EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cZ6U9NQ.jpg)
So around this time last year I told my parents I was done with university and wanted to study art by myself, aiming to be an illustrator and a concept artist. I had just completed a undergraduate science degree and having shown barely any interest in art before, nor having any major issues in my uni education, they understandably disagreed with me.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/hPivTfi.jpg)
I had done some drawing as a kid, like most, but it was limited to mostly copying Blizzard game manual drawings once a year. I remember attempting to draw from ‘imagination’, failing, and thinking I just didn’t have the ability to visualize things.Thinking someone might be able to teach it, I picked the Visual Arts unit in the last 2 years of high school. I don’t know about other peoples experiences, but for our school it turned out to be more learning about a certain way of talking about art and art history. This was by no means not educational, it gave me a framework I still use to understand aspects of literature, film, history and modern art, but I only got to do about 5 drawings and 2 paintings over 2 years. Furthermore, although these were attempts at replicating the representational and impressionistic works I favored, it made me realize what they were doing was far beyond my ability. A couple other people in the class seemed to have a knack for it, so I assumed maybe it just wasn’t for me.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/LBUkZ62.jpg)
At any rate this small artistic interest was shadowed by my love of videogames. Me and my friends played many, but we really started getting into it with the birth of steam (steam checkers anyone :D?). Half-Life mods were what took most of our time, but of note for this story are CS 1.6 and Unreal Tournament both of which we could play in the school library. Now because I played a lot, being one of the lucky kids who could play at home, naturally I was pretty decent. I wasn’t the best though. I had two or three friends better than me. Same for both CS and UT, in ranking things out I would rarely ever best these guys in score. I just assumed they were better at video games.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/7SYcybD.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/1ILGa2Y.jpg)
Then in 2008, my brother told me a Starcraft:BW tournament was being broadcast on the web. Lo and behold, not only was there videogames being treated like a sport, there was English commentary! (None other than Tasteless of course). Me and my friends all got hooked, and of course started to follow and play Starcraft. We installed it on all the library computers and hooked up to the Australian “Battlenet server” BoredAussie so we could play each other. Free periods and lunch times were spent playing Starcraft on the back computers in the library, highschool sure was fun.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Fzvh5aW.jpg)
This time, once again I put plenty of time into BW, but I wasn’t the best at it. I was second best. This one friend, who didn’t even seem to play much at all, would beat me every single time. I would get close sometimes, especially when we would play random races every now and then, but he would always somehow close it out. So once again, I just assumed, he must just better at BW, RTS, and video games than me. Just how it is.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/KPcg9g9.jpg)
However, I stuck to it this time, mainly because BW was fun as all hell. So I went looking up strategies and replays. I found a Jaedong replay (naturally my zerg hero), and a version of BW that let me play it, and watched carefully for what was up. I copied his play exactly, observing how much faster he was getting out stuff, and how much more efficient I could to be, and this was even before any significant interaction or fighting happened. I versed an empty slot on a map called Lost Temple practice or somthing like that, and made sure I could execute all these things on time. I played my other friends and made sure to remember to place down that god damn infestor pit after the third and a bunch of lurkers. I made sure to make sunks and hatch some lurks at the third so some squad of A moved marines couldn't just fuck it up. I MADE SURE to research CONSUME and DARK SWARM. And then I beat my unbeatable friend. Twice in a row. And then tactically never played him again until sc2.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/6U9M48t.jpg)
It was at the start of Uni when I was introduced to the Day[9] daily. Me and my friends had just quit WoW, a game which I look back upon fondly, having learned from another friend the valuable life lesson of what efficiency and optimization means. I had actually listened to Day[9] before, as he and Nony did a game analysis on savior vs bisu which I enjoyed immensely. So I was pleasantly surprised to find so many hours of thoughtful analysis to enjoy while on the train to and from uni. I caught up to all of them just as the sc2 beta started and Day[9] started to shift over to it. Even though I had been keeping up with a lot of the BW scene, it was eye opening to see not only the depth of analysis, but at just how practical and sensible all the theories and thoughts presented were. This was qualitatively different to what I was exposed to before, which was the Klazart, Diggity, Moletrap type of commentary; more about adding a little more enjoyment to watching a game. What Day[9] was doing was actually teaching, and what he was teaching was something that suddenly put so many things in life under a single category. Problem Solving, and how to approach it, is essentially what I see Day[9] giving to me.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/sIDBN61.jpg)
Not that I realised its wide reaching application at first, I just wanted to play sc2 and be super good at it. And I kinda was. I was good enough that I would play the same people according to the time of day. This was before grand masters, but my friend calculated from a ranking site that we were both top 200 in SEA and NA (we played on both, but mainly NA). So that's something I guess.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/OgXPAtJ.jpg)
Never got too far in tournaments though, I only played in about 3 Australian events and I only placed in 2v2. I never got to play as serious as I would have liked, mostly I blamed university getting in the way. Really I think I never put enough effort in because I didn’t think it was something I could pursue for a living. Either way, I ended up dropping sc2 after I realised it was just causing a lot of frustration and anger (and a broken mic, and mouse, and headphones, and a missing spacebar...), given I wasn’t giving it my all. Sc2 still remains something I watch, especially the odd final here or there, but my days of playing it are definitely over.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/eoEH11g.jpg)
The idea of problem solving, and Day[9]’s ideas about it, I found applied to so many things other than Starcraft. It was essentially the key to developing proficiency at any skill, with ideas such as simplification, making reasoned hypotheses and testing them through experimentation, manufacturing the right question to be answered with the most effective tool in a toolset you constantly aim to expand; it was endless wisdom. It finally clicked to me when playing the puzzle game Spacechem, and I was able to break it down how to win the game in terms of Starcraft and Day[9]. It was even relatable to my uni work, in which I saw in the history of science (one of my majors), the Greeks to Isaac Newton essentially developing ‘Day[9]’s problem solving’, except it was being called ‘instrumental science’ and ‘the scientific method’. (I was getting a distinction average at USYD, so i’m not entirely crazy here :D).
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/KALq93S.jpg)
So I tried applying this problem solving skillset to other things. The first thing was pen juggling. This came up for several reasons, the main one being I had recently been introduced to watching anime. I had seen the ‘classics’ before (Eva, GitS, Cowboy Bebop), but I wasn’t really aware of the depth of material out there. It was actually a recommendation by Diggity, who had posted up a bunch of recommendations of random things to watch due to his encoding job if I remember correctly. On it was ‘Scrapped Princess’, which hooked me, and I proceeded to watch more. Now WoW had taught me that if you're watching a video, you should be doing something with your hands at the same time (i.e. WoW) or you’re wasting valuable time. While watching anime you can’t play a game at the same time, you have to read subtitles. So I remembered back to highschool where I wanted to learn to juggle pens like in the cool youtube videos. I still can’t do it as good as those videos, but at least I got beyond the basics into combos and links.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/CQCgmgN.jpg)
The next thing I applied it to, is Street Fighter. For you eSports people that don’t know, fighting games are THE shit. Streets is essentially Starcraft, except you know how in that 15 minute game where you make one false move at mid game and you’re pretty much fucked? Well the same thing is in sf4, but the game usually only took 20 seconds and you're going straight back to exciting decision making in like 10 more seconds. Not that long term buildups of excitement are 'worse' or 'better' than what fighting games gives, but its also easier to play at parties :D. I’m still not too good fighting games, but I’m probably getting closer to where I was in sc2. I tied 4th in Adelaide twice recently, that's not too bad right? Streets is pretty much the only thing not art related I make sure to make time for.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/KQwpOPC.jpg)
So that brings us round to this year. My interest in art was rekindled in my 3rd and final year of Uni. I think it was the ‘perception’ unit for psychology, and we had a professor come in give a series of lecture about vision, specifically the area beyond the physics of light, and more into how that information gets interpreted by the brain into what we actually experience. For a sample, one of the ideas is how do we know something is ‘white’, when if you take a white sheet of paper and put it under different lights and in different surroundings the actual light bouncing off it and entering your eye changes drastically from ‘white light’. So what is the brain doing to let us naturally never run into the problem.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/7HUZawJ.jpg)
The second influence was my continued consumption of anime. I had kept up with recommendations from a friend to filter out a lot of the bad, so I think I've had a far better experience with the medium than most. What I think I appreciate the most about anime compared to western tv, is generally a heavier emphasis on the longer plot arcs that aim to conclude the series as a whole. Western tv is generally structured more on episodic plots with an arc or two for a season, written with the intention of continuing indefinitely. E.g, the Wire could have continued for a lot longer, EVA only has a limited number of angels to defeat. Nothing wrong with either, but I have a preference for the closure in anime :D.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/NktwK5P.jpg)
But the final push was a movie. I hesitate to name it considering I don't even think it was that good. Maybe it was because I was on a family holiday, stuck on a boat for 2 weeks watching movie after movie with my brother, but it was that movie that eventually convinced me to seriously look into art as something to "do in my spare time" . The movie is "It's’ Kind of a Funny Story", but I'm warning you, its good but don't expect too much. Its certainly given me the view that it doesn’t take a masterpiece to really change your life, more just the right story at the right time. Or maybe I just like sentiment more than most?
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/a6qBcrv.jpg)
So after that trip, I got back and started looking on the net for learning how to draw. Armed with Day[9] knowledge, I knew exactly the kind of information and resources I was looking for. It was funny because the first good link, that led to all the other good links (I find all you need to unlock a cache of info is just one good link or word you can google) came from a site i lurk often. You might have heard of it, its called TeamLiquid or something like that. A guy named Saurabhinator had posted his year of drawing training in a blog, and also had a bunch of links to good tutorials for people who wanted to do the same (Saura's 2011 Art Blog). From there I found the magical industries of concept design, pre-visualization and illustration. Another thing I learned from Starcraft, streams make for good learning :D. Here's a good list of art streams for those who are curious (Art Streams)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/doRIkMA.jpg)
Its funny because until I saw videos explaining these industries, I had no conscious awareness that such things existed. Sure I had copied Arthas from the blizzard manual, but for some reason I must have assumed it was just some drawing done in the spare time of a coder or a 3d guy. It just didn't occur to me that people were getting paid to draw cool shit that either doesn't exist yet. It didn't even occur to me that someone was getting paid to draw the cool shit on magic cards and all the board games me and my friends play.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/SgAsXAr.jpg)
At the time my uni grades had been slipping due to videogames, so I made this deal with myself. If I don't get into a 4th year of uni, an honors year which requires an average grade of 65, I would quit videogames and go hardcore into art. I was still drawing a little each day to feel if I was enjoying it (I was). The letter for my uni exam results arrived late January. My weighted average over the 3 years... 64.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/9oVqCxe.jpg)
So here I am a little over a year later. Parents were understandably skeptical at first, but came around when they saw i had quit video games and was working hard. Without their support, I couldn’t be working at this over 10 hours each day. Still loving art, its pretty much Starcraft and Streetfighter except you can take way more time in making decisions. I hope this time though, I can make it to the 'finals' of art, I’m certainly working as hard as I can for it. Will I discover I don’t have the talent to be one of the best? Here’s one of the best the lessons I’ve taken from the education of Day[9] and my experiences playing Starcraft, BW and SC2. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that I want to get good at art and design, and that I have the opportunity to work as hard and as smart as I can make myself. And it’s not because I’m working for something, or trying to achieve something, at least not directly (it would be super cool to work for Valve/Blizzard/Riot/Wizards/Ridley Scott xD). It’s because I’m playing a game, the game of problem solving and mastery of a skill, and the game is fun as hell.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hope you had fun reading if you did, I imagine most would just skim through all the pictures. Still got a long way to go. Nobody really cares how fast you get good, it's how good you are right now. 1 year of the hardest work I ever did I think gives me the excuse for a little self indulgence :D. I am looking for work now though so if anyone has any please contact me :D! A sincere thanks to Sean Plott, whose education I think needs to replace 40 percent of what was actually taught in my high school (I don't know about other schools, but I can't imagine they would be too far off). Another 40 would be from Steve Novella and the skeptics guide to the universe podcast, but that's another life story.
TLDR - Just look at the pictures?
As an aside, I'm really sorry bout that hard drive death so you can't see when I feel I made big leaps in understanding. I back up with like 2 levels of redundancy now, never making that mistake again :D. If anyone has any art questions, I'd be happy to chat. If you're still hungry make sure to join Crimson Daggers. Its a great art community created around most of the people on that livestream list. The people there continue to help me with free education and self improvement as the core ideas.
As a final aside, here are some fun parallels between art and Starcraft
Have a basic overall game plan = Thumbnail your idea before you start
Look at your minimap = Look at the Navigator (Your piece small)
Learn your hotkeys = Learn your hotkeys (in Photoshop)
Watch your replays = Critique your own pieces
Execution is just as important as theory
Try to think if an error was caused by poor execution or poor/no intention
You learn more from losses than from wins
For guaranteed improvement, work on what you are weakest at
If your body is healthy you can think and concentrate better
If its practice, always play/paint to improve your NEXT game/piece, its not about winning/making a good looking artwork
If its a tournament/work, always play/paint for the win/the best product you can give to your client using ALL your tools
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DW8Zuye.png)
.![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Przvv4s.jpg)
