Independent Games Summit: Overcoming Creative Block on Super Crush KO

[Music] all right thanks for coming to my GDC talk let's get started my name is Gabby Jerry Enzo I'm a trauma based independent game developer who's been working as a game artist and art director in the industry for about eight years here are some of the projects I'm known for I think it's this side I very recently started working with drink box studios who are the creators of black Amalia and severed and whenever I start working with a new team I like to take a moment to reflect on my past work and think about my strengths as an artist as well as some skills that I can improve on so lately I've been thinking a lot about my recent experience with creative block and that's what I want to talk about today so let's go back to a couple years 2017 which was a very eventful year for me early in 2017 I worked as an art director on a game called graceful

explosion machine which was a very colorful shoot-'em-up and was also one of the first games that launched on Nintendo switch so needless to say it did extremely well we were very happy with that launch and the creator of graceful explosion machine mobian Fikri asked me to direct his next project which we would start working on later that year later in 2017 I also released a game with my own studio called laundry games called a morticians tale which was a very emotional story driven game where you play as a mortician running a funeral home and morticians tale launched to massive critical praise it was nominated for a bunch of awards and stuff and we were so happy with that launch that we decided to start prototyping a new game so around the end of 2017 while we're in the middle of launching a morticians tale I started working as an art director on what would eventually become super crash ko as well as art directing laundry bears next project I was juggling a lot of creative and art direction projects at the same time and you can probably see where this is going

around the end of that year in the beginning of 2018 I started feeling really exhausted all the time I felt really foggy I had a hard time focusing on things I was struggling to work a full eight-hour day I also started feeling really unmotivated even though I was really excited about the projects I was working on if I liked a struggle for me to actually sit down and do the work and when I did do the work on them I wasn't happy with the work I was producing I felt frustrated with myself and I felt like I was making a lot of bad decisions and on top of that and this is something that I'm particularly embarrassed about I was also becoming a very argumentative person with my teammates then we could me feedback or what's your ideas with me and I would get really defensive about my own art I was miserable and I imagined I wasn't a very pleasant person to work with at the time all these feelings started bleeding into my personal life as well I'm a pretty creative person and I enjoy making things outside of my work but suddenly I started feeling less motivated to work

on even personal creative projects normally after work I would come home and went spend my evenings with hobbies like drawing for fun or baking or gardening or whatever but suddenly I didn't feel motivated to do even those things anymore I spent a lot of my free times at home watching Netflix or scrolling aimlessly through social media and as a creative person not doing creative things made me feel worse and after several months of dealing with all these awful feelings both at work and at home My partner suggested that I might be burnt out and maybe dealing with creative block so what is creative block and where does it come from well creative block is described as the inability to access your internal creativity which can result in the ability inability to create the lack of motivation to create an overall just mental and emotional fatigue it primarily affects people who are in creative positions so in our industry it would be you know artists writers musicians and sound designers game

designers etc and there's a lot of reasons why this might happen to a person sorry I'm trying to lean away from the mic so you don't get that good good good thi ASMR okay one theory as to why creative block happens is because our ability to discern something good has surpassed our ability to make something good this is a handy chart that I've seen pop up on the internet over the last year and a few years and while this is mostly used to talk about art block I think it also applies to other creative positions as well this chart shows that I create a creators progression in skill over their lifetime with the red line representing the creator's ability to make something good and the blue line representing the creator's ability to discern something that is good when our ability to make something good surpasses our ability to discern something good this is called a creative high but when our ability to discern something good surpasses our ability to make something good this is

called a creative low or creative block and this is absolutely a thing I've dealt with over my career in my personal life and in my professional life and I admit it feels pretty lousy when it happens but another reason why creative block happens is because of external pressure feeling like everyone is watching you and that you're letting people down if you aren't productive or good enough and in this day and age of indie games especially with so many games being released constantly it's important that your game stands out that it is beautiful and unique and runs well on every platform it needs to run well on and that the whole game is simple enough to be made by a smaller team on top of that and if you're an any developer watching this you probably understand this pressure to be successful because you and your team's personal finances and well-being depend on it and if you're not an indie developer if you work in triple-a or you're just an aspiring dev this pressure might sound silly but it's absolutely real and it absolutely adds stress onto game artists musicians writers and designers especially you

feel like you can't just make art you have to make beautiful one-of-a-kind while also being efficiently made art and that pressure can sometimes prevent you from making any art all when I had first stirred art directing graceful explosion machine and I morticians tail years ago I didn't feel any pressure at all really I was a relatively unknown game developer an artist and I didn't feel like there were any existing expectations of me however I was still a person suffering from anxiety and I often dreamed about making successful games but once I finally achieved that success my anxiety didn't go away in fact that success only made it worse both graceful explosion machine and morticians tail were successful and I suddenly felt pressure to replicate the success not just for one game but for two new games EP to be perfectly clear my colleagues weren't the ones putting this pressure onto me I was doing it to myself and in hindsight this wasn't very fair of me to do so because ultimately

success is not a cure for mental illness I think as much as we've grown as a society and we're a lot more open and understanding of things like depression and anxiety we still have a tendency to take them a lot less seriously than other types of illnesses but at the time of my burnout I remember feeling really angry with myself for still being anxious and depressed and creatively blocked despite having some success but taking the time to take a step back and acknowledge my creative block and point to this external pressure I was feeling as the cause of it helped me start to find solution to help as to how to overcome it when we started writing down super crush ko I was given the opportunity by mo to not only do art direction but to also take some creative direction over the game so well with things like story and themes and narrative because I was dealing with this creative block largely caused by this external pressure I just described I started making some really silly decisions the art wasn't bad necessarily but it was boring and something that we had seen several times before the story was safe and

uninteresting and the character designs were uninspired and when I showed this to my teammates and other colleagues in the industry the reactions were all very lukewarm which is not really the reaction you want when you're trying to make something cool and unique I remember feeling really frustrated with myself for not immediately having a brilliant idea for the art and story for this new game and in hindsight I wasn't being very fair to myself when you start out with doing pre-production concept and developing art for a game you don't or at least very rarely you don't immediately come up with finalized look to your game this process takes time in iteration more likely when you start concept in a game you start out with this kind of stuff mood boards images that inspire you rough sketches and ideas color swatches and palettes you start with the basics and because I was so stressed about getting it right the first time I forgot completely how much fun concept in can be when I started working at drink bucks to you as a few months ago I told her constantly khushu quijano

I've got my struggles with this and he said something to me that I will never forget which is you can't get too precious about concept art the whole point of concept art whether it's hoping a concept thing in general whether it's art writing or music and so you're coming up with as many ideas as possible and seeing what sticks and concept it's supposed to be a fun messy part of game development and it's supposed to be enjoyable it's the only time in the game development cycle really that you could just set your limits aside and come up with as many ideas as you possibly can sometimes I came up the bad ideas and but you also come up with good stuff too and while I was working on super crash I was so stressed about coming up with something unique and getting everything right the first time that I could really forgot about how much fun and concept art is and how much fun it is to just trust myself with my own my own art when I was studying graphic design in school I had a professor used to preheat this praise to me which was don't try to be different just try to be good the idea

behind this phrase that by focusing firstly on being good following the basics of design and making decisions that you know work and trusting your own instincts of what is good you will ultimately make something that is different good is different enough and if this doesn't make any sense to you I totally understand this is a bit of a weird constant phrase so here's an example that will hopefully help illustrate this better if you haven't heard it if you haven't played this already this is hole down a mobile game by Martin Johansen that commit a few years ago for iOS and Android and while the artwork isn't necessarily anything new we've seen lots of minimal flat shaded 2d games before what makes hold-down so special is how well it's executed its animations are fancy and it uses particles screen shake visual effects and feedback to make the game feel really satisfying and it has this weird little worm thing that doesn't really do anything but it acts as a super cute and super recognizable mascot for the game Martin took great care and

designing hole down to feel good first and foremost and that allowed to be different and to stand out and for it to become US as popular and successful as it has been when I think back to what I started to do concept art for super crash ko I was focusing so hard on being different that I totally forgot about being good first so around the beginning of 2018 mo saw that I was experiencing this creative block and told me to take a month off just to figure it out and having this time allowed me to take a step back my frustrations refocus and ultimately start to make good decisions for the art of the game this month away from my usual work was really important and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to have that much-needed break and this summer my biggest piece of advice comes in if you're experiencing art block do not isolate yourself from others you do not have to suffer this alone if you're working with a team or have colleagues tell them about your struggles with creative block or burnout and encourage them to do the same with you sometimes people can give you an outside opinion or advice you may not have considered if you were just

working alone and having a group of colleagues you can trust allows you to inspire uplift and support each other during creative block or other frustrating times like this I'm very fortunate to live in a city that has a big indie games community and I have a lot of friends and colleagues in the industry I can turn to but I realize this might be the case for everybody especially if you live somewhere that doesn't have a community or maybe you're new to the industry or whatever and if this is the case for you I recommend trying to look online forums discord social media can be a great place to make friends and learn from other game developers and find your community having people to turn to when you're experiencing creative block including online friends can be beneficial for yourself and for to the Internet of course can be a great resource for tutorials and define inspiration which leads me to my next piece of advice for overcoming art block which is surround yourself with inspiration if you're feeling uninspired and frustrating with the things that you're making try surrounding yourself with other art music or writing that you like that motivates you and that makes you feel good and if you're looking to

come up with something unique for your game try your best to look outside of what people are already doing in video games when I took my break was super crush ko I started a new morning habit where every day or before I start my work for the day I would drink a cup of tea and spend 10 minutes scrolling through various art and design websites not only was this a great way for me to encourage myself to feel motivated before starting my day but is also being inspired by things outside of video games things like architecture and film fashion photography makeup drag graphic design industrial design TV shows anime music toys in nature just to name a few in May of 2018 our team started working out of a physical office in Toronto and for the first time since I started making indie games I had access to permanent wall space that I could use for putting up Art boards I print out inspiration for super crash ko as well as some early sketches sketches and concepts and it's become a great way to

surround myself with the art that was inspiring me as well as my own art that I was making having physical reminders in front of you if both these things is really motivating and also allows you to receive feedback and ideas from office mates which happened quite officemates which happened quite frequently it was also very helpful so after my month-long break where I spent time surrounding myself with inspiration and letting myself have fun with the concept art I came back to the super crush ko team with this mock-up and the reaction was a complete 180 from the reactions I was getting the first time when I showed them my old bad art people were excited and talked about it happily their faces lit up this was the exact reaction I was wanted and I was so validating and motivating this single mock-up was able to inform the art for the rest of the game which we continue to iterate on and make better as well as some other decisions for the rest of the game when it came to me music and even gameplay this also allowed me to feel a lot more confident with my decisions and help direct the other artists working with me on the team when it came to animation and

cutscene art we used team were able to make the game a lot more cohesive once we had this art direction and this is ultimately where the title of super crash kayo came from crushing your robot enemies and maybe also developing a bit of a crush on the antagonist while you're at it so in short I was able to overcome this massive year-long creative block by acknowledging my burnout and understanding the external pressure causing it taking a little break from the work that was frustrating me and finding the fun and con start again leaning on my team for support focusing on making something good firstly for making something different and surrounding myself with non King game inspiration daily I'm also glad to say that by overcoming my creative block on super crush I was able to overcome my art create a block on the other project I was working with with laundry barrier it also provided way we provided me with a list of tangible exercises I can do if I ever find myself going through creative blocky chem whether it's with drink box or on a personal project whatever so now here is a list a short list of exercises I did that work for me

and will hopefully work for you if you ever find yourself experiencing creative block number one is revisit your basics if you've been making art or music or writing or been designing games for a while chances are you feel pretty confident with your fundamentals however if I'm feeling stuck I find revisiting these basics to be very helpful but it could be things like color theory anatomy lighting even if you're already quite familiar with these things sometimes finding a tutorial and revisiting your fundamentals can open up new doors you may have forgotten about or never considered before number two is try a new thing if you're feeling stuck with your current work try playing with a new medium for art if you're primarily working digitally try sketching things out with pen or marker if you're a writer who primarily uses one digital tool try switching to a different tool or using pen and paper if you're a musician who largely works with synths try picking up an acoustic instrument acoustic acoustic or vice

versa this also goes for subject matter sometimes by creating genre or movie don't normally work with can be creatively stimulating if you're an artist who mostly draws figures and people try drawing environments instead if you're a game designer who largely designs action or fighting games to try your hand at paper prototyping a puzzle game or visual novel if you're musician who largely writes happy whimsical songs try reading something darker and more serious if you are creative professionally any finer hobbies fall into the same categories of what you do for a living try a different hobby that's completely unrelated like drawing or picking up a new sport or baking or writing or knitting or gardening or reading or carpentry or playing a musical instrument whatever by taking the time to try new things whether it's a medium subject matter or hobby you're allowing yourself be creative in new ways you've never experienced before and sometimes this can inspire all new ideas and motivations for you my third tip is to

do something creative for yourself every day this one might seem pretty obvious but it's important to differentiate personal creative projects and professional creative projects if I say draw every day I don't mean draw every day so you can be productive or draw every day so you can practice and image to be better and while these are both important I recommend drawing every day or finding something creative to do every day purely for yourself not for something work-related not for professional development not to put on the Internet do something creative every day for you you don't overthink it you don't spend longer than 30 seconds that's all the time you have for it but just take the time to make something for you and the reason why I recommend this is because if you're the if you're like a person if you're a person like me who makes art professionally sometimes it's easier to forget that making art can also just be for fun and personal enjoyment so this daily drawing or creative exercises entirely for you and if you're the kind of person who likes to be productive constantly and

the idea of not being productive is stressful for you that allow me to explain this in a way this exercise in a way that might resonate with you better taking time off is productive I like this quote from one of my favorite artists hey kala I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong I'm sorry that says I try to keep a habit of sketching everydays I believe your imagination is like a muscle that you need to exercise frequently and I absolutely agree with them as much as drawing every day's for yourself it's also in a subconscious way for your work in your productivity as well and this leads me to my final tip for overcoming creative block or burnout which is be kind to yourself if you're feeling frustrated and angry with yourself over experiencing creative block the way that I felt continuing to be angry is not gonna help you it's okay to take a take a break or take time off to do something unrelated and be forgiving to yourself and I realized this probably sounds really wishy-washy especially in comparison to all the tangible advice that I just listed but it's just as necessary and important to

remember being kind to yourself is a simple and small thing you can do to yourself that ultimately makes a big positive change for you and your mental health so super crush kayo was released in January of this year and I'm really proud of it I'm really proud of this super colorful super gay thing that we made that people seem to really like this is some cool fan art that someone made it's really cool I'm very excited about this and I'm really proud of my team and I'm really proud of myself too for overcoming this really rough creative block and to be able to have a list of tools that I can share with you and other people who might be experiencing creative block or who might know someone who is or may experience creative block in the future so in closing if you're experiencing creative block you are not a bad artist if you're experiencing creative block you're not a bad game designer if you're experiencing creative block you are not alone if I can overcome it so can you that was

really cheesy but thank you for listening to my talk regardless I hope it was helpful if you have any questions about creative block or super crush or making art for games please feel free to reach out to me I'm at gabbed are on Twitter thank you so much again