Keep Creative

#013 - Ever wondered what life is like as a self-motivated independent game developer and YouTube creator? Join Connor as he interviews Reece Geofroy about all things creative.

We cover quite a few topics:

• Reece's journey from lost youth to self-taught game dev
• Tips for self-learning
• Documenting a game's development on YouTube
• Why traditional education isn't a must-have in the indie community
• The helpfulness of qualifications
• How copying your favourite creations is the best learning curriculum
• Implementing structure in your learning
• Reaching out and networking
• Keeping connections intimate and personal, yet still respectable
• Appealing to people's humanity
• The creative process
• Committing to game development full-time
• Why you should think of your life in stages
• Balancing time between creating and marketing
• Dealing with burnout and depression
• Why we shouldn't idolize people (it's an excuse)
• Using college routines as a template for productivity
• The advantage of externalizing our ambitions
• Nurturing a personal support network
• Creating motivation
• The difference between motivation and determination
• Why determination is better
• Tonnes of productivity talk
• Taking mini-vacations and why it's productive
• Maintaining your sanity as an ambitious person
• Personal organization
• Why you should dialogue with your future self
• How we over-estimate short-term goals and under-estimate long-term ones
• How being your own boss is like being a kid with no parents
• Why being firm with yourself is essential
• The importance of style and why you don't want to settle on one
• Prioritizing your ideas
• Keeping consistent
• The evergreen advice Reece would give himself if he were to start all over again

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions or read our newsletter for creatives here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/reecegeofroy

#012 - Ever wondered what life is like as a fresh out of college, professional animator for shows and cartoons? Join Connor as he interviews Ken Ackerman about all things creative.

We cover quite a few topics:

• The life of an early career animator
• Landing a job straight out of college in the creative fields
• Understanding the performance triad of skill, speed and attitude
• What 2 attributes you need to excel in a team
• Open your mind 
• Checking your ego 
• Thriving within a studio environment
• Art block
• The  difference between what your brain expects, and what you can actually do
• Accepting where you're at with your skillset
• Getting and digesting feedback from other artists
• Collaboration (and why us more introverted creatives can find it scary)
• Talent vs hard work
• How to persist
• Avoiding the hole of self-pity we can often find ourselves in from time to time
• Separating yourself from your work
• Why you should be sharing your work
• Artist atrophy
• Trusting others to be involved with your project
• How being uncomfortable can indicate that you're growing
• The best part of being in a duo, group or team
• Taking pride in your strengths 
• Life-drawing as a learning tool
• The best ways to explore new styles
• The advice Ken would give themselves, were they to start all over again!

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions or read our newsletter for creatives here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/kenackerman

#011 - Ever wondered what life is like as an Ableton certified trainer, plug-in maker, producer and educator online and on YouTube? Join Connor as he interviews Tom Glendinning (ELPHNT) about all things creative.

We cover quite a few topics:

• Ableton certification
• Educating music in the YouTube space
• Origins of ELPHNT
• How ELPHNT addresses the pain points of self-teaching musicians
• Why a laptop is more reliable than bandmates
• How old dreams make way for new ones
• Why visuals are important in auditory art forms
• Making a lasting initial impression
• Bringing attention to your creations
• Plug-ins
• How visuals come first!
• What it's like for YouTube to reach out to you to make music for their library
• Teaching concepts through video
• Habits
• Why flow is kind of a myth
• The incredible power of short deadlines
• Crafting a gripping story within a video
• The DAW-less movement
• Why focussing on daily input-based goals (like making music for just 10 minutes a day) is the key to long-term creative victory
• Productivity tips and techniques
• The excellence of collaboration
• How collaborating makes you more accountable than if you were to work alone
• Burnout and depression
• Learning frustrations and how to deal with them
• The negative effects of taking yourself too seriously
• Dealing with external pressures to finish, upload and have your work liked and well-received
• Crazy method for beating burnout
• Deleting your work
• Why short, punchy tips & tricks video culture is ruining your ability to learn effectively
• How it took Tom 10 years to get to a point of consistently appreciating his own music
• Mapping out the perfect self-learning plan
• Different levels of self-education and their effectiveness vs cost
• Why style is not something you develop, but rather seek to discover
• What advice he would give himself were he to start over again

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions or read our newsletter for creatives here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/elphnt

#010 - Ever wondered what life is like as a popular YouTuber and music producer? Join Connor as he interviews Jeremy Blake, sole creator of Red Means Recording about all things creative.

We cover quite a few topics:

• The value of infotainment
• How to inject education with novelty to find and keep an audience
• Infotainment
• The 363,000 subscriber YouTube channel Red Means Recording
  • Its origins
  • Key elements
  • Trajectory
• Ins and outs of YouTube as a broadcasting platform, and its lesser known quirks
• How you can only ever expect approximately a third or less of your audience to see your latest upload
• What it's like to have a video be picked up by the YouTube algorithm (almost a full year after its initial upload)
• His iconic and viral OP-1 synthesizer jamming videos
• How Jeremy fell into what has grown to become his profession 
• Toying around 
• Forcing creative restrictions 
• How the most painful creation to date of his (due to burnout ) became his most popular one
• Being honest with your short-comings
• Self-promotion 
• Productivity tips
• Breaking smart 
• The crucial nature of physically distancing yourself from your work 
• Why understanding musical genre is perhaps the most important element in your growth as an artist
• The evergreen piece of advice he would give himself were he to start all over again! 

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions or read our newsletter for creatives here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/jeremyblake

#009 - Ever wondered what it's like to collaborate with 3 mates on a comedy YouTube channel? Join Connor as he interviews Zack Stroud & Josh Quinn from BLANKS No One Asked For, about all things creative!

PS: Please forgive the brand new budgie in the background trying to join in the podcast! He won't be so noisy next week.

We cover quite a few topics:

• Importance of persistence 
• Making a collaboration happen
• How to go about involving friends or other creatives in a dream project of yours (like a YouTube channel)
• Collecting ideas
• Overcoming performance anxiety
• Letting go of what others think in order to make compelling content
• Dealing with embarrassment
• How to prioritize creativity amidst your and your team's everyday responsibilities
• How creative outlets, whatever they may be for you, actually make life better and are necessary in 2020
• Community-first philosophy
• The usefulness of batching your content to maintain a consistent output (or the illusion of it)
• The advice Zach and Josh would give themselves were they to start their creative venture all over again!

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/blanksnooneaskedfor

#008 - Ever wondered what life is like as a multi-instrumentalist? Join Connor as he interviews Isaac Bruggemann, about all things creative.

We cover quite a few topics:

• Understanding the changing habits of our audience
• Switching out of our own perspectives
• Practice (what counts, how to optimize it, prioritising it, etc)
• What it's like to play alongside jazz legend James Morrison
• How to maximize your results by focusing
• Focus tips
• How hard it is today to stick to things long enough to become great
• Challenges of communicating ideas
• Letting your work speak for itself
• Picking up lesser-known or appreciated skills that make you more well-rounded
• Knowing the tools at your disposal
• Juggling learning and pursuing multiple instruments at once
• How to deal with the stresses of being an artist
• Tips for procrastination, feeling like you're falling behind, overwhelm, self-criticism, failing to meet expectations, etc.
• Externalizing your fears
• Keeping our larger-than-life goals achievable and ego in check
• Being aware of where you're at in your journey (and appreciating it)
• Saying yes to things which take you away from achieving your goals
• How to roadmap your own self-learning
• Why the order of what you learn is important
• The importance of technique, universal skills and mental models in acquiring lots of skills
• Cultivating patience
• How artists can become serious and lose their spark
• The important of play and child-like wonder
• Taking failure personally
• Separating our art from our identity
• Beating burnout when it happens
• What piece of advice Isaac would give himself if he were to start his creative journey all over again

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/isaacbruggemann

#007 - What do you get when three on the rise musicians with different educational backgrounds walk into a podcast? Today James hosts our second roundtable podcast with CWUP community members Caleb and Lucas about all things creative. So kick-back and enjoy the creative company.

From education's impact on your creativity to the liberating revelation that nothing is original. This conversation is one you wont want to miss, no matter where you're at in your creative journey.

You can learn more about our community for creatives at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/roundtable2

#006 - Ever wished you could have thousands of followers on SoundCloud? Join Connor as he interviews Kevin Flores (AKA'd as Amacchi on Soundcloud), about all things creative.

You'll learn Kevin's path to thousands of followers on Soundcloud and how long it took. We discuss what success means to him, making money with music, and getting your tracks on playlists. He also shares how much time is actually spent creating new music, and how inspiration can come from the games and media you consume. We ponder why the field of video game music might be so saturated and why it's okay to take your time to find the right pathway in education, and to be unafraid to drop-out. Kevin shares how he sometimes falls out of love with music due to a competitive mindset and how not worrying about the numbers can help. We come to a mutual agreement about the silliness of trying to please the people around us who don't get or care about our creativity, and whether having a style matter. We also talk about the endless cycle of inspiration, motivation, and action, as well as tips for beating creative block, the downside of cramming your art, why finishing new pieces, is so difficult, and the importance of honest feedback and critique to your success. Be sure to stick around to the end, because we'll close by asking Kevin what one piece of advice he would ask himself if he were to start all over again. This will be a creative break like no other!

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/amacchi

#005 - Ever considered the life of an Instagram artist? Join Connor as he interviews Anna "LuxuryChoccie" Williams Harrison (pet portrait artist), about all things creative.

You'll learn about what it's like being known for wonky pet portraits, as well as how Anna juggles a much larger side project on the side (an art book centered upon Japanese street fashion). We talk about beating burnout, keeping practice fresh, bouncing between projects, and finding entertainment in your art. Anna tells of her brief time in Switzerland, how online challenges like Mermay and Inktober have helped shape her, and how she found her audience in the first place. She shares her thoughts about capturing people's attention with eye-catching shots, and we discuss the careful line of pandering to your audience's expectations or trends. You'll learn how to find a niche and ideas which resonate and build the right audience for your long-term goals and how to maintain momentum with batching and navigate a self-imposed posting schedule as crazy as hers (1-2 times a day!). Be sure to stick around, because we'll close by asking Anna what one piece of advice she would ask herself if she were to start all over again. This will be a creative break like no other!

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/annawilliamsharrison

#004 - Ever wondered what it's like to write music for your favorite animations? Join Connor as he interviews Yuang "Seycara" Chen (Spongebob the Anime on YouTube), about all things creative.

You'll learn about the fall and rise of the incredibly popular SpongeBob anime, his involvement with its development, and how its success has affected him since. We'll talk about the cons of having your work reposted or used without your permission, and the pros of finding relevance in the less interesting aspects of creativity, such as theory. Yuang shares his stories of competition at a young age, finding his first gig in an online forum and working on a narrative game. We talk about gamer addiction and how to overcome it to stop procrastinating and how being paid to make music isn't quite what you'd expect. Yuang shares how he mixes what he wants to create with what YouTube audiences want in order to get results and we learn about his upcoming new album and an accompanying music video. You'll understand what it's like working with animation and dealing with the tropes and cliches that come with it, what the most critical part of the music-making process is to Yuang, and why worrying isn't productive in the early stages of your art career. Be sure to stick around, because we'll close by asking Yuang what one piece of advice he would ask himself if he were to start all over again. This will be a creative break like no other!

You can learn more about the community behind Create With Us Productions here:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com

Join the community, hit subscribe, and keep creative!

You can find this episode's show notes at:

https://www.cwupcommunity.com/keepcreative/yuangchen