Hello everyone! In today's blog, I wanted to share how important it is to finish something regardless whether you are an artist, hobbyist, business person, writer, or anything really.
As of this past October, I finished the famous art challenge "Inktober" for the first time. In the past, I've also participated in other art challenges ranging from "OC Battle Comics" , Style Challenges, to the "365 Day Challenge".
I feel like it's fairly common for artists to start something, and put something on hold for a while, or never truly finish something. I admit, I've been there myself, and it can be hard to get over that hurdle. With that in mind, that's largely why I wanted to write this blog, to help bring awareness of how to overcome this challenge.
I like to compare the "Finishing a Project Concept" to home improvement. Imagine you want to redo your bathroom. You decide you want this bathroom to look stunning and impress everyone that comes to your home. You decide to start with "repainting" and you end up finishing that task. After that, you decide to tear up the tiles and add new tiles. In the middle of all this, you decide to read a home improvement magazine and you see the latest Kitchen Sink Model and suddenly, you have this Kitchen Epiphany! "Now I WANT that kitchen sink!" you think to yourself. Immediately, you go out to home depot that same day and you purchase that sink and start working on the sink in the kitchen. You might have forgotten however you invited some friends over that weekend anticipating you where going to finish the bathroom, but instead chose to work on the kitchen. How awkward, now, you have your friends over and the kitchen is in the middle of renovation AND your bathroom floor has been lifted up and your guests are yelling at you because everything is in utter chaos!
So now, what do you do? Well, the first thing I would do in this situation is evaluate the current state of the mess and apologize to the guests. With witnessing the sheer embarrassment, one would hope this would greatly motivate that person to finish the original task at hand, and not have to experience this tragedy again.
Bad Art Memes & Bad Habits
I've never been a fan of the "Art Memes" specifically talking about " Show all the work you've never finished". I've seen these float around on tiktok, youtube and tumblr, and where it can almost come across as funny, I don't think it's good to almost "brag" about everything that went unfinished. It can look bad for future clients that look at your social media and once again, it can create a negative psychological effect on yourself as an artist. By creating a video about it in the first place, you're effectively reminding yourself of everything that went "unfinished" which can further perpetuate a negative mindset and even promote bad habits as an artist. Some of these habits including "lingering" on a piece for a long time or longer than needed. The only "positive" I see out of these memes is if you did indeed go back and decide to "finish what was never finished before" Or just admit to yourself that they are "sketches" and not pieces designed to be finished.
Positive Output Instead of Negative
I feel There's also a lot of artists that also consider "sketches" to be "unfinished drawings". Which I feel is not the best outlook on sketches or a sketchbook. Sure, it does happen, where a project may get started but goes unfinished and may never get touched again. In regards to sketches, I feel it's best to look at them just as a "loose drawing" and that indeed was the intention of the work. Not EVERY piece of artwork needs to have the intention of being refined in it's final stage. A Drawing can simply exist just as that, a drawing.
With the bathroom comparison to drawing, I would relate this to the situation where an artist starts a drawing with the full intention of bringing it to a fully rendered piece, and then decides in the middle of working on that piece they want to instead start another project, without finishing the original.
I feel it's good to have more ideas rather than not enough ideas, but the artist needs to remember to finish what they started. It's especially good to put this in practice in the event an artist works alongside a team of other creators. If someone else on the team needs an asset in order to move forward with the project, the artist needs to be capable of focusing on the original task as to not bottleneck the team. This can cause a very unfortunate snowballing effect, where if there's an important piece needed to either test something or see how it looks with other elements, The artist needs to be able to finish those assets also in a timely manner.
Even if the artist is a solo creator, the ability to finish something is crucial, that way they can showcase their pieces to their fanbase, build a portfolio, and it even can affect your general mood as an artist.
The psychological effects of "finishing something" can have a majorly positive effect, where there becomes a sudden boost of motivation to then therefore work faster or even simply feel better about the outcome of the project.
There is the case of "procrastination" and getting overwhelmed by all the projects that had been started, and not wanting to go back to them.
Commission Pressure
For new artists getting into the world of commissions, this is a very easy "trap" to fall into.
The importance of "finishing something" can go in a multitude of directions.
Let's say in the case of a commission, you take on a task you are familiar with and you get your first one done no problem! Then, you decide to take on something you've never drawn before and the client also wants a lot of edits and changes.
The first thing I can see is "as an artist, it's OK to decline the art if you feel you cannot achieve that specific requirement. In which case, you can also hand that client off to an art friend who may be looking for commissions to do.
On the other hand, if you are dead-set on the project, don't keep the client waiting!
What can happen is an artist can get intimidated by all the fixes to the work or even the "uncertainty" of if they are doing the project correctly or not. And that's OK if there are hurdles. What's important is that if you decide to commit, you need to let your client know where you stand, and sometimes it's also OK to tell the client "No, I feel this makes more sense". The concept of saying "no" can also come across as intimidating to new artists, but it's important to be reasonable with your own time and the client's time. Some clients can go on and on about perfecting every tiny detail, and it's ok to put your foot down as an artist. Obviously, The artist wants to make sure the work is done to a satisfactory level for the client,
but some client's can be uncertain as to what they want, and come up with infinite ideas to the project that can be maddening from both perspectives.
If a life event happens in the middle of a commission, keep the client up to date. Ask them about deadlines or once again, if you need to pass it off to someone else, don't be afraid to do so or even ask for help from other artists or friends to get the job done.
It is very satisfying though making sure the work does get done. I'll always say that if it's within reason, finish what was started, and make sure to complete the work in a timely manner.
Being Inspired by Authors
When a person gives themselves a task and the task is a large one to start, it can come across as intimidating to finish. What can also happen is getting stuck in the "high" of working on something, and then not wanting that something to end, when it needs to conclude. This I feel is also very common with artists that want to start a comic or novel.
For those that are especially inspired by Epics or very long stories like "Dragonball" or "One Piece", we may find ourselves wanting to do the same.
Eiichiro Oda, the author behind One Piece did not start with One Piece (which now has over 100 volumes, and is still running)
But Oda actually started with a story called "Wanted!" which was a collection of five one shot manga chapters. He then later worked on other shorter stories including God's Gift for the Future, Ikki Yakō, Monsters, and Romance Dawn before finally tackling One Piece.
Similarly, Akira Toriyama also had developed multiple short stories before tackling "Dragonball". Some of these stories including "Wonder Island", "Chobit", and "Dr. Slump", just to name a few.
My Experience with Starting with a Smaller Project
When Mystic Mask Media was more active a few years ago, we at first decided to start with our big project "TerraZone: Clash of Creatures". The project has some interesting branching elements to it's story, starting off at first as a small hobby. This hobby eventually lead into a more serious project with the creation of our game development team Mystic Mask Media. We had big plans for the game becoming a video game, and even showcased the game at various events including conventions, livestreaming, and local showcasing for a few years.
We eventually wanted to kickstart the project, but upon further research, we realized the project had a lot more than what we could handle at the time even including the idea of kickstarting the project.
That's then when we took a step back, put TerraZone on hold and decided it was important to understand what goes into publishing a game. We came up with our first small project "Hyde & Zeke" to test the waters and see what exactly we where getting into.
We spent about half a year developing the game, and currently we have it published on steam. "Hyde & Zeke" also gave us an opportunity to say "We finished our first published game" and had something to show for it. This then gave us further motivation to branch out into various game development topics and opportunities as well as have something in each of our portfolios.
Since working on Hyde & Zeke, I've learned a lot about animation and even developed new methods for more sprite art and 2D animation workflows.
What About Hiatus /Reboots?
Sometimes, life gets in the way of a bigger project and it's simply out of the creator's control to truly finish something at the time. This can be in regards of both positive and negative life changes, and sometimes, it's ok to take a break and come back to something. Life changes can include anything from getting married, job changes, family related matters, school, friends, etc.
Maybe there wasn't anything in the way at all and the project was simply mentally draining and the creator needed to take it easy for a few months. This is a bit different than some of the previous examples as this starts falling into "art health" territory. I always believe it's important to take care of yourself first and take care of any situations that may have blocked the project from finishing .Sometimes, these tasks take time and may take even months or years before the original project can return. What's really cool is when the project returns and suddenly , it's like you went training in the mountains and gained 100 levels or progress on your previous knowledge and the project comes back stronger than ever!
Sometimes, the skills are so different or the original idea changed , and a reboot is needed. This is a form of "finishing" as now the project returned and it's simply better than the original idea. I've definitely seen many examples where stories where rebooted in both writing and art style changes.
Art Challenges
I don't think I can stress enough how helpful art challenges are to help artists finish projects. Art Challenges are not just something fun to do, but also teach how to meet deadlines and stay focused on a specific task. I consider them like personal "training wheels" to help artists get familiar with the importance of meeting deadlines, and to work a little quicker than they may be used to.
I plan on writing a more in-depth discussion on "art Challenges" , but some more well known ones include "Inktober", "Mermay", and "Smaugust".
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Hope everyone had a great holiday week and a Happy New Year!
See You Soon!
Thank you everyone for reading this blog. Once again, look forward to upcoming art ideas and topics. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date! You can also take a look at my social media updates on Instagram, twitter, and artstation!
Task completion is important because ideas are intrinsically fragile in their origin. It is only by pushing and pulling, cutting and editing that the worker finds the idea's worth and possibility. Good ideas give rise to additional, often better, ideas. But the birthing of constructs benefits immensely from having a fully realized THing to consider.
Adventures and risks of the mind are absolutely necessary. But successful adventures and risks usually need grounding in something that is There, something that endures, at least for a few moments. - H.