Justyna Dorsz – Page 28

Minimal designs

Every day is Hug Your Dog Day — Hug your dog today. And tomorrow.

This text is not about dogs.

When I first started drawing things and selling them on t-shirts and such, I spent way too much time endlessly improving my complicated designs. And then after maybe a week of work I would have one finished design and I would submit it to various websites. And it would disappear, no one would like it, buy it, no one would pay any attention. Then I would repeat the whole process: make a design for days, obsessing over tiny details and colors, submit, and most often than not, get no response and no interest.

Even after being in this business for years, I still can’t predict what people will like. That’s why it’s so important to not get too attached to any artwork, but keep making them, preferably fast, keep submitting, and some of those designs will get printed, often the ones you least expect.

Among my 10 most popular designs, 4 are designs that I thought no one would like. But I said to myself: “OK, you worked on it for hours, you might just as well publish it.”

So remember — quantity trumps quality. Draw a lot and publish everything, you never know what will be popular.

Useful gifts for artists and designers

I drew a cat in a gift box, and it made me think that I could write a short note about gifts because I am asked about it sometimes. First, I think it’s better to save money than buy gifts this year. Covid-19 is in no way over, and the worst is yet to come. But we all like giving gifts, so here are the two most important things that all designers and artists and creators will find useful.

PENS

The one thing that any designer that I know would like to get, even if they still have a supply on hand. You don’t have to buy the exact kind, most designers will draw with whatever. Best buy black ones, here’s a nice set.

SKETCHBOOKS

I prefer square ones, but artists often use the standard A5 size like this one. But again, it doesn’t really matter all that much, any sketchbook will find its use.

My Grandma

Two days ago, my grandma had trouble breathing and was feeling tired. My mom measured her blood pressure which was too high and then called a doctor at a local public clinic, described the symptoms, and told the doctor that she gave my grandma Nebilet to lower the blood pressure.

The doctor consulted my grandma’s file.

“I have not prescribed Nebilet,” – the doctor said. – “If your mother dies, it will be your fault.”

She refused to come over and examine my grandma.

In theory, public health care is free and generally available in Poland, as nearly everyone pays a mandatory health care fee. But in practice, you have to wait a long time to schedule a visit, often times a year or two even. So, we pay for private doctors when we can’t wait and Nebilet was prescribed by a private doctor, so that’s why it was not in the public clinic’s file.

This is only partially a story about my grandma, though. The second part is that after the call with the doctor, my mom was very upset and cried, and was furious with the doctor who refused to see my grandmother. She was distraught all day and even when she told me the story the next day, she could not tell it calmly. Most of all, she was angry at herself that she can get emotional and lets other people get to her.

This is a good start — noticing that we get overwhelmed by our emotions and wanting to learn to manage them. Most people don’t even get to that part. I, too, was like that.

Here are 2 main things that helped me:

Writing down all the emotions, in detail. And dissecting them into even more atomic emotions. I have hundreds of pages of notes written after upsetting events or conversations. I kept writing everything that came to my mind and analyzing what made me feel that way.
Realizing that I am responsible for my feelings – Accepting this made all the difference. The fact that someone made me angry is not their fault. It’s my fault for letting that emotion impact me that much. Once you realize that anger and other negative emotions only live in your mind, you get to decide what you do with them.

My grandma’s feeling better now. She’s only 94 years old, which, in her family, would be a bit early to die.

Pottery Class Story

The story goes like this: in a pottery class students were divided into two groups. Students in the first group were asked to make a perfect pot. Students in the second one were asked to make as many pots as they could. When all pots were compared it turned out that all the best pots were from the second group.

The story about a pottery class is from “Art and Fear” by David Bayles which I haven’t yet read. I’ve first stumbled upon it here.

I like it a lot because it takes the pressure off. I don’t have to create that one perfect drawing. It’s better to draw as much as I can without obsessing over a single drawing. I don’t need to write a perfect blog post either — the more I write the better I will get at it.

Hidden Paws

In December 2017, like every Christmas, I visited my mom. My brother was there too. Usually, we eat a lot, maybe watch some movies, do jigsaw puzzles, and play games. It should be relaxing, but it never is. Or maybe it is at first but we don’t like being unproductive for days.

So, we were there for yet another Christmas, and we knew how it would go and that we would feel tired after all the sitting around and eating. We came up with an idea of creating a small game. We wanted to make it in 3 days tops because we were delusional — most game developers are when they estimate how long it takes to make a game.

Cats in Love in Hidden Paws game — Love at first Meow

It was winter and it was snowing outside so all our ideas revolved around winter and we agreed that there would be an island and that little kittens would be hidden there and a player would need to find them. My brother knows 3D modeling so he made the cats and the island in Blender and I programmed it all in C# in Unity Engine. We had a small working prototype within a day. But there was still a lot of work to be done. And we kept adding isles and things. We kept making the game when we got back to our own apartments.

We titled it Hidden Paws. This is the description that we came up with:

Penguins in Hidden Paws game — Penguins! – my favorite level

“It’s winter and cats are still outside. Cold and alone. Find them and bring them home.“

We finally released it in March 2018 — our first game!

Everything is better when a cat says it

T-shirt designs are sort of like cartoons. Everything is more inspiring when said by animals.

Before I created this blog I’ve read a lot of articles that tried to motivate me to — start now! I still procrastinated but I am glad I did finally start writing.

If you have a project that is on your to-do list, don’t wait, act now.

Best way to take notes

There is one app that I use every day, many times a day — Roam Research. And I can’t overstate how vital this tool is for me. Roam is a note-taking tool but on their website, they advertise it as “a tool for thought” and they might be right. It certainly feels that the way I see connections between topics changed since I started using it.

I’ve tried many other apps for taking notes like Evernote and Notion. I had high hopes at first but inevitably I stopped using them after weeks or even days. A note talking tool must be, first and foremost, easy to use. If there’s a barrier to taking a note, let’s say if you have to open the right directory and find the correct file, open it, and then add your new note — then it’s unlikely you will take as many notes as you could.

And if we don’t take notes, we forget.

To take a note you open Roam and you already have an empty page with today’s date and you start writing — that simple. In Evernote and Notion, you can create new content fairly easily at first too but after a while you spend more time organizing your notes into hierarchical structures that those apps enforce and less time actually writing.

Creating a link to another note in Roam — In Roam you put brackets around a phrase and this creates a page and links to that page.

This is not a tutorial to Roam, by the way, because Roam doesn’t need one. The only thing that you need to know to get started is that you can put any phrase in [[brackets]] and it automatically creates a page and links to it.

And this is how you create a link to another note in Notion:

Creating a link to another note in Notion — Are you serious, Notion?

If you want to use Notion then don’t even look in the direction of Roam —once you see how easy to use Roam is you, won’t be able to switch to any other tool.

I like Roam so much that I recommend it to all my friends but it’s a surprisingly tough sell, maybe because it’s so different than what we are used to in note-taking apps.

I use Roam but there’s also a completely free alternative to Roam – RemNote.

4 steps for finding a name

I wrote before that the crucial thing is doing the work, not worrying about a name. But you still have to actually find a name. Here I am noting down the process that I use to find names for my stores, websites, companies, and games. There are 4 steps:

1. Write down all the words that come to mind when you think about your project. But don’t make it a list. Write the words loosely on a page. This way you will see connections between them better.

A few words that come to mind when you think about your project.

2. Use a random word generator and get words that you like or that seem connected to the words on your page. I use this one.

3. To get a few more unique words go to — poems! They are the source of words that are not often used in everyday life. Read some poems and write down the words that catch your eye.

4. Look for unique word combinations. If none, repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have more words and then look for connections again.

Wolf, story, home, and other words - look for interesting combinations.

This is how my brother and I found the name for our game studio Manic Hyena and all our games.

“On Writing Well” – Book Notes

I’ve read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser a few times already, but I’ve reread it these past few days. Now that I am writing a blog, I want to write it well. And the book is full of useful advice.

Here are a few highlights so that I can always keep them on hand:

SIMPLICITY

Strip every sentence to its cleanest components, remove words that don’t serve any purpose, e.g.:

“Are you experiencing any pain?” → “Does it hurt?”
“A personal friend of mine” → “A friend”

AUDIENCE

Write for yourself, write as you talk, write to enjoy yourself, don’t give a damn what the reader might think, don’t be timid or evasive.

USAGE

Be careful with words.

As an example, here are two ways of using the word “too”:

Wrong: “too” is a substitute for “very” (clutters the sentence): “His health is not too good”, “He didn’t feel too much like going shopping.”
Good: when sardonic or humorous use: “He was not too happy when she ignored him.”

LEAD

The most important sentence in any article is the first one. Nudge curiosity, keep the reader inquisitive.

Good lead examples:

“I’ve often wondered what goes into a hot dog. Now I know and I wish I didn’t.”
When in doubt start with a story, like so:
“At some point rather early in the spring of 1947, a Bedouin boy called Muhammed the Wolf was minding some goats near a cliff on the western shore of the Dead Sea.”

Bad lead examples:

Future archeologist: “When some future archaeologist stumbles on the remains of our civilization, what will he make of the jukebox?”
Visitor from Mars: “If a creature from Mars landed on our planet he would be amazed to see hordes of scantily clad earthlings lying on the sand barbecuing their skins.”
The cute event that just happened to happen: “one day not long ago” or “recent Saturday”.
“Have in common”: “What did Joseph Stalin and (…) Akira Kurosawa have in common? They all loved Westerns.”

ENDING

The last sentence of each paragraph should have an extra twist.“Make the reader smile and you have him for at least one more paragraph.”

“The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right.”

“Bring the story to full circle – to strike at the end an echo of a note that was at the beginning.”

People should come away wanting to hear [the writer] again.

VERBS

Better use active and be precise e.g. don’t say “he stepped down”, choose “retired” or “was fired”.

ADVERBS

Most are unnecessary.

ADJECTIVES

Also usually unnecessary. Make the adjectives do the work, don’t use them as decoration, only use when they convey important information.

LITTLE QUALIFIERS

Remove! “A bit”, “a little”, “sort of” “kind of”, “rather”, “quite”, “very”, “too”, “pretty much”, “in a sense”.

PERIOD

Short sentences are better.

EXCLAMATION POINT

Don’t use often.

“Don’t use to notify the reader that you are making a joke “it never occurred to me that the water pistol might be loaded!” Readers are annoyed by your reminder that this was a comical moment. They are also robbed of the pleasure of finding it funny on their own.”

SEMICOLON

Slows pace, use rarely. Usually to add thought at the end of a sentence.

DASH

Use in 2 ways:

Amplify or justify: “We decided to keep going — it was only 100 miles more and we could get there in time for dinner.”
Set apart a thought: “She told me to get in the car—she had been after me all summer to have a haircut—and we drove silently into town.”

MOOD CHANGERS

Use “but” or “yet” at the beginning of a sentence. “However“ is weaker than “but”. Clear confusion with “later” or “now”.

CONTRACTIONS

Use them, style will be warmer: “won’t”, “can’t”.

THAT AND WHICH

Always use “that” unless it makes your meaning ambiguous. If your sentence needs a coma to achieve its precise meaning it probably needs “which.”

“Take the shoes that are in the closet.” – Take the shoes that are in the closet, not the ones under the bed.
“Take the shoes, which are in the closet.” – Only one pair of shoes is under discussion; the “which” usage tells you where they are.”

CONCEPT NOUNS (nouns that express a concept)

Bad writing. Example: “the common reaction is incredulous laughter”, better: “most people just laugh with disbelief”

OVERSTATEMENT

Don’t!

“The room looked as if an atomic bomb had gone off there”

CREDIBILITY

Don’t inflate incidents or make bogus statements

PARAGRAPHS

Keep them short.

Don’t over-explain or put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Don’t use: “surprisingly”, “predictably”, “of course”.

INTERVIEWS

Quote people instead of writing about them.

Bad: “Mr. Smith said that he liked to go downtown once a week and have lunch with some of his old friends.”

Good: “I usually like to go downtown once a week,” Mr. Smith said, “and have lunch with some of my old friends.”

Details! When writing about people details matter.

WRITING ABOUT PLACES

Don’t write about everything, choose something different, that the reader might not know.

Eliminate facts that are known e.g. “beach scattered by rocks“ and “occasionally a seagull flew over”.

“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time” – William Zinsser

How to name your store

When I opened one of my stores a few years ago, I planned to draw little foxes and put them on t-shirts and tote bags. It was supposed to be dark and weird art, the foxes would all be alone in forests and caves, at night. And it would be winter.

I named the store: Fox Shiver.

Here is the first fox that I painted:

After the initial spree of dreary fox designs, I somehow ended up drawing lots of cats. I didn’t make a second separate store for my cat designs — I just published them to my Fox Shiver store.

It would be great to have a thematically consistent store with a fantastic name. But what’s even better is to actually open a store with any name that comes to mind and start publishing and selling.

When you look around, you will notice that plenty of people didn’t overthink their store names either. Go through the stores on any of the websites, and you will see lots of artists who often used a combination of words that they liked or simply their name or nickname.

One of my favorite artists is Nathan W. Pyle. If you don’t know him, here is one of his designs: