots of stuff I love (https://www.newgrounds.com/playlists/view/1d21d4449110dfc8efc07b66caf3aaac) but nothing super crazy I suppose. Your music projects feel like what I've been yearning to see more of on the audio portal all these years.
It feels like you figured out animation, or at least what you like/want to do with animation for now, and you're jumping more and more into figuring out your musical self now, and oh shit it feels awesome. I'll listen through the remaning stuff on your bandcamp and maybe bug you more somewhere else telling you how inspiring it's been. Damn I've even opened up photoshop and started painting and screwing around just for fun, and I haven't really been doing none of that fun art for the sake of art thing for a few weeks now. Thanks for the inspiration, dude!
I feel like I'm rambling but maybe you'll like something I've said, or maybe you'll dislike it, idk. feel free to yell at me. I'm sleepy and I'm just gonna press enter.
Hope you keep creating motivated either by yt ad money for food or because you got a musical nerve itching, and I hope I can chat with you someday and drum on glass bottles or some shit.
Ah! Thanks a lot man, it's really cool to hear someone out there has been keeping tabs after all these years! Going to try to respond to everything in order -
Other than the pencilmation stuff (actually I stopped doing those at the start of this year) and music stuff, I very rarely put stuff out. I even stopped tweeting mostly, 'cause fuck twitter. It makes sense that I have very little presence on the net now 'cause I'm busy with jobs and trying to learn new stuff and am trying to break the social-media addiction, but it makes me sad that I don't have stuff to share anymore! I totally will be back with some sick stuff eventually, so hopefully some people will still remember me when that day comes.
Re: "I wonder what he'd do with more time/no restraints" fuck man I wonder that like every day of my life. Right now I'm working two freelance jobs, but I've got a weird plan to switch to doing my own shit full time when those gigs end, maybe a year or so from now. The silver lining with working jobs is that having other obligations makes you value every hour of the day, which is helpful to me cause I'm lazy, and I wonder if I'll be as productive as I think I would be if I was left to do my own shit every day.
Thanks for listening to those albums! Beachware/wave are very shitpost-y, so I'm surprised to hear anyone has made it "halfway through" one of them! I mean I still like them, but one of those tracks is literally just a beach boys song played over itself at 3 speeds.
Now that you mention it, I also wish the audio portal had more wacky shit on it! Like the flash portal always had so much good fuckin-around stuff and spam on it, but that seems rare over in the audio portal. Not that I really spend much time there, anyway... but that's probably part of the reason why!
Anyway, glad you like some of the music we've made! If there are any standout tracks in there it would be cool to hear which ones you liked best! I'm gonna listen to the full thing but that playlist is sick. Some really good hidden gems in there.
It made me smile to hear our albums made you want to go make something - that's like one of my favorite things to come away from something with. I remember a long time ago when I heard vaporwave for the first time it made me go animate a weird trippy-looking thing - not related to their retro-aesthetic visuals at all but just a unique product of the mental space it put me in. I think if I had to choose between making stuff that would put people in awe and make them bow down me and making stuff that makes people invigorated to go make their own thing, I would pick option 2 (but I guess I wouldn't mind the first one either, heh.)
I had the open tab but just read it nooow.
A couple of years back I was also on a 'bigger project' phase, managed to get a few things done. But more recently I've also moved more towards 'work and practice' phase, expecting to improve for the next chance to officially start something more ambituous, so I guess it's a similar track.
As for tips for 'working harder' these may be common/generic but have worked well for me:
-If you can, try not working from home, going to a co-work place or something like that, it helps a loot to focus.
-Lists! doing monthly/weekly lists of stuff to achieve on a whiteboard, one side has the (more 'mandatory') 'job stuff', and the other side the 'personal projects'. Keeping in mind that even if you end up just finishing 3 out of 5 items, it's still good to keep you aware of your progress.
The bit about future plans reminds me of a Plypmton book where he mentions a point in his life where he made some general (and ambituous) plans for his career (just found the intro, p17)
https://books.google.cl/books?id=u5Go1ZEY2cMC&pg=PA17&lpg=#v=onepage&q&f=false
As he points out, stuff didn't work out completely, but it's nice to see how it still pushed him in an overall good direction.
Keep it up! ;)
Oh man I've always wanted to do the "work somewhere else" thing but those co-op places are pretty expensive around here so I never bothered. :p Then at some point someone on twitter pointed out that you can literally just bring a laptop to the library and it's the same thing, which I would really like to try but libraries are still half-closed where I live - you can get books but then you gotta get out. I've tried to do weird thingies to trick my brain into thinking I'm working somewhere else, like working in a space in my apartment specially designated for working, or taking a walk around the block every day before I start as if I'm "walking to work" but none of that has done the trick yet.
I have kept lists though, and that's very helpful! Something that really changed things for me was just deciding what I would do that day every day before breakfast (also, mandating you do stuff "before breakfast" is a really good trick for getting yourself to do something every day) - and as long as I'd made enough things for myself to do that day I would be generally productive throughout the day. BUT if the workload was too light I might procrastinate all day and do nothing, so you gotta pick a good number of things to do. THEN if you can get it all done and still have some daylight left, you can enjoy the rest of the day guilt free! My least favorite thing about working freelance is the looming feeling that "I should be working right now" and accomplishing all the stuff you set out to do that day sorta cures that, which allows you to watch tv sometimes and not feel like shit, which is nice to be able to do.
Hey, Em! It's been a decade. Hope you're well and your album is doing great! I'm on this crazy nostalgia trip before 2023 arrives. Glad you're living life with retrospect. I had a blast listening to your stuff. Funnily enough I also became a musician and matured into becoming a cinematographer.
Hit me up on my instagram if you use any of the social media things. Let's chat and catch up!
instagram.com/nikitavoitov_
Hoooly shit I feel like just two weeks ago I was wondering what became of you. Glad to see you're still doing sick art stuff!
I'm not on IG sadly, but I'm on Twitter sometimes, discord all the time, and a checker of email if any of those work for you? Would love to see/hear what you've been up to!
@Emrox Twitter never grew onto me so idk I can write you an e-mail I guess!
jthrash
Very ambitious! Personally I feel even making plans for the next six months in this day and age is bound to end in disappointment, due to having to drop whatever you’re doing over some outside thing you can’t control. Probably pessimistic, yes, but I remember starting off the year 2020 making big plans about being more social and meeting more people irl, and you know why that didn’t work out for me…regardless, in the case of art and animation, it is extremely important to be able to pick up new software and techniques, so your plan for the next decade actually sounds similar to mine of at least learning a new piece of software a year, starting with Unity.
I remember being particularly inspired by a video of Glen Keane working his magic on the then-new Oculus Rift (or was it HTC Vive?), so if this traditional pen-and-paper animator could still pick up new skills well into his 60’s, then I have no excuse at age 27 to not pick up any new technology/techniques myself. I do think people have to spend most of their time mastering a skill they’re already decent at while saving other skills/hobbies for their day off. If you want a job in the cut-throat entertainment industry, you can’t by simply by being passable at a lot of things—you need to excel at one thing, while also being decent at everything else…
Emrox
Re: making big plans is dangerous - that's why I like to leave long-term goals sorta vague, more of a direction to head in than a specific destination. In fact, the last really big project I had a hand in was developed the same way - by experimenting and being flexible and feeling out the end product instead of dreaming up a big idea and trying to execute perfectly on it. Then it grew to be a very ambitious project, but it actually got finished and it actually came out good - and it was totally the sort of thing we had set out to find when we picked out our direction in the beginning. (If that's too abstract to make sense, it was a game called Trail Mix (free on itch.io!) and one of the other guys on the team wrote a blog post about the process we used to arrive at the game idea: https://gamedesign.sheridanc.on.ca/coojohnl/2018/10/11/exploratory-design-and-prototyping-coding-quickly-and-openly/ )