About the Artist
At first I created this blog to help my students in my motion graphics class. But I find myself sharing with them all the useful information I’ve stumbled upon in the past 5 years of learning and working as an artist.
You’ll still find a lot of material here specifically written for my motion graphics class but in time this blog will fill up with the more useful information – How to easily promote ourselves and find an audidence for our art.
Back in Texas I taught myself Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, web design, and Flash. Then I came out California to study animation. In school I worked extremely hard training myself to become a disciplined artist but I realized I was working hard but not working smart. I learned 2D animation, 3D animation, Life Drawing, Illustration, Storyboarding, motion graphics, Digital Video editing, and I even learned how to use lighting equipment. I designed my own characters, wrote scripts, developed my own stories, created fake commercials, 3D characters, learned a lot of technical stuff, and by the end I greatly improved my drawing abilities. I did everything I could to find the best way to make it as a commercial artist. But even though I taught myself so much I still couldnt’ solve my fundamental problem. I ran out of food, I had no place to live, no car, and I still only made a little more than minimum wage.
I changed my direction a 1,000 different times trying to follow my passions in a way that would solve my fundamental problems. Why do we work so hard as artists for so little? Along the way I have realized some very deep truths and I am still learning more than ever. I have also found some very useful tools and information which I am now sharing. What I found will hopefully get us to that place we so passionately desire – freedom as independent artists.
I’m currently 24 years old and I now teach Photoshop and Motion Graphics at Westwood College. I love teaching, but I found that many young artists know the technical skills but are lacking the fundamental principles of design and storytelling. My fear is that in this new technological world young artists will spend a lot time learning technical skills like how to use design software tools without spending the time to learn the fundamental design principles that make our favorite art so good. If you don’t learn the fundamentals properly then no amount of technical skill or techniques will ever make your art rise above the rest. For this reason I spend a lot of my time just trying to teach new artists the basics of storytelling and design principles. In the future I’ll try to post more articles and videos demonstrating how to make your artwork tell a great story in an engaging way.
All artists know that the best way to get to know an artist, is to look at their artwork, so here it is. My art. You can check out my portfolio site,
and you can check out my first book here
Sincerely,
Shaun David McMillan
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