The Concept of Leveling Up

I was scrolling through instagram and I came across a very talented animator's work. His name is adriengromelle. The animation was brief and simple. It was the muscles of the back flexing, and it was showcased with incredible simplicity and somehow managed to show all the essential details. Someone commented "how long did it take you?", To which Adrien replied, "2 hours." The commenter then replied that it would take them a week to replicate the same thing. Adrien clarified that he's studied anatomy and animation for 17 years, so for the commenter to achieve that within a week is a marvel. The commenter replied that they once animated a bouncing ball in a day, so this should surely take a week. But they didn't get it.

Here is something interesting I noticed as I developed as an artist. It's not something mentioned often. Either way, I would call it "purposeful ignorance". It's something I did, especially as a teenager. We are told to study to get better as an artist. That is the fundamental key to getting better. Don't do this simple yet effective measure, and you won't get to where you want to be. Purposeful ignorance can be exhibited in many ways, but here are two. First, to go with the example above, I often get asked how long a comic page of mine takes to make. It takes 4-8 hours. Then I often hear, "wow, it would take me 2 days!". True, if you were to copy my work line for line, it would take you a while. Maybe even less than 2 days. But, what if I let you copy one of my pages 4 times over and over again? Would you be able to replicate my page having learned my page layout, poses, everything- line for line, without copying? No. At least not if you're a beginner or intermediate. See, this is purposeful ignorance, or to phrase it a little differently, selective learning.

You draw what you know. For instance, you write sentences with words you know. You don't use words you don't know the meaning of, because you understand you don't know how to place them correctly in a sentence. You can copy coherent sentences out of a textbook. However, that does not mean you understand all the words you used in that sentence, but you understand them a tiny bit more than before.

As an example, when I draw the muscles of the back, I know every single superficial muscle there is to see. I understand how the scapula can be seen underneath the lattisimus dorsi, and how the scapula and rhomboid muscle show up underneath the trapezius. Like looking up the definitions to words in the dictionary and using them confidently in sentences, I have become adept at displaying my knowledge of anatomy. Your goal should be to do the same. Find what it is you want to get good at drawing, and like a dictionary, find all the necessary parts required for you to excel at it.

Let's say it's your first time studying something you've never studied before; for example a leg. You study and draw it from multiple angles for 5 hours. 2 days later, you try to draw it from memory. However, your brain only picked up 20% of what you studied. This is the second example of purpose ignorance. Our brain doesn't want to work so hard remembering so many fine details. It only keeps the things it found important. It's selectively learning. I used to do this when I first began drawing primates. I would often draw a baboon and make it look like a dog because my brain was selectively choosing what it liked and what it didn't find essential, and when it did that with a baboon; well then I ended up with an odd looking dog. So the first time you draw something, you learn 20%. That's actually pretty big. The next time you study, your brain picks up another 15%. The week after, another 5%. Then for years, it only takes in 1% or less at a time. This is when you start to understand if you were made to be an artist. Do you enjoy this dead-slow grind? Because once you become a master of a certain subject, it becomes very difficult to level up more in that subject. Then you draw something you've never drawn before. A car. Well damn, a car and a leg dont look anything alike. So now you're a master of anatomy, but once you draw cars, it looks amateur. What do you do to get better at more things? I like to call it knowledge farming.

Knowledge farming is the process of looking for things you suck at and aim to get better at them. You must learn how to plant (search), grow (study), and harvest (execute). Knowing what to look for is remarkably hard for people, even with the internet to use in every instance. Searching up information and learning about your subject will get you to appreciate what it is you want to draw. For instance, I draw alot of animals. I had an encyclopedia of animals and read through the 1200 page book several times so I knew about the animals I was drawing. Then comes studying, aka, drawing repetitively from reference. Studying can seem too labor intensive. People would rather just skip that stage and get to the harvesting stage and execute on this wonderful idea that they've had. Well, tough luck. There are no shortcuts. Leveling up is hard. God intended it that way so that mankind can dream. If all things came to us as easily as wishing for it, then life itself would lose all purpose. At least it would to me.