Schoolism Interviews

Pure "Gold" right here, from the source.  Check out "Schoolism.com's" collection of heavy hitter interviews.  Bio and Tips galore.  Big thanks to Bobby Chiu for doing these and sharing.

                                                                    Schoolism.com

Cool Find: Frank Oz, Carroll Spinney

Talented people on top of their craft always have great things to share un-knowingly and knowingly.  I try to keep notes and catch it when I can.  Three and a half day Memorial Day Holiday and trucking away with the wrestling short vid 6 more shots to go and I'm anticipating it to get tougher getting so close to the end.  Will post a proof of life clip soon.

Steven Spielberg Advice

Wow.. That's all I can say!

George Lucas Advice

Some "Gold" here, from the source. Nothing like learning from someone that's up there, where you wanna reach. Not some regular folk that's just guessing.

Practice Makes Perfect

Like the old saying goes! Here is a killer clip to shed some light on this.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Immortal Work

It is normal not to be satisfied with your work, that is a mark of someone pushing to be the best they can. From what I've ran into just doing the work and earning that 10 thousand hours and getting those thousands of ugly drawings (animations) you should be in a better controllable state. Here is a great quote to the Dream chasers/ Craft pushers out there from Orison Swett Marden: *Regard your work as Stradivari regarded his violins, which he made for "eternity". And not one of which, was ever known to come to pieces or break. When a piece of work leaves your hand it should bear your "recommendation". Below is a great shot breakdown I found, to a great poem piece from a inspirational movie Dead Poets Society.

From a Painting background, I've seen people get good but just do that same template piece and are just satisfied with that alone, not pushing to the next level, challenging themselves, exploring new possibilities, just getting by with mediocrity. In my opinion how you feel( i.e bored, angry) when you paint a painting ( I think this may happen too in animation or any other art form) is transferred to your work and is reflected back to the audience/ viewer. Just an observation of mine, you can definitely tell/ feel the innovators and pioneer trail blazers.

Mental Gold !!!

Through the choices and decisions you make, you can determine what your environment will be. Let’s look now at what we can do, to make your future environment pay off in both satisfaction and prosperity. The first step is to recondition yourself for success. The number one obstacle on the road to high level success is the feeling that major accomplishments are beyond reach. This attitude stems from many, many suppressive forces that direct our thinking toward mediocre levels.

To understand these suppressive forces, let’s go back to the time we where children. As children all of us set high goals, at a very young age most of us wanted to conquer the unknown, be leaders, jet pilots, doctors, presidents, and great artists. To do exciting and stimulating things, become famous, and wealthy, in short.. to be successful. And in our blessed ignorance, we saw our way out clear to accomplishing these goals. But what happened? Long before we reached the age when we can begin to work toward our great objectives, a multitude of suppressive influences went to work. From all sides, we heard “It’s foolish to be a dreamer” and that “Our ideas are impractical, naïve, or foolish, we had to get our feet on the ground and our head out of the clouds”. We heard that to get ahead we had to have money to begin with, or that we had to have important friends, or just plain luck.

As a result of being bombarded with this, “You can’t get ahead so don’t bother to try”, PROPAGANDA. Most people you know can be classified into 3 groups. The 1st group are the people who surrendered completely, the majority of people who are convinced, deep down inside that they haven’t got what it takes, that real success, real accomplishments, is for others who are lucky, or fortunate in some special respect. Now you can spot these people because they go to great lengths to rationalize their status and explain how happy they really are.

The 2nd basic group are those who surrender partially. Now this is a much smaller group than the first one. This group enters adult life with a lot of hope for success, the people prepare themselves, they work hard, they plan. But after a decade or so, resistance begins to build up. Competition for top level jobs look pretty rugged, and this group decides greater success, just isn’t worth the effort. They rationalize “We’re earning more than the average, We live better than the average, why knock ourselves out.”

The 3rd group is quite small, perhaps 2 or 3 percent of the population. This group never surrendered their dreams. They never did and they still don’t let pessimism dictate their limitations. They don’t believe in surrendering to suppressive forces. Instead these people live and breathe success. This group of people is the happiest, because it accomplishes the most. These people become top salesmen, top executives, top leaders, top artists in their respective fields. These people find life stimulating, rewarding, worthwhile. These people look forward to each new day, each new accomplishment, each new challenge, each new encounter with other people, as adventures to be lived fully.

Now let’s be honest, all of us would like to be in that third group. The one that finds continually greater success. But to get into and to stay in that group, we have to fight off the suppressive influence of our environment. To understand how people on the first two groups will unwittingly try to hold you back.

Try this experiment: Tell several of your, average friends or your fellow workers with the greatest sincerity that someday you intend to be Vice-President of your company. What will happen? Your friends will probably think your joking, and if they do believe you mean it, they’ll say something like, “You poor sap, you got a lot to learn”. But assume that you repeat that same statement with equal sincerity to the President of the company. How will he or she react? One thing is certain the President of your company will not laugh. He might look at you intently and say to himself “Does this person really mean this?” But he won’t laugh, because BIG people do not laugh at BIG ideas.

By the same token, when you tell somebody that owns a Million-dollar home, you plan to own your own Million-dollar home one day, that person won’t laugh either. And they won’t think you’re crazy, that person knows it’s perfectly possible because that person has already done it. But if you tell your neighbors that they’re liable to tell you that it’s impossible. Remember people who tell you something can’t be done, almost always are unsuccessful people. Strictly mediocre in terms of accomplishment, the opinions of these people are poison. Develop a defense against people who want to convince you, that you can’t do something. Accept negative advice only as a challenge to prove that you can do it. Be extra, extra conscious about this. Don’t let negative thinking people destroy your plan, to think yourself to success.

I call these people Negators, Negators are everywhere and they seem to take delight in sabotaging the positive progress of others. Some of them do it out of jealousy. They’re not moving ahead themselves, so they want to see you stumble too. Others may be sincere and well meaning, but they’ve been brainwashed. They’ve surrendered, they’re convinced that success is impossible for them, and that people who strive for success are risking everything and are liable to end up with nothing. So be careful, study Negators. Don’t let them destroy your plans for success.

*Excerpts from the book “The Magic of Thinking Big” – David Schwartz Ph.D.

Check out the rest of the book it clears the path, this continues the earlier post on who to believe sometimes.

Learning from People

Knowledge from experience is very valuable. I treasure it always, it might not be understood at the moment of hearing it. But the illumination that strikes later or at the time, saves energy and time to progress faster. My favorite one was when I was like in my 20's and this man spoke to me and told me, "Wow your wheels are spinning". I guess he meant I'm doing big things, because I've started being productive and trying to be great in Art.

He passed along this great advice, "Don't trip too much on yourself on how you look right now (negatively), because years later you'll know it was bullshit and you'd waste all this time. And you've already been cool all along" something in this realm I tried to recreate. But this was, something very profound, and helpful to get me light years beyond my peers.

To that, collecting wisdom, advice, comparing notes with others has always been fun for me. The feeling is captured here, gonna check out these books soon. But the vids are pushers. But just filter out, the "Stay in comfort zone ones" and there is a BIG difference where the advice is from.



E.g. I shared my dream and the extra hours I put in after work to be a great pro Animator to a owner of this accounting firm next door to my present non art job and his reply was "Working two jobs, huh.. that's how I did it too. You can do it".
Compared to someone in a crap job venting on you, will bring you down or make you feel guilty to make them not question themselves on why they don't have the guts to do what your doing . On the hours you spend trying to get closer to your dream.

I heard this in some interview about a guy up on a podium winning an Oscar or Academy award upon his speech he say's " This is for all of you people, that spend that one hour a day trying to reach you dreams". -----> Let's Go!

Glen Keane Advice

The example above is just so, alive and appealing the fluid shape transitions.


It seems when you run up against a problem (while pushing your Craft), you always think it's just because " I'm not good enough" but it's not that. It's just that you've kinda hit the limit of you knowledge, and you gotta go out and observe, find, get, and discover something more. "Those are really great" the best times, when you feel like you stink and you can't get it, any better, your stuck, and your in a rut. That's like "man", the world is open and your ready to learn something new. You gotta go, you gotta take advantage of it. Sometimes you wallow in that for like a week and that's crazy.

*this is a great example of hitting the zone, the flow, zen, when your rocking.

Once I really hit my "Key Poses" (Animating), it's more of the joy of it. You know it's like I've practiced it enough and you can now just go ahead and play that piece on the piano. And its a joy, the expression, and I'm living it completely, lost in the moment animating it.

-Following are excerpts from an interview by Clay Kaytis

29 Ways to Stay Creative

I enjoy collecting info to get better and not re-invent the wheel. Here is a great vid to help for the struggle up (re: if your not struggling, your not learning anything)

Stan Lee Interviews

Comic books will always have a special place in my heart, the coolest composition, design and style. To me it's like a portable fantasy movie. And who doesn't know who this guy is. To see this man with so much zest and passion for life, its just very contagious. Peep the hidden gold in his words and learn this mindset. Enjoy..







And an extra.. His heroes