I first posted about the "new" economy on Oct. 31, 2011 HERE.
Now there's continued evidence that we creative people are driving this new economy. Dr. Richard Florida, one of the world's leading experts on economic competitiveness, demographic trends and cultural and technological innovation, gives an RSA talk HERE about our current economic situation and the important role that cities play in it.
Wired magazine wrote about it in February HERE.
The 31 Habits of People Who Connect with Anyone
For the full post, click HERE for the Scott Dinsmore's Live Your Legend website.
The 31 Habits of People Who Connect with Anyone
1. Make friends. This is the foundation. Making genuine connections is nothing more than making friends. When you’re about to approach someone, ask “how would I treat this person if they were my close friend or someone I’d want to be a close friend?” You don’t have hidden agendas and constantly push products and talk about yourself with your friends. You put friends first. You listen to them. You hear their problems so you can help in any way you can. Act accordingly.4. Contribute. Meeting people is about making their lives better. Whether that’s by giving them a smile, a new job or anything in between – there is a way to help everyone. See everyone as a chance to help. Give like crazy, embrace generosity and make others more successful.
5. Know what matters to them – do your research. The more specific you can help someone the better. This comes from learning all you can about the people you want to meet. Not to manipulate, but so you can actually do something meaningful for them. Read their blogs and books, take their courses, sign up for their newsletters, learn about their interests, family, passions and charity work. Anything is game. With today’s online tools, there is no excuse not to learn about someone before trying to interact with them.
6. Start immediately & connect long before you want something. Don’t wait for the right time, more credentials or some arbitrary milestone. Those are excuses for inaction. Connecting is similar to planting trees – the best time to start was 20 years ago, but the second best is right now. No one wants to connect with someone who’s just out to get something. You will no doubt ask for help in all kinds of ways from the people you know, but that is far from the first step. Start as early as possible and connect because you want to, not because you need something. There’s really no other way to be genuine.
7. Make people a priority. There is no more important task for anyone than surrounding yourself with the right people. It’s all of our job and a part of every day. It’s not something we do for an hour every week or two. It’s a way of being. A way of life.
8. Be open to conversation. Embrace conversation with those around you. Everyone is a chance to learn something. Your server, the guy next to you on a park bench or plane flight. Even if you came to read a book, realize the best part of your day might be learning about the world of the person next to you.
9. Be well-groomed. I hate to have to mention this but if you smell like you haven’t showered for three weeks, look like you just spent the past four days strung out in Vegas, or have the breath of a dead cat, people are not going to want to talk to you. It’s not about wearing expensive clothes and watches, but it is about being presentable and physically enjoyable to be around.
10. Embrace persistence. Be comfortable with not getting responses. Most connections take a while and can’t be rushed. And while you’re at it, get used to “No” too. People are busy. Especially the well-known high-up folks. Just because you don’t hear back or get a no at first, does not mean it’s over. Most people send one email or make one phone call and think they’ve done their job. Not even close – that’s just the very beginning. If you have a way to uniquely help them, then it’s your job to get in touch. They will thank you for it. Don’t be a stalker. Don’t be the annoying nag. Friendly genuine persistence is a power few use.
11. Make days & provide memorable experiences. Get in the habit of making peoples’ days better. This could be as simple as a smile, compliment or heartfelt thank you. Provide fun/unique/enjoyable experiences that make life at least a little better.
12. Know who you are & who you want in your life. Know your passions, goals, talents, interests and the impact you want to have on the world. These will serve as your guiding light for how you can help and who you actually want to write into your story. Act with intention.
13. Be uniquely YOU. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Don’t try to look and sound like someone else and don’t hold back! Be vulnerable and open. Share your real story and goals. Tell others about your wife, kids and parenting struggles. Talking about the weather does not build connection. Being real does.
14. Create trust. Every interaction is a chance to either build trust or erode it. Do what you say. Show up on time. Share who you are. Slowly open up your real world to others and they’ll do the same for you.
15. Keep track of everything. After every meeting or interaction, write down what stood out, what you learned about them, their goals, their interests, family, birthdays. Anything goes.
16. Pay attention. The easiest way to be interesting is to be interested. Find excitement in what you can learn from others. Hear what they say. Listen and learn about what matters to them. Not so you can say something back as soon as possible, but so you can get a window into their world. People want to tell their story. Be the person excited to hear it.
17. Follow up & keep up. Keeping track makes this all the easier. A phone call, lunch, email or casual introduction to someone helpful. Any will do. Follow up with unique value, keep them front of mind and keep yourself in the front of theirs.
18. See opportunity in others. Every new person is a chance to connect and help, and has the possibility of being the person you’ve been dying to meet. You won’t know unless you say hi.
19. Believe in people. Know that most people are inherently good and want to help as much as they want to be helped. They want to make the meaningful connections as badly as you do. They want to hear your story and they want to tell you theirs.
20. Find common ground. Everyone has something in common – see it as a fun challenge to find what it is. The faster you can find shared ideas, beliefs and interests, the quicker you can relate.
21. Remember names. Nothing feels better than hearing your own name, especially from someone you just met. And “I’m not good with names,” does not fly. No one is good with names unless they practice! This alone puts you on a whole new level.
22. Be the connector. Bring groups together. Host events. Introduce friends who have similar interests. Make it your job to bring the right people together. There is no more powerful service you can provide.
23. Be the mentor as well as the mentee. There will always be people above and below. Be the mentor for a few people not quite at your level and find mentors to keep brining you up. Embrace both roles. You can’t have one without the other. Do your part.
24. Show your passion. You must be interesting. The best way to do this (aside from listening like crazy) is by embracing your passions, working towards an idea or cause and having a set of beliefs you’re deeply excited about that you openly share with others. No one likes talking to lemmings. Live and connect with passion. This is the surest way to be someone worth talking to – and everyone is capable of it.
25. Lead an interesting life. Live a life worth hearing about – most importantly for you, but for those around you as well. Do things you don’t normally do. Just being in new surroundings will cause you to interact with a new group of people without even trying. The more things you do and try, the more things you’ll have to talk about and the more fun you’ll have!
26. Tell stories. People connect on energy and emotion, not facts and stats. Communicate with stories as often as possible and encourage others to tell theirs. Know the fun stories of your life and share them with others.
27. See friends not strangers. When you walk into a room, see the new faces not as strangers but as friends you have yet to meet. You see the world in a more similar way to others than you probably realize – especially if you’re at the same event or a part of the same communities. Approach accordingly.
28. Care about people. None of the above matters if you don’t actually care about the people around you. If you don’t care about the person being a part of your life, you likely won’t do any of this stuff. If we’re going to connect in a powerful way, we must reframe the way we look at people. Enough said.
29. Show up (ideally in the physical world). Connections don’t happen in your house or office. You must get out there, say hello and reach out. This can start with emails and online connecting but this is only the very beginning. Nothing makes a more powerful impact than meeting in the flesh. Don’t hide behind technology. Get out of your office and from behind the computer, work from a coffee shop instead of your living room and be in the places where other passionate people hang out.
30. Create coincidence. The craziest things tend to align when you start to reach out, offer help and share your stories and passions. The examples of ‘random chance’ you’ll here throughout our How to Connect with Anyone course will blow your mind. This is how I met Simon Sinek, Tim Ferriss, Keith Ferrazzi, Peter Thiel, Gary Vaynerchuk and plenty more. The more time you spend around others, the more it happens. Be in the right places and let chance play its part.
31. Be unforgettable. When you embody these habits, standing out becomes a given. Your existence becomes memorable.
LOTS of Ray Bradbury Wisdom
The excerpt below is from exp.lore.com. There are more links below to additional Ray Bradbury insights.
INTERVIEWER: How important has your sense of optimism been to your career?
BRADBURY: I don’t believe in optimism. I believe in optimal behavior. That’s a different thing. If you behave every day of your life to the top of your genetics, what can you do? Test it. Find out. You don’t know—you haven’t done it yet. You must live life at the top of your voice! At the top of your lungs shout and listen to the echoes. I learned a lesson years ago. I had some wonderful Swedish meatballs at my mother’s table with my dad and my brother and when I finished I pushed back from the table and said, God! That was beautiful. And my brother said, No, it was good. See the difference? Action is hope.
At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad—you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.
Ray Bradbury on optimism in this fantastic Paris Review interview. Also see Bradbury on doing what you love, rejection, space exploration, writing with joy, and the secret of life.
Complement with 7 essential reads on optimism.
Watercolor & Photoshop Background—Sc. 13
I don't know how to paint.
Which is exactly why I've decided TO paint the backgrounds for this film. I've learned that instead of not doing the things I don't know how to do, I'll learn how to do them by simply doing them. The way to become good at something is to try doing it…and to fail. Period.
So here's the second painted background of "Adult Toy Story" for scene 13. This is the original watercolor painting:
This is how it looks after A LOT of work in Photoshop:
This is how it looks with the animated door and rough movement of Honey:
On to the next one!
Which is exactly why I've decided TO paint the backgrounds for this film. I've learned that instead of not doing the things I don't know how to do, I'll learn how to do them by simply doing them. The way to become good at something is to try doing it…and to fail. Period.
So here's the second painted background of "Adult Toy Story" for scene 13. This is the original watercolor painting:
This is how it looks after A LOT of work in Photoshop:
This is how it looks with the animated door and rough movement of Honey:
On to the next one!
Watercolor & Digital Background
This is part of the reason I haven't posted since June!
I decided to paint the backgrounds in watercolor to get a painterly textured feel then make adjustments digitally in Photoshop since my painting skills are basic at best.
I'm satisfied with the results which is all that matters!
This is the background for Scene 12:
I decided to paint the backgrounds in watercolor to get a painterly textured feel then make adjustments digitally in Photoshop since my painting skills are basic at best.
I'm satisfied with the results which is all that matters!
This is the background for Scene 12:
5 Steps to Coloring Animation Drawings
In Scene 11, Honey's hand flips a light switch. Here's what the composite will look like:
The steps for coloring the animation are exactly like the previous coloring background post except I did not add a texture—
1. The rough drawing on tracing vellum:
2. The clean pencil drawing on animation bond paper:
3. The inked clean-up drawing:
4. The initial base color:
5. The final color with shadows created using the Burn tool in Photoshop:
I opted to NOT use the black outline for the animation art and instead used a colored line simply because I thought it looked better.
Craft is the (Kind of) Enemy
Dustin Harbin of the excellent Drawn blog shares his interpretation of the manifesto with which I agree. I did, however, qualify my support of this manifesto in the header with "Kind of" because I believe that craft is the enemy ONLY when one is getting started. Once one gets started, however, one should be improving one's craft. So the next comic or film should be better than the last and so on. Otherwise, one will get stuck on the OK Plateau, and we sure as hell don't want to live there!
5 Steps to Creating an Animation Background
Finally, with Scene 11, I'm doing the first "real" animation and color backgrounds.
Here were the steps I took to make the light switch background. The coloring was done in Photoshop:
Here were the steps I took to make the light switch background. The coloring was done in Photoshop:
1. The rough drawing on tracing vellum (I got the idea to use vellum from Bill Plympton. He uses it as an inexpensive way to plan.):
3. The inked clean-up drawing (I tried skipping this step but scanning graphite pencil makes for ragged selections later when coloring.):
4. The initial coloring. The highlights and shadows were created using the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop:
5. The addition of a texture to make it look a bit more realistic:
And that's the first color background for the film. The photo-realism of the switch, however, means that I'll have to maintain that look throughout the film, at least for close-ups.
Future post: the steps to coloring an animation drawing.
Complacency Kills the Dream!
Wow, this blog post, from one of my favorite websites—Live Your Legend—spoke VOLUMES to me! The ideas expressed are exactly about what I'm trying to accomplish with this blog, my projects and my life.
It's based on a new documentary called "I'm Fine, Thanks," by Crank Tank Studios in San Francisco. They're currently fundraising on Kickstarter (I just made a contribution!)
When we're young, we're allowed to dream.
Then those dreams are destroyed for the sake of "practicality" and being "realistic." I still remember some old person who wasn't an artist telling me as a pre-teen that I needed something to "fall back on" when I said I wanted to be an artist.
Why the f$#k did I listen to that person? Or anyone for that matter who wasn't an artist? How the f@!k would they know if I could or could not make a living as an artist?
Read the Live Your Legend post and watch the trailer. Your creative life and future will be better for it!
4 Steps to Become an Expert
Journalist and author Joshua Foer speaks here about getting past what he calls the "OK Plateau."
To summarize:
• Research found that when acquiring a new skill, you pass through three stages: the cognitive stage—intellectualizing the task, discovering new strategies to perform it better, making mistakes, concentrating, consciously focusing on what we're doing; the associative stage—making fewer errors and getting better; the autonomous stage—deciding that we're OK at what we've learned, putting the learned skill on auto-pilot. Usually it's a good thing to be on auto-pilot for routine tasks because it allows us to focus on other things.
• It's hard to improve a skill, to develop expertise, to get past the plateau, when in the autonomous (auto-pilot) stage. People who get past the plateau use strategies to stay out of the autonomous stage. They keep whatever skill they're trying to develop in the cognitive stage, under their conscious control.
STEP 1: Experts tend to operate outside of their comfort zones and study themselves failing. The best figure skaters practice the jumps that they can't land, the lesser skaters practice the ones at which they're already good.
• Deliberate practice is, by its nature, hard.
STEP 2: Experts walk in the shoes of someone who's more competent. Chess-playing success will be greater if you study the actions of the grand masters than if playing lots of games of chess. Break apart what other experts have done in their work.
STEP 3: Experts crave and thrive on immediate and constant feedback.
STEP 4: Experts treat what they do like a science. They collect data, they analyze data, they create theories about what does and doesn't work and they test them. They discover what their best practices are.
Successful People Struggle. Period.
This little gem is from Amy Hoy, Product Crusader at Unicornfree.com (visit the site for an explanation of her blog header art and website name.)
Commit this to memory and repeat daily!
Successful People Struggle. End of Story. And yet, there are those who kick ass anyway, who show up, who do awesome shit, and who do it all bravely against the grain — because true success is always against the grain.
13 Points of the "Cult of Done" Manifesto
 |
| Image courtesy http://billyjohnson.wordpress.com/ |
Bre Pettis and Kio Stark collaborated on a 13 point manifesto, written in 20 minutes. Read it, live it.
The Cult of Done Manifesto
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
5 Highlights from Seth Godin's "Poke the Box"
Marketing and creativity expert Seth Godin's "Poke the Box" is an 84-page manifesto that encourages us to produce something scarce which is by definition, valuable.
Here are 5 excerpts among many inspirational insights in this book:
1. "Only by poking, testing, modifying and understanding can we truly own anything, truly exert our influence."
2. "We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected and new."
3. "The upside for you (and the challenge) is to find the energy and the will to challenge the mediocre."
4. "The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work."
5. The person who fails the most usually wins.
9 Sterling Hundley Ideation Steps
Illustrator and painter Sterling Hundley has an informative video showing his creative process.
Here are the 9 steps:
1. Start with text. Research.
2. Simplify the text into several words. Establish word stacks from these disparate ideas. Boil it down to several words that directly relate to the author's content.
3. Write down word associations under each word stack. Pursue tangents and even create new word stacks because this often leads to less obvious solutions.
4. Create simple icons next to your words. This is the first step in creating a visual connection to the literal associations. Keep it simple with little detail.
5. Form bridges—connections between the icons in separate word stacks, using metaphors, analogies, visual and literal associations, word play, shape, design, puns, etc.—and begin drawing.
6. Develop more complex drawings from the bridges. Juxtapose two disparate ideas into a single image.
7. Use value to fully explain shape.
8. Draw a box in correct proportions and define the composition. If an idea doesn't work in the prescribed confines, save for future use.
9. Define the method of execution as a compliment to the content solution.
5 Highlights from Seth Godin's "Linchpin"
Do you want to be successful in the new Age of Creativity? Read Seth Godin's "Linchpin" and learn how to make yourself indispensable!
These highlights don't even scratch the surface of Godin's insights. Read the entire book to get the full effect:
1. Stand out. Be remarkable.
2. "It's the art and the insight and the bravery of value creation that are rewarded."
3. Scarcity creates value.
4. Being fearless is essential for being successful in today's economy. "The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds."
5. "You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system."
Artistic Anatomy Part 5: Mouth Muscles III
The "lower" muscles of the mouth:
Risorius
Risorius
L. risus—laughter
origin: fascia over the cheek
insertion: skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth laterally causing dimples
insertion: skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth laterally causing dimples
Triangularis (Depressor anguli oris)
Of triangular shape
origin: lower margin of the mandible
insertion: skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth down; pulls upper lip down
Quadratus labii inferioris (Depressor labii inferioris)
L. quadratus—square-shaped + labii—of lip
origin: lower margin of mandible
insertion: skin of the lower lip
action: pulls lower lip down and out
insertion: skin of the lower lip
action: pulls lower lip down and out
Mentalis (Levator labii inferioris)
L. mentum—chin
origin: mental protuberance
insertion: skin at chin
action: raises skin of chin and wrinkles it; protrudes lower lip
insertion: skin at chin
action: raises skin of chin and wrinkles it; protrudes lower lip
Next in the series:
eyes, nose and mouth planes, frontal view.
Art, Life & Business Manifestos
From the 99% website.
Plus one of my favorites, the Holstee Manifesto. You can find out more about it at their website which is where I got this picture:
Artistic Anatomy Part 5: Mouth Muscles II
The "middle" section of the mouth muscles:
Zygomaticus major
Caninus (Levator anguli oris)
Origin above canine tooth
origin: canine fossa
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth upward; together raises lower lip
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth upward; together raises lower lip
Zygomaticus major
Origin on zygomatic bone
origin: zygomatic bone in front of suture
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth upward and outward
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin at corner of mouth
action: pulls corner of mouth upward and outward
Buccinator
L. bucca—cheek
origin: alveolar processes of mandible
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin of the lips
action: pulls corner of mouth outward; compresses lips and cheeks
insertion: orbicularis oris; skin of the lips
action: pulls corner of mouth outward; compresses lips and cheeks
Orbicularis oris
L. orbicular—small disc + oris—of mouth
origin: fibers from the caninus, zygomaticus major and buccinator
insertion: lip-rim skin
action: closes and protrudes the mouth
insertion: lip-rim skin
action: closes and protrudes the mouth
Next: the muscles below the mouth.
Chuck Jones Wisdom
Some knowledge I picked up from this 1975 animation special issue of Film Comment magazine:
1. Weight=Believability
2. To show surprise, connect whites of the eyes OR raise one eye OR make one eye square.
3. Be mindful of primary and secondary action.
5. Characters are the multiplications of our own foibles. All humor is based on that fact: the recognition in others, in a multiplied form, of something that we ourselves are capable of.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)