Hey, guys! In this episode, I am chatting with Zac Retz, a visdev artist working in film and game industry with SONY Pictures Animation, Dreamworks, Laika, and others. He is most known for his real-life observation paintings on his Instagram.
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Get in touch with Zac
- ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/zacretz
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zacretz/
Key Takeaways
“You can’t have excuses if it’s something you really want to do. Just make it happen! You don’t want to be sitting at the same spot in 30 years, regretting, “oh, I wish I did that!”
- First job Zac found was at Barnes & Noble. He went to the kids’ books section, made a list of 20-30 publishers and emailed them all and got 1 job offer.
- Zac is practicing his observation skills every day which sets him apart because it makes his artworks much more believable
- Zac wakes up at 4 am every morning, goes for a quick walk to wake up and then works on freelance projects before going to work
Resources mentioned
- Inspiring Artists
- Richard Schmid – implies details so well and compositions are unique
- Edgar Payne – big mountains scapes, compositions
- Schools and classes
- Nathan Fowkes, Sam Nielsen, Dice Tsutsumi & Robert Kondo – Zac is doing their classes on Schoolism over and over
Special thanks to Zac for joining me today. See you next time!
All artworks by Zac Retz, used with permission
Episode Transcript
Announcer
Creative, artistic, happy! That’s you. There are endless possibilities for living a creative life. So let’s inspire each other. Art Side of Life interviews with Iva.
Iva Mikles
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of art Art Side of Life
, where I chat with inspiring artists and create variety or related videos. My name is Iva and my guest today is Zach Retz. And in this episode, you will learn what it means to be a visual development artist in a big studio and what he wishes to know when he was in high school.
Zac Retz
Yeah, I wish I knew the importance of painting outside and studying from like the master painters or studying from like screencaps and, and photos I wish I knew like the correct way to study and totally help push yourself to the next level constantly.
Iva Mikles
Zach is a visual development artist working in a film and game industry. He is currently working full time for Sony Pictures, animation and freelancing on the side for clients like DreamWorks, like blur, real effects, headless production, and most of his free time he spends practicing from real life observation and painting quick concept, which you can find on his popular Instagram account. So please welcome Zach Retz. Let’s get to the interview. So welcome, everyone to the next episode of Art Side of Life
. And I’m super happy to have Zack here. Hi, Iva, everything that you joined us here and take time from your busy schedule.
Zac Retz
Yeah, of course. Thanks for doing these. It’s cool too. Especially when working throughout the day and to be inspired. It’s great to listen to these interviews. So I’m so happy to be on. Oh, that’s
Iva Mikles
also Yeah, I’m really like happy that you enjoy them. And yeah, that’s awesome. And let’s just dive in right away to your background. And maybe you can mention some of your biggest decisions you had to do in order to you know, get where you are now in your art career.
Zac Retz
Yeah. My background, so senior year of high school is when I decided I wanted to be an artist, like full time, that’s what I was going to do for my career. I think before then people, some family members and you know, school, they try to push you in a direction. I think my family wanted me to become a pharmacist or something like completely different. But yeah, my dad was like you should if you’re into art, you should just do it. Don’t worry about the money. You’ll you’ll figure it out. And yeah, I went to school, I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. So that’s what I focused on. And yeah, I graduated, I emailed all my all my favorite publishers, and I ended up something ended up working out. So I did a book with flashlight press. And yeah, I spent like the next like six to eight months working on that, which is amazing. And then I worked. During that time, I started freelancing for Game Studios, a lot of like mobile games, because that was pretty vague at that time. And that led me to get a game job in upstate New York, which was where I was living. And I worked there for a year and a half. And I realized that wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I wasn’t feeling like, fulfilled artistically. So I quit. I quit in the spring. And then I spent the entire summer just practicing and learning and building my portfolio to try to get into animation. And that fall, so I spent the entire summer doing that. And then that fall. I posted online on our station, and then like a week later, I started I got like two or three job offers in California. Wow, cool. All right, I’m moving. I’m doing I went down for CTN i know i think you go sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I went down for CTN and I put up Everything in my car and I just had my car shipped. I didn’t even sign a contract or anything yet, but I knew I wasn’t. I wasn’t coming back to New York.
Iva Mikles
Now you don’t have the cold winters.
Zac Retz
Yeah, yeah. No more cold winters. No more shoveling my car out of the snow in the mornings. Great.
Iva Mikles
Sure. Yeah, exactly. But so how was it for the first job? You know, when you mentioned that you mailed a lot of publishers, you know, how many did you mail? Or was it like one reply? Or how did it work? Because sometimes people imagined you know, I sent five and no one wrote me I was like, Oh
Zac Retz
no, I went to Barnes and Noble I look, I just like looked around in the kids book section. I just made a list of anything that caught my eye. Any book, I looked at the publisher I wrote down I probably made the list of like 2030 publishers. And I went home I emailed them all and I sent them my portfolio and I think probably like five or 10 of them got back to me and they’re all like Oh, we don’t have something right now your work is whatever is is good but we don’t have anything and then flashlight they had they had a story that was ready to go but not an illustrator yet. So they’re glad they found me and it worked out
Iva Mikles
oh so what helped you develop your skills you know, when you said like you worked on your portfolio for the whole summer Did you work from some books or did you have a mentor or like observation from life?
Zac Retz
Yeah, I did a few things. I I did a lot of observation from like life because I knew I wanted to focus in color and lighting for visual development and so I painted outside all the time. And that helped helped grow my eye so I saw how real light work to not just like light from like a photo or you know, so that that was helpful that kind of like set me apart a little bit from some of the stuff that the studios were used to seeing portfolios so from life and then I took all the schools and classes that had anything to do with like color and lighting so like Nathan Fox, his class Sam Nielson Dyson, Robert they’re coloring my class I took all those some of them I take I do all the assignments go through the all the lessons and then I just start the class over and I just do it all again. And yeah, those those classes were great and they were way better than anything college head yeah, I’m glad I did those.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, I also enjoyed them. I didn’t do the same Nielsen closet so I have to go back to that one. But yeah, I also like
Zac Retz
that one’s intense. Oh, good. Good. way he like thinks about everything mathematically. It’s crazy. Yeah,
Iva Mikles
life is physics. So Right. When you go paint outside, what is your favorite medium they also go sometimes with a tablet and paint digitally or everything is traditional, or do you have a preferred medium now overall?
Zac Retz
Yeah, I do. I just do traditional outside because digital, like I’ve tried it with my iPad but there’s always like glare reflections and it’s never worked out. And it’s good. I sit in front of my computer all day so it’s good to just like use real paint like it feels so nice sometimes so like paint on an actual piece of paper. But yeah, I use acrylic and oil outside.
Iva Mikles
Do you also combine them sometimes or just like acrylic painting and all painting? Yes separate
Zac Retz
Yeah, acrylic is great for quick little sketches. And like you can do you can you can go on like a hike and bring like a bunch of little pieces of paper and
Zac Retz
just like I’ll just do I’m like this big like low pitches like I went to a marina and so there’s boats and it’s it’s great to just are like still realize that some oranges but um, yeah, acrylic is great for doing a bunch and you they dry and then you can put them in your backpack and then you can keep going own oil is a little bit more of a setup. But you can, it’s easier to paint larger. Because you can make some turbine time into your paint and it just just runs and it’s, it’s nice and it but it takes like weeks to dry. So, yeah, yeah, it’s just good for different things.
Iva Mikles
So do you set yourself a time limit when you’re painting outside like, Okay, I will spend Max one hour on this painting or 15 minutes.
Zac Retz
Yeah, I don’t set a timer. But in my head, I was telling myself, I’m going to do three paintings. Usually I’ll go with friends. So I’ll get a cut out like three pieces of paper. And I’ll tell myself, I’m gonna do these three paintings. By the time everyone else is ready to go to a new painting spot or something. So if it just telling myself that it forces me to do a bunch of quick ones, and because the more you do, the more you learn, and then you you warm up and you get bad paintings out of the way. And then you start start doing more interesting things. And
Iva Mikles
yeah, challenge yourself with more, right?
Zac Retz
Yeah, yeah.
Iva Mikles
So how does your artistic process look like now if you can take us through some of your big steps? If you’re starting a new project, you know, like, how do you do maybe a research do the thumbnails do you set like color palettes, or maybe you can mention a difference between like a commercial project and maybe your own painting.
Zac Retz
Okay, so if I’m working for a studio, usually though, they’ll give you the script and you read, they’ll tell you to focus on a section or there’s one one set like say, the characters go into this building. And something happens in this building is like a fight scene or something. And so I’ve read that part of the script and try to figure out where are the key story moments, like the most important shots in that scene and I would just paint those really fast. So usually, they’ll give you like a week or something and I’ll try to do like a few paintings every day just like really quick. Usually, I just go straight into color and just try to capture the right mood and feeling for that scene. And then then we go to a meeting with like directors and everyone and we and we go through them and and if if people are feeling like that’s the right mood, that’s the right the right feeling for the scene. And it’s like kind of the right design because I’m thinking about design too. As I’m doing this and then from there I can I can go into more detailed stuff I can start detailing like what does this wall actually look like? What does it doorway look like? You know things like that so that’s how it works with like, more like studio work but as my on holidays commercial compared to which other one Yeah,
Iva Mikles
Something if you are if there is a big difference, right? When someone gives you a script and when you are working on your personal project, maybe if it is, you know, big painting or a story moment you want to sell as art print.
Zac Retz
Yeah, um, so for my own stuff, I generally do the same process. But then I’ll just sometimes at work you won’t have time to like finish like a story moment idea you had. So for my own stuff, I just spend that time and finish like a cool story moment with characters and everything.
Iva Mikles
And how is it for you, you know, the the transition from traditional to digital, you know, do you have your own brushes you created and? Or, you know, so it has the same feel?
Zac Retz
Yeah, that’s yeah, it’s kind of important to me, I I paint digitally almost the same way of hate paint traditionally, like like they make fun of me at work for painting everything on one layer and
Zac Retz
yeah, I don’t. I feel like keeping it as close to just like the natural way that you paint is important because there’s something that happens and then when you’re painting outside when you’re just like observing and painting and not thinking about like, clicking a new layer, making some adjustment or like doing some Photoshop trick, like, once you start doing that, it kind of like takes your brain away from painting, and more about like, a process. And then you don’t have that like that, like experimentation in your artwork. Which something that I really enjoy that traditional painting. And I try to capture that in digital.
Iva Mikles
Because your work you do the whole environment with characters, or is it like, just ideas for backgrounds? Or if you can mention maybe like, how does actually look like, you know, to work as a bit of artists?
Zac Retz
Yeah. So in the beginning of a movie, when they first hire you, it’s very much like I described like, you read the script, do like quick story moments. Because, you know, no one knows what the movie looks like. Yeah. So you’re trying to figure that out. And then as time goes on, we get a clearer vision of what the movie looks like. And then we spend more time going in, and designing like props. Like, say, you’re in this room. Or you’re in a train station, you have to design the, like the stairwells that go up to the different areas, or the tunnels that go down. Like the central place where people go and get their tickets, you have to design like, the area. And then what are the tickets actually look like? What do you what are the screens that you go up to? What are those look like? Interior exterior. So it might start with like a like a nice, like cinematic story moment painting. But then after that you paint like a flat wall with no perspective, you focus on the textures, each detail in that wall? Because you need to pass that on to the 3d artists who will build it and texture it and all that. Yeah. So as as you go through the film, it becomes more of doing the little design the detailed stuff. Which is fun to be boring by it’s like, it’s a good break, too.
Iva Mikles
Because you need to think how the characters will interact with everything like the look at the screen, the touch this pattern, how would I emphasize them? We’d live in the layout and composition and everything great. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And when you do so many things, because you’re also teaching and working on your own projects and working so how do you design your day? Or how does your like week look like? You know, so your maybe daily rituals?
Zac Retz
Oh, we were talking earlier, because it’s 4:30am right now. I get up at four every morning. splash some cold water on my face, go for a walk, quick walk. And it’s pitch black out. And yeah, I just I just come back and get right to work I do in the morning. Because I work the best in the morning. It’s something about like getting up before the rest of the world is up and it’s still dark out like the day hasn’t even started yet. But you’re you’re going something about that just motivates me. And I’m like super focused at that time. So yeah, that’s when I do either my personal work or my freelance work, I’m able to do half a day of work before I go to my normal job. And right now I work at Sony animation. And it’s just a couple blocks away so I just walk over to work. And I’m there from nine to six and then I come home I usually work out and then make dinner. So make my lunches so I make dinner and I make like a lot. So I’ve got lunches for the week or whatever. And yeah, then I watch a cartoon and go to bed. I tried to go to bed before 10
Iva Mikles
Yeah, well, if you wake up so early, then you still need to have some amount of sleep right?
Zac Retz
If I go to bed after 10 Night, there’s no way I can get out there for
Iva Mikles
and so you draw every day in the morning right so you have this creative juices flowing.
Zac Retz
Yeah, every day. And, um, and then usually Saturday, all I’ll do the same thing. Except Saturday, I’ll do freelance all day or my personal work all day. And then Sunday, I just, I just chill out, I go for a bike ride or play some video games or something.
Iva Mikles
So you always take at least one day kind of off from the week, so you can recharge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so what would you say maybe to young self or kind of like something you wish you knew before you started the whole art career because you’ve changed some course of the type of art to do. Is there something you wish you wish you knew?
Zac Retz
Yeah. Yeah, I wish I knew the importance of painting outside and studying from, like the master painters or studying from like screencaps and, and photos. I wish I knew, like the correct way to study and totally help push yourself to the next level constantly. And I don’t think I think that’s something I learned like after college. I just like I just have to, I tell us to figure out how to paint because I wasn’t very happy with whereas that sorry, I just do tons of film still. Studies, I started painting outside and doing both of those. And thinking about like, composition and color and lighting. Like how other artists did it and copying their paintings. Yeah, it’s something I wish I was doing like in middle school.
Iva Mikles
And do you have like, favorite movies you would recommend as like this is cool for layout or light and think for inspiration? Or like old artists?
Zac Retz
Yeah, movies. I don’t have anything specific. But if you search Zack Gretz Pinterest. I have a Pinterest page that I just post film. So it’s like constantly throughout the day, things that inspire me. So some movies I hadn’t even seen on there but I might like the composition of this one shot or the colors.
Zac Retz
So there’s that and then artists. My all time favorite is Richard Schmid. I think I was just drawn to his his paintings because there’s so
Zac Retz
he implies details so well. And his compositions are unique and interesting. They’re not like the typical all the time. And they’re so moody and the colors are great. Also, Edgar Payne, you know, his big mountain escapes. And his compositions are just perfect. Yeah, those are a couple like, again, like you go to Pinterest, I have a page of paintings that I like so
Iva Mikles
Oh, nice. Yeah. And so how do you do the you know, grouping? Or do you do like, I don’t know, sounds that light or the environment or you just have everything like together?
Zac Retz
I cannot have every like, I’ve got a section for screencaps a section for paintings, a sketch section for drawings and characters and like a couple other ones like storyboards, just like a few of the things I like to go to and get some inspiration or
Iva Mikles
Yeah, and do you also have like a favorite books or it’s mostly when you search for inspiration? Like online or like from nature? Or is there some like favorite book like, Okay, this is the Bible.
Zac Retz
Not any one book is is the Bible, I would say. I think Richard Schmid alla prima that book is great. I agree with pretty much everything he says, In that book. It’s just like, the correct way to paint. I feel like that book is great. And then at your pain. It says, I think it’s like composition of outdoor painting or something. Yeah, that book is great. It’s cool to see like his little thumbnails. They do like his little pencil sketches. Yeah, those two books are excellent.
Iva Mikles
Yeah. Okay. I will put some of them on my list, which I have thought somebody mentioned but the other one I don’t so Okay, good. That’s the next one. And when you mentioned also like the freelance work and like a full time job, how do you do your networking now? Is it everything through art station or it’s also just word of mouth or how do you find new paid projects for someone who’s just starting out? And don’t know, like, where to what to do?
Zac Retz
Yeah, um, I have had almost zero luck, like, going to clients like I think like the book that one worked out for some reason but like, trying to get like a job in animation or or like a game studio or something I’ve had no luck emailing clients or applying to their, like internships or anything I’ve just been completely ignored. The like I mentioned, I got animation jobs through art station, like these companies, they look at our station. Also, I had a friend who, who got a job, because a director saw his artwork on Instagram. I think I get a lot of work through Instagram as well. And Facebook. So yeah, my my advice would be to post artwork all the time on social media, like, every day or a couple of days a week, whatever you can do. Because people people are always on their phone checking, like just going through like Facebook and Instagram. So if a director sees your stuff, by accident on one of those social medias, then that could be your ticket in.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, because but was there like a certain number of followers or exposure where people start contacted you? You know, like, because when you have like 200 followers, then it’s hard to find the account. So maybe what was the level of when people started offering your job? If you remember.
Zac Retz
Yeah, well, it goes like, it’s like a, like a graph that goes like this, you know, it’s like, when you’ve got like, a couple 1000 followers, you know, you’ll get a freelance shot once in a while. But like, as as it increases, you just get more and, like, I, for some reason, I’ve been stuck at like, around like 40,000 Instagram followers for like a year. But I get so much freelance work that I I can’t do it all, like, I turned most of it or most of it down. So, like, as a specific number like,
Iva Mikles
either was more like, the level as you mentioned, like, if you go say, just going up when you have few 1000 Then there is like one here, one there. And then maybe something what you can leave from, but as you mentioned, you have a full time job. So that’s main source of income, and then you combine maybe with the selling the tutorials, and the brushes and artworks, or do you have more sources of income you combine?
Zac Retz
Yeah. It’s, it’s not. And in animation, it’s not a good idea to be fully reliant on your on your film job. Because as you know, movies get canceled, or they get put on hold. And then the art team is the first ones to go you know, they fire the artists and so you might you might be out of work for a little bit. So yeah, I just I told myself that I was like, I need to like have a bunch of different incomes. So I’m not at work like worried like, Oh, I’m gonna get fired. Like if they fire me. Whatever, I got some freelance work I can do. So yeah, I do my full time job. And actually, my, my full time job, I don’t spend any of that money, I put that into a separate bank account for my savings. So I know that the freelance work I do that covers all my expenses. So I don’t I’m not worried. I’m not like freaking out at work when there’s layoffs or whatever. And also, it’s good for planning for your future to have the money building up. I do freelance from other animation studios like TV, Game Studios. And then I have like Gumroad and Patreon videos that I do. And those are good because it’s like you make a video and then people will buy that video throughout the year so it’s kind of like constant money coming in. Is there anything else that I do? I think yeah, I think that’s it. Yeah.
Iva Mikles
Because it’s always hard to combine. And it’s like, I was thinking about Patreon Now recently, and because there is also almost like a full time job to keep up the Patreon and also that because the Gumroad, you create ones and then you can have that there. But for a Patreon you produce content, like, twice a month or every week, or do you do like a guided tutorials there? And then you sell them also on Patreon? So Gumroad Yeah,
Zac Retz
yeah. Patreon, I think you can do it two different ways, you can do the monthly like subscription. So people pay every single month. And so you have to make sure that you post enough tutorials or whatever, every month, so people feel like they’re, they’re getting their money’s worth. Or you can do it more like Gumroad, where they only buy the tutorials that you post when you post them, which is what I do. That’s like the low stress Verizon version. So I think I just did like, one or two video tutorials last year, and I posted them, the same ones on Gumroad, and Patreon.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, because we were talking also we then another guest where like, she was creating like two videos per month on the on the Patreon, and the sped up version can be on YouTube. So you can have it like both. So you have the explanation on Patreon. And then you can have even YouTube, which is also quite interesting. And if we go back to the ad, career photo, do you kind of consider like the most difficult moment of your career because that’s usually the time when we learned the most, if you can take us to that story.
Zac Retz
Difficult. I think when I was working at a game studio, I was going through a lot of personal things that made my life really, really difficult. So like that, on top of like, trying to become a better artist and working at a studio. Um, and I knew I didn’t want to be at that studio, too much longer. So when I decided to quit, to leave that steady income, that was tough as like, Oh, my mike and be able to do this. But a good test, like I mentioned, just take what your job is giving you put it into a different bank account and try to do your freelance work and whatever, try to cover your bills for a little bit just with that. And if you can do that, then quit your job. And that’s what I did. And then I was able to focus on my portfolio Yeah, and like I mentioned getting up early every day, I got up early, set a schedule for myself, and I just worked on my own on work and just study and it’s very frustrating, like, I knew and I wasn’t improving as much as I’d like to. And whatever but I just kept doing it and and there’s always that doubt in your mind. You know, it’s like I just quit my job. What if I never enabled to get into get another job? But yeah, as long as you’re improving and you’re posting your work online like yeah, eventually worked out. But yeah, that was that was a difficult time. But the reward was was so great. I got out of the snow. And I moved like right next to the beach. And it’s like
Iva Mikles
so the key takeaway would be that you work just kept going on and you know, like the schedule you set for yourself and just don’t stop basically, just keep going.
Zac Retz
Yeah. keep yourself motivated. I learned a good thing to tell yourself like if you’re, if you’re going to go work out, for example, don’t think about how you feel now like right now you feel tired. It’s after work. You just want to go home and go to sleep and eat and watch TV or whatever. Think about how you will feel after your workout. Like after you work out. You’re like Oh, I’m like I’m like sore from working out. I feel like I did something like this is great. Think about that feeling before you work out. So then you’re like, I’m just gonna work out because like that reward is so great.
Iva Mikles
Yeah, also and the endorphins, and then you feel like healthy in the long run. So, yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. And let’s look about the future. And I would like to know, maybe, what would you kind of image in a, you know, like dream scenario in five to 10 years? Is there some project you would like to be working on or maybe like art books or graphic novels, games?
Zac Retz
Yeah, um, there’s a lot of things I would like to work on like, button the next five to 10 years, I’d love to be able to art direct something. Because going through the process of making a movie a few times, you see how it starts out, sometimes it starts out really cool. And then like, overtime, it gets like watered down, and then the finished product, it’s not as great because you know, you’ve got all these people trying to put their advice in whatever’s so it’d be, it’d be nice to be in a more of a leadership position where I can, I can fight back a little bit, I can, like, speak up in meetings, I can be like, now, like, if we do this, like, it’ll, it’ll be very, very interesting and unique. Or even just in terms of like color and lighting. It’d be nice to be able to have my own ideas. And kind of, like, manage a team. I feel like
Zac Retz
yeah, so our direction and then I think longer term I would love to do I’d love to have my own studio and do like my own thing completely.
Iva Mikles
I was just thinking exactly whether the you should start a studio.
Zac Retz
Yeah. Because, you know, it’s great to, to work at a studio and, and make artwork for for someone else. But if you can do it for your own story, and your own, your own vision, something that you’ve created. That’s got to be like the most fulfilling thing ever. I feel like, it’s like, right now I’m working on my own like little personal project. And just to see things kind of start to happen is it just, it’s an amazing feeling. And yeah,
Iva Mikles
definitely, I’m looking forward to see that because you can just find your own team. And yeah, in a few years, you can have a movie or something else. And yeah, you’re on severe. I think that will be awesome. And if you think about like long, long in the future in like 100 years, what would you like to be remembered for?
Zac Retz
You know, those, those movies like that will never be forgotten, like, Toy Story or, like that set like the standard for the next like 20 years of animation. Like we’re still just like, very intuitive thing to do to make something like that or have like a significant role in some like groundbreaking movie or some like really cool, like book or creative like graphic novels, some, just some really awesome story. That kind of lives beyond me. I think that would be really cool. Yeah, that
Iva Mikles
sounds great. And then yeah, before we finish, maybe you can share, like the last piece of advice or key takeaway, and then we will like,
Zac Retz
Yeah. Last piece of advice. Yeah, I think I heard I’ve heard some people lately say, Oh, they don’t have time to make a portfolio. Or they. They just they have excuses for reasons why they don’t like get to that next level in their career, whatever. I say. You can’t have excuses. If it’s something you really want to do, because there’s always something you can cut back on. Like, that’s why I get up at four in the morning and I do my own projects, my own freelance work that opens up time and whatever so I’ve got time to do other things. So don’t Don’t be lazy. You There’s always something you can cut out. Like maybe it’s watching TV, you don’t, you don’t need to watch TV, you could take a break for six months and make a portfolio. And one thing I did was my lunch period. I mentioned earlier, I make my own lunches. So I can just go to the cafeteria, or the common area or whatever it were grabbed my lunch out and sit back at my desk, eat and do a lunch painting, and stuff on social media. And that’s given me so much freelance work. So, yeah, I think my advice would be to just, if it’s something you really care about, if you want to get to that next level, or you want to do your own personal project, or get that new job, there’s always something cut out of your life for a short amount of time. Or maybe maybe you’ll find that you just love it. And then you you keep that schedule up. But yeah, just just make it happen. Because the reward is great. You don’t want to be sitting 30 years from now, or 50 years from now. At the same spot, you were thinking like, Oh, I wish I did that, like you can sacrifice now to to accomplish that great thing.
Iva Mikles
Because you regret more the things you didn’t do. Because you never know. And as you mentioned, just making time, because we basically never have time for everything. What do you want, it’s just the prioritizing the tasks you want to improve. And also, as you said, that the change over time, it’s not just like, you know, week that you improve, but it’s just taking longer, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So thank you so much, again, for being here. It was so great.
Zac Retz
Oh, thanks for having me. And this is this is awesome that you do this. It’s it gives artists and gives us something to listen to. And we’re on the grind working hard.
Iva Mikles
Really happy as well that everyone just enjoys it because I also started this project because I didn’t have something like that when I was just learning or working. So I think it’s a lot of great inspiration from all of you guys. So yeah, so thanks again for being here. Thank you. So perfect. And and thanks everyone who joined as well today and see you in the next episode. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you being here. You can find all the resources mentioned in this episode at artsideoflife.com. Just type a guest name in the search bar. There is also a couple of free artists resources ready for you on the website as well. So go check it out. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or Stitcher so I can reach and inspire more artists like you. If you want to watch the interviews, head over to artsideoflife.com/yotube. Continue to inspire each other and I will talk to you guys in the next episode. Bye.
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Hi, I am Iva (rhymes with “viva”). I am a full-time self-taught artist behind Art Side of Life® and a Top Teacher on Skillshare. I have 15 years of experience in the creative field as a concept designer, illustrator, art director, and now freelance artist, content creator, and art instructor. My goal is to help you get your creative groove on with Procreate and make awesome art through practical classes, tutorials, Procreate brushes, and guides on art tools, supplies and resources. About me »
