Got Talent?

[artfx]

Have you ever looked at some of the amazing work in the galleries here and thought you could never do that? Or have you thought that those artists have some amazing ability or talent on a level you could never achieve? While some artists new to a software package, or new to the CG world altogether, see such work and get inspired to do more, I think many artists see that and get a bit disheartened at their own progress.

What if, though, the idea of talent is a myth? What if the power to do an amazing work like that one you saw in the gallery is just as available to you as to anyone?

Well, there is some pretty compelling research being done that suggests that may, in fact, be the case! In this article in Fortune Magazine, the idea is put forth that it may be all about potential which everyone has, being directed in the proper, disciplined way. The idea that practice makes perfect.

What do you think? What would do differently in your own CGI art if you knew that the same quality you see in the best gallery images here is just a matter of time and practice to be yours?

[Sierra Rose]

I agree it is possible to achieve a level of mastery with practice and time. Only a 6th year student myself in drawing, I see more progress already than I ever dreamed possible. It is very encouraging when you do see progress, but you have to keep practicing even when you don't. I think you have to love it so much that you will stay with it no matter what.

[BenEcosse]

+1

[Gochris1]

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book about this topic called "Outliers."

This article is a good condensation of the book.

There is a section of the book regarding musical college applicants. The outstanding students had wracked up 10,000 hours of practice. The very good had done 7,500 hours, and the good had done 4,000 hours.

A person can become an outstanding animator. Richard Willams' book encourages lots and lots of practice. He writes "If you don't want to do lots of work, what are you doing in animation?"

My guess is that in today's animation climate, one who is good (but not outstanding) can do quite well.
At any rate, opportunity knocks for those who work the hardest.

The one thing that I think can't be taught is good taste. If an artist is exposed to well done art, they will either pick up on its lessons or not. Usually if a person is serious about their art, they will exhibit good taste. But not everyone does. Still, for every Fantasia there's a Family Guy - and Seth McFarlane may not be exhibiting his good taste, but he's making lots of bank. And noone can deny that he spent many hours practicing at the drawing board. (What he produced I don't like, but that's not important.)

So even for those with bad taste, there's plenty of opportunity. To borrow a phrase: Just do it.

[BenEcosse]

a good source book on the technical side of animation tho

[Gochris1]

The point of the article is not to compare people who write music to people who play music only. In the context of the article, comparing songwriters who play well to musicians who play extraordinarily well does not matter. They are two different things.

Regarding what I wrote above, I do not equate being an animator with being a film maker. My comments were based on being an animator only. Being an animator is one thing, a film maker another.

A film maker is resposible for the content of the film. Usually that's the director, writer, or producer, or a combination of them. An animator is one who draws, but is not resposible for the content of the film.

So to be a successful film maker I think you need a combination of sales ablity, artistic ability, determination and something interesting or humanistic to say. (Many animators *are* film makers of course - Plympton, Hertzfeldt, P.F.)

But there are plenty of great animators out there who are not burning with desire to say something. Many work at the big studios, and are perfectly content to animate whatever their latest assignment is. Pixar is filled with talented animators who use their talents in service to whatever the studio/director/writer has to say. (And they do a great job of it too.) And to join their ranks you need to practice a lot.

I agree, the only people who can take animation further are film makers who have something new to say, and frankly, you don't need 10,000 hours worth of practice to say something new. Any knucklehead on YouTube can say something.

But if you work at being as technically good as Richard Williams or Eric Goldberg or whomever, then whatever you have to say will be much more entertaining and forceful and artistic. That's where the 10,000 hours is crucial.

It's just like learning to write well. You don't have to write well to have something to say...

But if you learn to write really well, you will communicate your message clearly. You will get your point across more forcefully.

As Murnau said "Great art is simple. But simplicity requires the greatest art." And to get the greatest art you have to practice and practice and get so good that what you do seems easy to other people. You make it look as if you were born to do it, you had some sort of magic "talent" others don't have.

The "talent" is the willingness and opportunity and drive to work hard, sacrifice, and dedicate your life to being a better artist or animator or musician or whatever.

Hope I cleared this up.

[Gochris1]

I agree, it's too bad that many people just learn how to animate and are not interested in saying something with their animation. They just want to work at Disney.

[slowtiger]

I think the topic has to be broken down to some essentials first.
- Good animation: this can be anything from an approved scene in a feature film, or some animation which counts as "outstanding" only among animators, to a wildly experimental short only hailed by critics.
- Good animator: again, this can be someone who's happy with being a small cogwheel in a studio, or an artist who tries something new every time, or a successful businessman/independent animator.

Doing animation is only one trick, but most animators are able to make a living from just that. Creating good films is an entirely different level of craftmanhip. Creating an outstanding animated film is high art.

And don't forget that most animation is teamwork, so it's a matter of discussion where the talent has to be in a group of people so different as animator, script writer, director, voice artist, composer, and so on.

With talent, you can get away with a lot less practice. Without talent, you can achieve quite a lot through enough practice. At least you need enough practice to be able to express your ideas.

It's not the talent to draw. Drawing is easy, every child can do it, and given that you don't stop practicing you can become a pretty good draughtsman. I bet if we devote as much school lessons to drawing as we do for writing, everybody would be able to draw - realistically, cartoony, whatever.

But the one thing which can't be taught is seeing. This is the one talent you really need. I should be more precise here: it's not just seeing or even observing. It's the ability to spot the moment when something is right. To know where any single stroke added would spoil the picture, to know which single note needs to go to that moment in time, to know which order of words really makes the sentence perfect. This is a talent, it may be much more common thatn we think, but it needs training like every other talent, or it is lost.

Everything else can be learned: the drawing, the analysing, the knowledge of the art, the rules of the trade.

[Paul Fierlinger]

But artfx is voicing a different sort of frustration when asking, if he isn't making a mistake by making too many side glances at the works of others, and this is something I understand very well because I always felt the same way. Since I was 15 and a newbie art student I got nervous around the enthusiasm of fellow students huddling over an anthology of some master and going OOH and AAH! I never joined them because those books gave me pangs of despair. Sometimes denial is not just helpful but necessary for survival. I sensed at age 15 that there have to be zillions of artists dead and still alive who created wonders to behold, but the more of these I'm going to discover, the more I'm going to feel that any attempts on my part to match them are going to kill my deep seated need to draw, and then I'm going to die because what else will there be left to do?

This is why I stopped going to the movies and quit mingling with other artists, moved to the suburbs, closed the doors and went to whichever places in my head my urges took me. My survival instincts taught me to isolate and deny that there could possibly be anything of any interest happening out there I could benefit from.

[BenEcosse]

[Paul Fierlinger]

The last sentence of the article:

Maybe we can't expect most people to achieve greatness. It's just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn't reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.

I have my doubts about most of this claim. I know what process occurs in my head when I hit upon a good idea that pulls me out of a dead end situation and is the result of my refreshed mind after taking a walk.

But there are those rare moments when a good idea pulls me out of a dead slump I find myself in; the proverbial white sheet of paper (or white screen in our case) and it just popped up in front of me without any preliminary process of my own making. In those moments I know with absolute clarity that it came to me from a mysterious place I don't need to understand and I just accept it with gratitude. These moments can't be achieved through practice... I remember experiencing them when I was six as well as a few days ago. I agree with the statement that it is

available to you and to everyone

but it has nothing to do with hard work and practice.

[BenEcosse]

David Lynch believes you can practice and train to 'see' better. (Catching the Big Fish)

[Paul Fierlinger]

David Lynch believes you can practice and train to 'see' better.

Oh, for sure! But this is not what I am talking about. By my weltanschauung, to achieve great things one needs to have a spiritual connection in life. This applies to great writers as well as great explorers or great parents. TM is not quite the same thing.

[BenEcosse]

new and exciting ideas flowing

[Byron]

Yes - I think the the article is nonsense... but if 'scientific experts' say it is so - it must be so!