Artists must have books: Orbiting the Giant Hairball
I got to know about this book while listening to the Stanford University's series of podcasts on business entrepreneurs. What sounded very appealing to me was that the author Gordon MacKenzie is an artist that managed to stay 30 years working for a single company: Hallmark, the company that does all-occasion cards.
As Animator artists we are striving to get better with our art, trying to stay on top of things and come up with the latest trends on acting, posing, staging, etc. When we already have a few years working with the same studio, company, project, we are inevitably facing the corporate side of them too often, this makes us stagnate with our ideas, with our creativity, with our art.
Gordon MacKenzie explains in his book what its called a "Hairball", he says that every idea its a hair and when two of them come together will form a little tiny puny hairball. In a company, ideas are coming from every angle resulting in hairballs and in big corporations there are giant hairballs. MacKenzie says that the trick is to stay innovative when being part of hairballs.
MacKenzie's writing style will glue your attention to every page, his ideas, stories and anecdotes are eye opening, he has a peculiar way of seeing things, the book contains a lot succinct drawings that explain his concepts in a very simple way, chapters names such as "Introducing... your brain", "Paint me a canvas", etc. you will love the reading.
Gordon MacKenzie brings up a thought that every artist has had. The idea of being discovered by a company, a studio, a person. Someone that recognizes our talents and gives us that opportunity we were waiting for a long time to prove the world who we are and what we have to offer. Someone that will help us grow and will elevate us as artists, someone that believes in us, someone to validate us. But no one never came.
"There is still hope, you are an adult now, as an adult you will be in a position to redeem your creative genius. Reviving the creative genius in you is the beginning of Orbit".
--Gordon MacKenzie
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