Build Your Brand as a Digital Artist with Ryan Kingslien | Episode 212

[Music] Oh what's up everybody oh my god talking about technical difficulties finally can hear me this is your host Braden fail welcome to game dev Unchained the number one podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof and coming with me a special guest that has been patiently waiting Ryan Kingsley so I'm gonna unmute you a quick so that everybody can hear your lovely voice and here we go you are on awesome thanks glad to be here Ryan I've been a longtime fan thank you for welcoming you welcoming me on to your podcast this is the part podcast of course before we go into too much detail

I'll kind of want to spend this part to let you introduce yourself to the audience out there of who you are where you're from where you're heading so in simple terms on CEO of game art institute and I have just spent the last decade training creatives to get really kind of really artists to get creative tech careers like really just fun jobs in the new industry I actually got my start as a as employee number five I think it was number five of pixologic and where we developed ZBrush and help them develop from ZBrush to does he brush three and then a little bit further on than that but in that process I kind of learned my love for education and just decided that once I left that that was where I really wanted to make a an impact in the world and and so I

built ZBrush workshops I built you artsy visual areum you know I built a lot of initiatives majority of them failed you know largely burned to the ground of my own making and today game art Institute's primary focus and my primary focus is training for character artists and environment artists and kind of meeting filling the gap that traditional education leaves because it's just you know knowledge isn't power you have to have something else you have to have execution this is an execution game so we train people in execution and that's been my focus is what helps people specifically creatives execute and achieve some level of capacity so that they become hireable so that's me in a nutshell we're where we're going is we have a new initiative we call vertex school and that is coming up I think in a couple of months and we're building machine learning training programs and a bunch of stuff to help creatives kind of

expand into what's going to be the next generation of tech do this super exciting I mean one of the I was turned to you obviously in the early ZBrush days I have your voice and your teachings associated with ZBrush exclusively because it was such a new program it was very new and I thank you and I think the community thanks you for kind of helping us navigate through that crazy interface and everything character Anatomy man thanks Esther shaping but like your transition is something that I've been noticing for a lot of veterans later in the career where they found in education being pretty much recession-proof I don't know how accurate that is but also like as like a secondary passion and and some in some cases like yours have become a primary fashion and when it comes to entrepreneurship which is I feel like

one of the main topics that I want to talk to you about in this episode like how how did you figure that [ __ ] out I mean it's it's just something that I think in our traditional art school we don't even have an elective that covers how to do business or go no walk down that yeah I mean how did you can you talk about the early days of testing these grounds you're talking about learning through your failings and being able to kind of truck through that any insight on yeah I mean the first thing is it's not been figured out you know so I'm still failing still succeeding and I think the [Music] you're right it is something that is it's hitting a lot of people in our industry now as if they're heading off into education and in many ways it seems like that's the recession-proof approach but once you get into business you realize you know business is business it'sit's been around forever there's a whole physics to the way in which

businesses operate and that becomes its own thing and it is not the same thing as being an artist so you can quickly find yourself at odds with why you're doing it and that's something that has to be kind of addressed you know I got into business unintentionally it was an I'm an accidental entrepreneur by all means and it was just I the company I worked for the last company I work for where I work for somebody who made me decide I would never work for anybody else again was just a horrible experience you know it's just a bad boss and you know he was going through his own crap so you know I'm sure what he was struggling with was real stuff in the middle of the depression and you know so all good there but it was still a bad experience for me and I as a creative realized how little control I had over my life and decided I was gonna get control you know I went off I started freelancing and I realized I was just you know we're basically working

the same hours plus more hours drumming up work and then my wife told me that she was pregnant and and that we were having a kid and I was like I gotta level my game up you know how do I do that and this was in the beginning of internet marketing and all this stuff and you know Jeff Walker had this class called product launch formula and that class kind of opened me up to being you know they didn't have this word back then but an influencer of who's launching classes and builds a business around that and I had no idea what any of that meant I just knew that I had some standing in the community and I had the capacity to teach I loved it and maybe somebody might actually take a class or two and we we started with my own classes we just were like we're just gonna offer this out and nobody else is doing it so it just grew gangbusters we

trained thousands of people we brought people into it we had partners all this kind of stuff and and then more people started to flood into it and then people were able to do this on their own through Gumroad and so you know right around that time that's when it became more real it became more of a business because competition was there and there was more options for people to do stuff so we had to convince people to go with us or do things on their own and you know we had to figure this stuff out and and you know those were very difficult years and they were mixed right with just a couple of years before I was really unhappy with my own artwork and so you know I had a team releasing classes and doing stuff but I personally wasn't satisfied now it's trying to of struggling to figure out like what's my art what's important to me and what makes you know a difference and and that struggle man I mean like there was the business struggle and in the beginning it was no not a real struggle because we

were in what they would call a blue ocean so it was just you know it's a free-for-all and as long as you were adding value it was great when it got to a red ocean we started to struggle and that's where we're at today a little bit is we're in a bit of a red ocean in terms of training and people are undercutting pricing and everybody's trying to go cheap and gig and they're doing normal business tactics right and so what I had to decide myself and this is like we if we bring this back to how he how'd you figure it out I Sam I haven't figured out but what I have figured out is you just gotta find what you want to do right like what's what's the mission what can you lead people in and that's where I took two years and I took game Art Institute I was working with a partner and we severed the relationship I had a bunch of the teachers I severed those relationships and I focused on just what I wanted to do which was basically get somebody a

job mm-hmm I wanted to find a path where it's like you can take that guy gonna grab some water I had a class right before this so I was talking nonstop I wanted to find that guy that is like working at Starbucks or the job I had which was you know a nitrous doctor at Costco you know and I mean I've worked as an aside on an assembly line I've worked in construction I've worked in bookstores I've worked as a pizza delivery guy you know done all those jobs and I wanted to find that guy and give him a path to a job so that you know he goes from 2030 thousand whatever this current job is to 60,000 but not just that but he's doing something that he loves that would have not been possible before and that in in all honesty I I don't I mean traditional education is ill-equipped to prepare

somebody for you know I wanted to make that difference in the world and we did we built the boot camp the boot camp is the the the primary vehicle for that and um and that's the thing that I feel I can lead people and that's the mission of my life that's where I could stand up I can be in here with this in this meeting with you because I'm very introverted even though I'm on camera and you know I I kind of I work on a persona and I project if I'm if I don't have to do that kind stuff I don't you know I like to just kind of be behind the scenes but that mission of getting that person that job that was the sirens call that led me to kind of get through all the other crap you know I have to get through which includes cash flow you know that's something you got to think about in a business is how much money do you have coming in how much you I love to spend money I'm an artist you know

it's like I want this guy's tutorial I want this thing let me buy it let me get it let me work with this person right but I got to think you know do we have the students is the cash flow coming in and and so there's these real business concerns and the only way that I will invest myself because I have to make tiny sacrifices the only way I would invest myself is if it's a big enough if it's a big enough call to what to my mission in life you know which that is you know because I now know what that is I know I have one focus getting somebody a job that would not have gotten a job before does that make sense oh yeah that totally makes sense I can definitely relate to that my camera is all stuck but uh well the one thing that's really relative to what you're saying is I'm done similar in that face I'm probably several frames back because you're in you got your skin in the game longer than I have but I

feel like a lot of game developers that I do talk to have found themselves running or a business or going into business it's because they had a horrible or multiple horrible experiences and then realizing how little control they've had I mean I know personally that's what I went through just I know you're based in Orange County I grew up in Orange County as well it's not a lot of Orange County jobs so all the good jobs that I've ever had was always in San Francisco LA and that commute is insane and just you know going back and forth and that I think we talked about this many times before really showed how little control I had and then like you said the onslaught of family really pushes you to grow up a bit really and yeah it's a very similar tale that many game developers have told

me and it seems like the only way to really challenge yourself and not get comfortable and you know it's a it's an asain journey for sure it is but it's also if I get interrupted it's um it's a journey that all aspects have because I we as creatives tend to think of ourselves as like different because we're you know we're so far removed from other fields but dentists have this for example my brother runs dentist office and they're basically artists they're artists in their field but yet they have to run a business and so a lot all of there's so many people who start companies start companies because they're an expert in something they're an artist in something and they feel like they need more control but you don't realize the cost of getting that control and that's the conversation that you begin to have it's conversation I've I'm always having you know because my

preference would be I go to Bali and I go grab clay from the riverbank and go sculpt a bunch of naked figures and that's it like I would love to do that but then one of my kids get for education probably crap and it just goes from there yeah the constant need of looking at the whole family and all your dependents and being able to spread that that joy it's something that I'm taking from business and applying it to my own life like 11 the simple terms of income and expense starts to kind of spoil into other parts in your life is like well I mean yes it would be great to do this but at the same time you know what what am i spending to to achieve that mm-hmm and what you have to give up exactly no exactly so it like in terms of self education on the business side I know there's a lot of like trial by error that comes with its territory but what

kind of resources that you fell over the years have really helped you kind of forge this path for yourself a little like books mentor or any type that you felt like hey these are tremendous resources for anyone that is out there going through this or thinking about doing this these are the five main or five top two things that has helped me yeah now I'm glad you asked you know because there's no shortage of consultants to help you do this and consultants love to get paid you know up front they love to get paid in the middle they love to get paid at the end of a project they love to get paid but do they deliver results do training programs deliver results you know I have a business training program that I give right you know does it deliver results and what is going to improve you and your your capacity to you know be a creative and run your own business and I mean we've done everything we started out we spent ten thousand on this Emeth

program in the early days and we had a coach with us for a while then we spent God knows how much money on Tony Robinson a coach there and the thing that ultimately shifted me and it took a while for the shift to affect was actually a group called wake up warrior and they don't operate in the same way now but they had a bootcamp that you know they just put you through this physical bootcamp that showed me I was capable of more physically then I thought I was possible of achieving you know and it's not just like exercise it was more like you know you're you get three hours of sleep you're eating pancakes in the push-up position right because it's like it was a 36-hour event and wanted to give me an idea that one of the things was they wake us all up and somebody's behind so now somebody's behind so we're all getting punished as a group and how do we get punished as a group you know we just started eating breakfast we got all the syrup on our

pancakes we're all ready to eat this and what do what happens you can't use your hands everybody's forced to get in the push-up position your plate is down in front of you and you have to down take a bite up swallow that down take a bite up swallow that right and I got full beard and you know I got syrup in my beard I got all kinds of crap and before when they first said you got to do this in this was like I was like you're out of your effing mind and I mean like I'm paying in good money and you want me to do what like I'm the master of my ship here asshat you don't tell me what to do I mean I'm I'm not doing it and I was like so I was like no I think I'm out but nobody else left so I you know am I going to be the the loser that leaves and then there's a peer pressure oh yeah there was actors oh yeah right we're doing it and then in the middle of it

he's like you guys are a bunch of pansies if your kids were here they'd be having fun doing this and you guys are treating this like it's the end of the world there's somebody's hurt your feelings your kids would be their face would be covered in gunk and put your face in the syrup cover that face up right and he's yelling at us and screaming at us but it all made sense you know it's just it's how you see these things and and so you know that was that was an event that happened but basically the point of that is you know for a and I can only speak from a male perspective I and I don't understand the female perspective very well try as I might I have to admit my limitation there and from a male perspective you're a creative you want to run a business one of the biggest things that changed my life and helped me kind of get control over over myself was pushing my

limits physically you know physically doing something so there was that and then after that I got a personal trainer and we I went from 155 pounds to 175 pounds and you know 20 pounds of muscles not easy to log in like you got it you had to eat I mean I eat so much morning noon and night and breakfast yeah I mean I was just eating all the time but that one event where I pushed myself physically and I achieved something physically that I didn't think was possible that changed me and so you know for some people that could be CrossFit like you look at Seth Nash who lost all that weight doing crossfit and you know the quality of life and then the conversation I had with him you know it's just it changes you when you as a guy realize that your body is capable of more than you thought you know and you take some control over that or at least what you know when I started to take some control over that that's when things really shifted for me that make

sense yeah I mean it's something I feel a lot of developers get too comfortable with especially I mentioned this many times in the podcasts we would feel like that the at the triple-a development level those are the highest quality and in most cases they are but we forget that those are 5 to 8 year cycles so the chances of them experimenting with new tools or finding new ways of doing things is very little it's more like they're in the rhythm of things and they keep at it and so when those artists or developers get out of that cycle they are lost in a new world of up-and-coming artists challenges and it's just a whole different development cycle so orderly constantly pushing yourself and finding those growth moments is something I think really helps with being in business and I like that little challenge that you had by not taking things too seriously all the time because I find myself having that laser

focus is great for certain things but being able to constantly step back and look at the overall perspective you mentioned family before I find myself doing that a lot i work from home mostly and you know by doing business you just want to make sure you put it you know all the hours and to make sure that you're getting the utmost results but now you know in the we had to take a step back so why are you doing this to spend more time with your family to enjoy life right and if your kid wants to play ball you know those are moments that you should step outside of your little bubble and enjoy the advantages of being at home and all that and that's something I have to constantly battle with and to understand and and get with I mean how was that transition you were mentioning you know you started this journey with your first child about to come into the world I'm assuming you have more children now since then - yeah - now - now we I tell people I started I

started my business to have more time with my family and that's like the biggest rookie mistake out there you know that's like that's like starting a family so you can have more alone time I mean that doesn't work out quite that way so you know I didn't know what I was getting myself into and I didn't understand you know the parameters of that and so the way I deal with it now is in is in cycles so for example right now I'm in a grind I'm I'm twelve hours a day and I get about a two to three-hour window with the kids but as soon as they're asleep I'm working and so that's just the that's just the phase I'm in right now because we're launching vertex and we're trying to get a handle on all the new texts so for me it's cycles and I have that time with them in the evening and then what I'm doing now

is on Saturdays I'm fairly religious about let's grab the skateboards let's get the bikes and I have a mission of what I need to achieve want to achieve with them you know within range I'm not I have to force them a little bit cuz I got to play that daddy role like my son would he's a he's six and he would watch Scooby Doo 26 hours out of 24 I mean he's relentless on that uh-huh so he needs structure and he you know and I've got him skateboarding now but I turn it into a challenge for myself it's like how do I teach this guy skateboarding you know and how do I teach him these different things and so I'm you know it engages me because now I'm like okay how do I chunk this so I got to teach him about different things like step stand step stand and so I'm like I'm like okay I'm gonna create a YouTube tutorial teaching six-year-old skateboarding right and I'm not gonna do that anytime soon but that's my motivation it's like I have this other side that's empowering my time with my kids and and you know in so

there's this multiple purposes to it that empowers them empowers me and you know creates a like a powerful moment because ultimately it's my job that they learned to ride a bike and they they skateboard you know so I have to find a way to do that with all the other time and and it comes basically from giving that time a bit of a mission and then you know every Saturday that's our that's our time mm-hmm you know together something sense definitely man it's it's something I have a family of my own and what I figured you know going into business with my partner is not just me and my partner all the other time I have to manage giving I hate to say like this but it's like it's like it's a worker a worker employer type of mentality with the family sometimes it's like hey all right the kids have to learn this all right these are the things we got to learn and you have fun with mm-hmm all right got to spend time with my wife all right I got a foster that love mentality

so we don't get it divorce takes time yeah yeah and it's had but it overall like I think if I were to look back you know I only started doing this just past year so I've only been in the game for like eight months just spending full-time on this it's been such a fruitful eight months you know was able to kind of coach my son's football team for the first time stuff that I would never do during the day and it sounds glory you know it sounds glorious in retrospect but there's so much hard time as you were talking about the to kind of because if you think of a regular developers time and how they spent eight hours and go home you go to do twice or three times as much just to maintain that just to see ten years of your fruit and labor later if everything else well right that's when you really enjoy things and I see the scale kind of stack

up our way I've had I've had teachers you know because I we've been doing this about nine years and so we've had for the most part we've had great relationships with teachers if there's been any failing it's been my failing of just being too busy and you know something that just the business did dumb you know but you know we've had a couple of instances where we've had partners that just turned toxic and and one of them created his own school in the middle of me launching his class and just kind of sidelined me and you know it's done really horribly in my opinion but you know I understood the pressure this guy wanted control you know and he needed control so he took extreme measures which meant you know doing what he did you know with our business relationship so I'm not gonna fault him for it but at the end of the day you know that school that he created

you know burned down just like some of my other businesses because you know he thought you can go out there and you can do this and I'll get some control but you know he didn't realize the cost of that control and alt and today he you know he works for somebody else and he does some stuff on his own and that's that's a that's a great solution for people when you have the day job and you have your business on the side you know that's something where it's like you have the best of both worlds as long as you have the time you can do that you know and somebody who I admire for doing that right now is Chris Costa you know with his fly in the wall studios and he's set up a really nice I mean just it's structurally I don't I haven't talked to him in ages but it's a beautiful system where it's like he has his day job and at night he just basically has an atelier where people look over his shoulders and as he works I think it's great you know that's a fantastic way to start the problem happens is when you quit the

day job and it's like now I have to be a provider because you're a guy and a guy provides that's like there's miles of baggage around you know what that means to be a provider but it certainly means a certain amount of money every single month you know and that becomes hard you know certain point I think that was one of the scariest steps to kind of wrap my head around because being a salaryman for so long suddenly the checks have to come from yourself or you have a big project that pays off for the next few months it's a different type of thinking of how money is processed that I've never had any training or talking to you you know I didn't come from a family of wealth so I didn't have like a butcher mentors to talk to me about how money actually were so I'm all a lot of stuff education on that part but you're touching on a subject that is very important that I

feel like a lot of entrepreneurship they do cover a bit but it they stay really on the positive side is like hey you have that passion you go for it you have something that there's someone out there doesn't have a product for and you're filling a need but like the partnership the relationship in the turmoil of that and going the business with friends and and trusting a family and all my gut if someone told me that hey yeah I'm going in business with the best friend or something actually will be a terrible thing you better be or better be prepared to say goodbye to that friendship and nothing more cell right yeah what's not endure the business exactly would love to hear more about that side because that's something that I'm learning just do by doing this this is just like it's hard to it's hard to grab a beer with a friend that like screwed you over recently you know like the tress right there is not the same

when something like that can happen because it really tests a relationship I always kind of compared it to like a second marriage it's like everything it's just fast forward 50 years with the worst possible conditions and you're just stress testing what you guys are made of basically and would love to hear your thoughts about that I you know I'm a my wife and I went into partnership in this in the beginning and that is one of the more painful things to experience in fact just yesterday we we reincorporated as a c-corp in delaware just because some investors that's what they're requesting from us and we exited my wife from the business so she all the shares just went to me because there's too hard you know like we had to make a decision what's the better relationship and obviously the better relationship his husband wife then business partner i mean that that

was just an ancillary thing but that's how hard to deal with and you know I think the primary thing that I look at now that I like to help people understand is that as a creative you're a business person whatever doesn't matter you know you might be an employee you might have your own company who cares either way in today's industry when the skill a half-life of skills probably two years now maybe three if you're lucky like and you're having to rescale if you are focused entirely on you as an artist and what you are a specialist in today you will be out of a job in five years hands down guaranteed I saw it I experienced it you know the the whole world of digital sculpting that I helped you know educate and and I helped like that world is still a very powerful very thriving world but it's much more competitive

today and so much of that is been moved to different geo locations that pay different salaries and so that affects where I am here in California in Laguna Beach California and you're Orange County so you know this place is insane you know and so there's all these these pressures and these things that kind of affect it and I've spent a little bit of time today trying to educate my digital sculptors to the fact that they have to they have to wake up to realize that that there's a half life to this skill like digital sculpting will change it will you know and you've got to be ready for what's next it's still very viable still lovely it's it's you know if I have time to myself I'm not spending that time oh let's go and substance painter and and do some stuff I love substance painter but if I have time to myself I sculpt a face you know you know and because it's so Oh fer did such an amazing job of like making that a

program that goes straight to your heart you know and you love it and he you know god bless him he he spent I mean when I worked there pixologic he he would call me at 12:30 at night you know and and he he he'd be working for another three hours after that call I'd be asleep after that call because I was like this is crazy and then he'd be in the office before I was in the office at seven o'clock right so he gave his life to making this program that that connects with people and changes their life and you know you get a sense of it in there but all of these skills have a half-life and we have to always be thinking about ourselves not just as this specialist that somebody's gonna trade time for dollars but you guys think yourself as a brand and a business and how do you expand outside of that and education is one part of that so I like to tell it I tell all my boot campers anybody who's

in here you know I don't the worst case scenario for me is they get a job and that's they just grind on that job forever because now they're under the thumb of somebody else mm-hmm you got to build a brand learn the skill then go and teach other people this skill and that's when you start teaching the community you start engaging with the community that builds your brand that builds insulation it builds connections when this job doesn't work out somebody's like oh yeah I learned this from you right like one of my students Corey Mullen he did this tutorial on gambeson 'he's creating a padded armor basically and that helped him get a job cuz he's in the job interview and they're like oh yeah you're that guy that did that that padded armor that gambeson tutorial and Marvelous Designer i used that on this project and next thing you know he's hired yeah you know so we have to be thinking about ourselves as more than the skills that we have and I think that's the problem that we as creatives have it's it's actually fundamental to

our existence because we must dive in deep into our skill develop that skill and then we bring all that capacity back up to the surface to say hey I can do this but but what we brought back up is not the core of who we are that's just the end product the core of who we are as creatives is we are somebody who will dive deep who will the time in who will digest who will go into that dark wood and discover new stuff that's that's the core of who we are as creatives and that's our core capacity that's the capacity that's going to create a brand and create revenue for us and create future jobs for us when AI and machine learning I mean machine learning now is doing stuff with 3d faces that blows my mind and so are we in a world where of them all and

Hossein and these guys are gonna going to be the best facial digital sculptors what we are now but what's gonna happen in five years you know can I just feed a bunch of frames to the computer and it outputs jean-claude van damme yeah it's gonna happen I mean just question yeah look at those deep face oh my god so awesome yes so great but uh there's a woman I when I like control-shift face yes we subscribe to it patreon and and he's just unreal so it's not so that guy he's like the main guy doing this right and all those YouTube virals is most likely from control-shift face and it's one guy I feel like it's like a whole government putting these out just to make sure in a new new world right here right yeah but I could completely agree

with you this is some this is a skill set that most developers kind of forget that personality right so we're talking about game education we're in a weird phase right now I don't know if you agree where a lot of like a traditional game art schools at least I grew up with our Institute and there was a phase that there was a lot of these schools kind of offering game programs that you know honestly wasn't any good right as expected and they closed down rightfully so because they were kind of not delivering on the goods but at the same time there's like this onslaught of interests of for game development right with the streamers with the YouTube there's a huge amount of awareness of games actually being made by people now more than ever so there's a whole lot more students wanting to learn but the traditional schools aren't really there maybe we have like the universities here and there but you know here pepper here

and there but I largely equate it to like the Wild West right now with game education and the only thing I feel that differentiates one school from another are the branding is the branding the personalities like who's teaching in who's running in red because to me and it gives that extra oomph of differentiy ality that actually matters to me right your experience how do you ah you know belief is because if I'm just going in and learning some substance painter from a no-face it doesn't feel as real it doesn't feel as especially a lot of these tutorials you look at the resume they never worked anywhere it's like why should I we're learning techniques and you don't even know if it's applicable in an actual game setting right and that's really dangerous really so what is your we're ushering a new decade right 2020 what is your outlook for the

next three to five years on game education let's just circle it into the United States we do have international listening out there but just United state wise like I'm pretty uncertain I know we have a lot of online communities such as yours that is doing great game education but I wonder if that's if that is the the future that's just like these online communities kind of teaching each other and just not know real like a big player like a university or something because the only thing just sorry to keep going off tangent the only thing that I've heard that has been like the biggest thing in a university was offering a pro pro gamer scholarship at like USC or something mMmmm and that was making headlines before game development right so that's a whole different thing this is really all know you tell people you tell people you work in games and they're like oh yeah I didn't think I make a million and

they're like which one of my friends made aliyah [ __ ] right it was like I remember the story when I when I was working in omen I remember the story of the artist who's like he bought a Ferrari with his bonus from blizzard man and like you know those so I'm like who did that and then it took a while and it was like oh my god that's right this they're talking about something for tonight's um eSports thing yeah and so they just don't understand it and but that's the way it's been and that's why this industry is so ill served by traditional education it's because I you know it's just it's not their focus right and and it's so new so I would say and the reason I mean I I saw some of this stuff coming up I'd been training students for nine years now um I saw that when I did like for example when we built you Artie we built you art scene we built it as like a class warehouse and you know the goal was to to build this out and could offer a whole bunch

of classes and and give people a whole bunch of room to grow that would match beat traditional education and what I discovered was 50% of the people are more don't show up for classes they just buy it mm-hmm and does that got under my skin and you know because it wasn't about building a business that made revenue and you know like that's not all I didn't get into business for that again I was an accidental entrepreneur I got into it for a mission I wanted to make a difference so when 50% of the people don't show up and they jand they don't even turn in homework they don't do anything I was like something's wrong here I'm not not happy somebody else would be happy with this system and I'm sure there's a you can build a beautiful school out of it and make a difference in the world but I couldn't and so you know we shut that down and we looked for what the next path was and the basic question I was trying to answer was what's gonna what's going to help somebody get a job keep a job

and you know enjoy the job for an extended period of time and what we landed on is is kind of a simple framework which is what we're using in the boot camps it's what I trained by religiously today and that's that we number one we have to remember that what we're doing is you're training for a job there's somebody out there who wants to pay you they don't they don't need you they want to pay you money to do this job they want to intentionally purposefully give you money so that you can survive do something you love and they want to do that why do they want to do that they want to do that because somebody's going to pay them money to achieve something through a product or something like that and they figured out how to make you know this stuff work it's a job you've got to figure out what that person needs right and so the way we talk about it in the boot camp is there's - there's a there's a graph and it goes in two dimensions okay and normal XY graph on one side there's the

breath there's the breath of what you can achieve so if we look at stylized characters for example you've got to be able to do a base sculpt the hand sculpt the head sculpt clothing do the low res you got to do the texture and you got to pose it so those are the eight phases let's say alright so those are eight things you have to be able to do all of those to get a job in games doing stylized work now if you want to work at high-res or you want to work at Blizzard you know each one of those studios you need to start to be able to do each stage better right your block in needs to be better quicker your hands need to be better quicker if you want to work at Blizzard you got to be top-notch in all of those things if you want to sculpt in miniatures you actually only need to know six of those things you only need to know head block in hands head clothing and really that's it you gotta

know for let's say so where do you want to work what do you want to do what's your North Star as in your studio so that's what I always ask people to do find out who your North Star is because that's going to reverse engineer everything and everybody always says I want to work at Naughty Dog why do you want to work at Naughty Dog's just a pissing contest are you just trying to say you know I'm doing this because I want to be the greatest you know well how are you going to get there right what's your focus and and how can we be intentional about developing ourselves as creatives as you know entrepreneurs and as people who you know are controlling our own destiny you know and so I always ask what's your North Star so if you want to work at Blizzard okay well here's the things that you got to do you got to do these eight things and you got to do it this well so when we talk about the next three years it's basically fits within that framework we got to know what are the

things that people are going to be wanting within three years so one of the things that's coming up now is artists should know some programming for the future mm-hmm it's not a it's a it's something to learn but it's not a pain so learn Python and there's plenty of free sources to teach that but it's what we're starting to introduce now because we know that in the future artists are gonna need it they're gonna need it to interface with machine learning programs and they're gonna need to become their own tech artists to some extent so so they gotta do these eight things plus nine they gotta learn some coding okay do they need to be able to code in machine language like you over who offers the primary developer of ZBrush and so he's like my primary source to understand um programming and he's cool he's crazy like what he achieves is you know out of this world there's parts of ZBrush that as I understand it are machine coded like he's writing in machine language which is the language other programs are compiled down into

and he is subverting certain windows management routines so that they operate better for his program and you know all of these things he's doing do you need to be able to do all of that stuff no no you don't need to be a software engineer who is dealing with databases you need to be somebody you know who knows a certain level of coding to get to a certain point and so if there is if there's one shift that I see coming I do think and I train my artist on this all-time procedural ISM is key you you have to keep procedural ISM in your pocket because procedural ISM is the gateway to machine learning machine learning is the gateway to actual artificial intelligence so this pathway will happen no matter what because well the efficiencies are too great the companies will do it like if you've seen was it Promethean AI have you seen that I heard of it yeah it's a

really cool system I don't know the mechanics behind it I just know the videos and you know basically it's that system where you say hey I won in eight nineteen eighties boys room and it'll put the Star Wars poster the back to the future and it'll put all that stuff up then you say I want it to be messy and it'll make everything all faxes right and you think about that one process of making something messy making something messy is a procedural process what is messy messy is simply a certain amount of things off axes with a certain variance this procedural right so if I was to go in and make a room messy at 3d room messy I would do a series of procedural things I can train a computer to do that kind of stuff is going to just become automated you know it's gonna take some time so what we have to be thinking about is number one where do I want to work what do they need what are their needs and I need to first off

get my foot in the door so if I if I'm in the industry already that's a different question but if I'm looking at this and I'm like hey I want to be a game artist I love what these guys are talking about here I love what brenda's talking about here in this podcast and all these things these people that you bring on and I'm looking at this and I'm like I want to be one of these people well training for the job is different than doing the jobs what I tell my people you know because the first thing you have to do is you have to attract somebody's attention that's it whatever attracts attention that's what you got to do you got to be the shiny object then you got to worry about keeping your job that's that's different the first thing is what do I do that attracts attention and help somebody see that you know I'm a job candidate um I have capacity that's it you know just focus on that and don't get too caught up on all the crazy stuff that's coming you know because there's there's gonna be time I think and there's difficulties and I

mean you know I know plenty of people that have been phased out of the technology I'm constantly getting phased out of the technology it's harder and harder for me to teach this stuff but at the same time you know that's kind of the stuff I love to do like I love to learn this I love to learn the frameworks of it you know so I stay in it for that but there's a million ways for us to think about our brand and our business outside of us being the ones that execute you know and I'm rambling a little bit but I think it's Tim champers owns an example of somebody who's kind of gone out and expanded his brand to include all kinds of other activities and now started to serve not just as the warrior but as the leader and I think this is this is the transition I've had to make as a creative and it's the thing

that I think is important for anybody exploring the entrepreneurial journey you have to understand that being the artist is what might get you interested it might be your first stage of validation but you will die on that battlefield you know guaranteed you need to be a leader that has a vision and that is is providing a framework for you know all the stuff that you've already experienced you know and use that as the foundation for for your product you know don't just trade your time for dollars in an activity that now you know it used you used to get paid $45 now to do it but now I can get somebody to do it for $10 and they're actually better mm-hmm I mean that's the reality today so why would you want to die on that battlefield don't reframe your thinking and stop being this person who's fighting for this other person's dollar that's that's a that's a lose-lose elevate yourself

elevate your vision of yourself and try to find a way that you can become a leader for this problem and that's that's where I've that's what I've been struggling to do because it's really hard to transition from artist to leader like I'm reading this book um which I never expected to like it's called bury my heart in conference room B and my brother gave it to me my brother like he runs dental offices he's very much a business guy and as I don't know if I'm gonna read any book my brother recommended to me but it is an amazing book that talks about how you build culture in companies and how you transition from being this person that's just gonna be out there and die on the battlefield to being this person that's leading other people and and helping pave pave a path for their glory and yours too that makes sense yeah I mean

it totally makes sense you're talking about your going your utmost ability and we were talking about the very beginning you only have a little bit a limited amount of time to for your output and the best way to do that is to 2x3 exit by involving other people that's where the partnership kind of thing you know the naturally the danger of that but if you do it right you know you intend to kind of give up responsibility which is another scary thing and letting other people thrive as not just your goal but their goals as well and it's something it's phase man I wish this was more part of our and what you are doing is a great service to a lot of game developers out there part of our game education because the four to five years thing is real you get outdated really quick sure you want to go to Naughty Dog but why don't you talk to that Naughty Dog guy

doing the job that you want and ask him how he feels right I think a lot of students just just just just look at one step ahead and not look at themselves you know when they're 30 or 40 do you really want to still be a naughty Doug you know the everyone crunches like crazy right so it's it's something that I feel like only services like yours can that really care about the students that have the relativity to to kind of express these knowledge to them I feel like a lot of the online schools there's a lot of them just teach the techniques and just move on which is I think a huge failing a huge disservice because it's dishonest our industry is not that strong where once you're in you're good right come on come on right I mean what we're doing a lot of these cases here is to demonstrate to students that you got to

have the overall perspective go out there you know build up that skill set but also build up your brand so you differentiate and it is like you said it much easier to come into an interview with the art station community or whatever that people have actually come across you like just like that you're like one upping your competitor based on your personality not just solely on your own huge yeah Roger Baxter is a good example of this he runs the podcast - nard podcasting and he started when he was a student mm-hmm you know no validation at all so start now you know like people like yourself you know you're out there now and you know you're giving back to this community and sharing and creating this and you know this is a fantastic thing to be doing whether it gets monetized or not it's like for every stage of what we

want to do go out going out there and sharing stuff like I created a podcast and you know all of these things where you just go out there and you give it's part of our give to the community it just helps your brand exactly and you know we're getting short on time but I do want to kind of segue with that we've had a lot of unity evangelists come on the show and I don't know you've met a lot of these Beck community but it's usually a lot of young developers that straight from high school started a channel and just gathered this huge community and unity just hires them to kind of help spread that community out and let people and I look at these like 20 year olds is like oh my god you good job but like I wish I had that guidance to kind of start young because 10 years from then I would be in this comfortable spot of having a lot of options and it's just something is like and I think in our era our generation no

one told us about right no one really they always talked about like Cliff Bleszinski getting his Lamborghini from Gears of War as they also that's all I can kind of get off it's like nope that world is done dude they don't hand out bonuses anymore it's done no more no more epic lot full of Lambos that doesn't happen I mean so uh yep miss Leveaux - I wish I was doing it I know what they call early call duty Daisy if you hear those stories oh my god it would just melt your brain but yeah it's it's a different industry now and I think it's always falls back to not just games right any industry to be really to future-proof you just got to really concentrate on yourself brand yourself don't be part of just another company don't strive to just be a part of another company's branding right if anything just help yourself and no

matter what happens the changing tides or whatever you'll be relevant which is one of the great points right so Ryan I want to thank you for doing an hour of podcasting my camera I believe is still it's just hiccuping the whole time there you go but thank you for your patience and this is the part where I hand the mic over to you to promote shout out give attention to anything that you want - so go for it awesome ya know if the primary thing that we do now that I could tell people about is to head over to game Art Institute calm and we actually have the character artist and the environment are seas of the two areas where we put enormous amount of love in there's me twice a week and we focus on building a portfolio and grinding through the process as much as possible so that's the thing I'm most proud of and we just started any mersive which is a I think it's sixteen weeks

five days a week program for game artists that's going to go through this whole I mean we're just gonna cover everything and it's an alternative to traditional education to get you into it faster cheaper with the same skill set so that you graduate you have the city or a job candidate for the same job as some other school that's gonna take you four years in charge yeah Shh I mean at this point ten to twenty times the amount of what game art is to it would you know so my focus is training game artists and giving them the tools it's been my focus for three years so just come visit me at game Art Institute comm and apply for for an interview awesome so uh for everyone listening watching just check out the description links and go to the game Art Institute I want to thank you ryan for coming on the show but thank you for josh starting me on the journey of ZBrush I'm dead serious the first tutorial I got onto was yours

and it helped me in a huge way and as you guys can tell tremendous educators tremendous speaker very motivational and it's talking about real [ __ ] man so I want to thank you Ryan for coming on and thank you you got a we gonna link up some son I'm throwing it out there great all right so they sunsets sunsets are great from here so sunsets and wine bring the family all right cool thanks a lot man alright see ya [Music] you [Music]