September 2, 2025 • 22 mins
Merv and Nicki dive into the value (or lack thereof) of a formal education when it comes to art.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Nicky McCoy and I'm an illustrator, fashion designer,
and traditional artist.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Mervin McCoy illustrators, storyteller and digital artists.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
For more than a decade, we've traveled in the convention
scene from coast to coast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We'd love to share what we've learned and are still
learning on our journey.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You're listening to paper podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You hear that music?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
She stole it off the internet, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's spicy beats b E E.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
T S and he hates beats. Let's check you out
that SoundCloud.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We don't need no education from you're gonna talk about.
You can do the rest of the song. That's what
you wanted to. Yeah, that's uh, that's us in schools.
Uh yeah, schools and art, art and schools like not
(01:05):
necessarily art in schools, But you can go into that
if you want. Maybe it will based on, you know,
how the conversations goes. But yeah, I mean, do you
think it's necessary to go to school for art? What
was your journey? Did you need it? Was it helpful? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I mean I guess I have a very privileged artistic
background when it comes to schooling, since I went to
a magnet middle school, a magnet high school, and uh
An Art College.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Magnets. How do they work?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
How do they work? I guess I found out over
the course of seven years. But I think that I
would say, off the top of my head one of
the things that it definitely gave me was focus. So
you know, even in the time that I would there
and learning like different techniques, it was still under like
(02:06):
the sort of umbrella of like learning fine arts during
that time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Is this where you're a hatred of digital art came from?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So funny enough, back when photoshop, I guess was shiny
and new, uh I was. I was learning it in
in high school. Actually, we had a digital photography class
with I think it was like it had to have
been like Photoshop, like like Adobe Photoshop one or two.
And I just remember taking photos of like really mundane
(02:41):
things like like telephone polls and stuff because I was
like fascinated with the wires and putting like really just
like bad filters on them, like no, okay, not like
lens flares, but just like you know, just like.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Is there like a negative fun yeah, yea inverting it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, inverting it, just like stuff like that. And think,
you know, it was so edgy and cool and yeah,
and we would like print them out and display them
and it was a thing. But I mean, I guess
that was like a foray into digital photography.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But isn't that that kind of like that thing we're
talking about with tools where you were kind of pushed
trying to push your limits and experiment. You just wanted
to see what would happen, which is the point of
expanding your boundaries and any receded to your traditional cave
where you never left again. Right, you're like enough turning
like poems. It's true.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Negative Well, I mean, like ironically enough, even if you
are a traditional artist, you still have to document your
work in a digital way. So whether it's through photography
or even just like scanning it in you know, to
get like high quality images, you're still ironically also using
(03:57):
digital technology to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's fair, so so so okay, So with you and
the schooling, then there's value to it, Like you don't
you don't believe in overschooling when it comes to art,
like ye, and mind you, that's that's not even me
trying to say, oh, there's no value in a master's
or anything. No, obviously there is, you know, but I'm
(04:19):
just saying in a general sense as an artist, because
you know, a lot of like parents will come to
us at the booth and whatnot, and they'll ask about that,
you know, are there classes or things that whatever, or
even other people will ask, hey, what should I do?
And my take is, and I do believe the value
of the schooling for the art, but I always say
sometimes a lot of artists focus on the wrong things.
(04:40):
Just at a show, like recently or a few months ago,
someone who was asking about art stuff and they showed
me and stuff. I'm like, this is great stuff, But
for one, you probably should be just taking a market
in or business class anyway, Like this is cool and
all you clearly you've already worked on do you in
(05:01):
your reps? You're not going to stop drawing or sketching
any books. So you got that out of the way.
I mean, you can learn new techniques and what not.
But at the end of the day, he wanted to
go into more commercial rum. So I think you really
should learn how to what it is you're selling. Yeah,
I mean are you selling you? Are you selling the work?
What are you like? What's the point? Why are you
doing this, and you know, maybe it was too abstract
(05:21):
for him, but eventually he kind of was like, oh man,
you should do a Ted talk and I'm like, no,
we don't take that far. I'm just I was just
because the thing is, you need to think about those concepts.
I know, they team seem very abstract and remote, but
especially when you get older, the value of them is
so much more important because when you don't ask yourself
those questions early on, it's when you get older that
(05:44):
you have those word crises. We're like, why am I
doing this? What was it for? You know, it happens.
You might laugh, but it does happen. Somebody listening to
this might be having that challenge right now. These are
normal things. You know. Some times you can prevent these things,
you know, thankfully, you know it's you know, I think
(06:05):
it's that's something you can learn. You can learn by
just experience. School can teach it that part.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Right, So yeah, yeah, I mean it was interesting because
I think like, even as I graduated from college, I
don't really you know, I would grudgingly admit that I
didn't really have a set game plan for my life.
And during school I really wish that my schooling, my
(06:34):
art schooling specifically had balanced you know, the business or
like the marketing aspects more because like things like professional
practice or like even my internship it was it was
pretty joky for the time. Oh gosh, I was with
like a like a non for profit. It was almost
(06:56):
like a it was supposed to be like a kid's
like television show or like that sort of thing, and
so we like performed and just had like different like
local kind of like acts. It was really bizarre. I
I didn't actually I was not one of the performers.
I was helping more with like the set designs and
(07:17):
like the backdrops and that sort of thing. But yeah,
it so I sit to say, I can't really say
it helped me with like my future career, but so
ironically to do that's true, So in a way, I guess.
But uh, I I feel like any of like the
practical like business aspects were ironically enough. After graduating from
(07:41):
college was actually just like working in retail and seeing
how those businesses ran and you know kind of like
picking up stuff from that and taking it over into
like my own personal practice.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Okay. What's what's interesting though, is you say that and
you know that was that's a perfect example of a pitfall.
Might be dramatic, but I'm just going to use that
word like a pitfall kind of pushing you in the
(08:14):
direction that maybe you were meant to to go in
because you know, even when I mentioned that's stuff about
you know, my journey or even talking to that guy
about you know, trying to figure out what you're doing. Like,
I don't necessarily think you need to have like this
whole thing planned out and know where you're going blah
blah blah blah piece by piece. That's not necessarily my take.
(08:36):
My thing is at least have an idea of what
your north star is. It can change. That's another thing
we've talked about in previous episodes where you know, you
got to be kind of open to change, like you're
the idea of why you're doing things and how you're
doing things can change. That's fine, but you should at
least have some idea at some point of or how
you're doing it, because then if you don't know and
(08:59):
then change comes in, things, are you very confusing, you
know what I mean? Yeah, So what.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You're saying is like it's important to kind of reassess
as you go along, because otherwise, like when something major
does happen, you're not going to have a guidance start.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, well, assess so that you can understand when reassessing
is necessary. Because if you're never assessed in the first place,
then things you're just happening to you. And like I said,
that can happen in many different ways. It doesn't have
to be as formal as I'm going to write out
everything I'm going to do. It's good to write things down.
It's good to write down your goals. Sure, it's good
(09:32):
to have an idea where you would like to be.
You know, I've had friends in the past I say, oh,
I want to be a millionaire by thirty and I'm like, okay,
that's cool, but what like what's the goal? Like that's
not the actual goal, that's an end result. It's like
when you talk about sickness, a lot of times people
talk about symptoms and not the actual problem. The millionaire
(09:56):
is a symptom of whatever you did to get there.
Like what's it?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
People say these things and it's like you don't have
a true north star. Being rich is not a north star.
What are you going to do? Because here's the thing
that is what tells you what kind of person you
will be. Will you do anything to get to that?
I don't know if that's a good goal. Does that
make sense?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, we just finished watching squid games.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Okay, yeah, I didn't even think about that. Okay, yeah,
well season three, season two, two point five, season three anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But but and you're like, we're only talking about school.
But this is important because school is a tool that
can either help you reassess or not. Some people don't
require a foremost schooling environment to figure out what they're doing.
Some people don't don't need to be corraled into in
a certain direction. Some people do, and that's that's fine.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, yeah, I think I would ask you as someone
that kind of got uh, I guess formal art training
maybe like later on in life, like you, what do
you think are like some of the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, okay, I my parents tried to give me as
many opportunities too to have training, like our art program
in Jamaica was you know, it's okay, And during summer
my mother did try to and breaks my mother sent
me to Edmund mand In School of the Art the Arts.
(11:24):
The problem is that school is like a fine arts
type spot. Maybe it's different now, and maybe it's mean
of me to even talk trash about it, but that
school was not inspirational for me because they tried to
put me in this box, this traditional box, and there
was there was no flexibility in terms of I'm not
saying they should adhere to my needs or whatever, but
(11:46):
there was no nurturing. The point is supposed to nurture
talent for me in that situation, the conversation or even
just the statement that hey, we know you you do
this and you like doing this thing, but if you
if you work with us here, you will have other
tools to add to that thing. But it was more
like this is trash. What you're interested in is trash,
(12:09):
this is art. Screw you, and and that kind of mentality.
It is not helpful. I'm not sitting here saying you
need to change your curriculum to fit me, but at
least try try to get me to realize that, listen,
having more knowledge in this in the art game is
(12:30):
only gonna benefit you, right, But that wasn't communicating. It's
just the condescending fine art type thing that which I'm
sure you've experienced because you used the gallery stuff. But anyway,
my parents tried to put me in art things all
the time and whatever whatever. You know, Uh they didn't
you know, that wasn't their world, but they did their best.
And so when the opportunity to go to art school
(12:53):
up here came, because uh you know, yeah, you know,
before I was gonna do something more traditional like law,
you know whatever, I jumped at it like something just
clicked in my head and I knew this is something
I wanted to do. I really was enjoying a level
law at the time, and general paper and and my
(13:15):
you know, the West Indian and European history a level
that I was doing, and even geography, even though all
of geography has nothing to do with you know, arts classes.
And that's also interesting thing. I was law is law
and history considered an art or arts in the in
that kind of system of education. So it's fascinating that
(13:38):
I was still in the arts, even it was in
the formal like the philosophical leg of arts, right, which
is law. So I ended up going back to what
my roots were, which was drawing stuff when I went
to art school, and that's kind of where I was, like,
you know, I kind of made a decision. I was like,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my all into it,
like I all this stuff. Like you know, I wasn't
(14:00):
drawing from life a lot, you know, other than when
I was at school, I would be drawn from comics
and trying and making my own comics based on whatever. Right,
But when I was in art school, I like something
just exploded and you know inside me, like I was like, yes,
I'm good, and I did my best to be the best,
and I think it worked. Like it's it's a fascinating
(14:20):
situation where the formal training. While I always joke with
my art school mates that we didn't learn anything in
the school, right, what we did is we learned most
of our stuff from each other, right with the camaraderie
and whatnot. Blah blah blah. I mean there are teachers
(14:42):
that I did value there. There are a lot of
my life drawing teachers, my character design teachers, my animation teacher.
I mean, I mean I'll name them like temper excellent
John Hunt, who worked with me on a comic like
a few years ago. Unknowingly, we just real I realized
we were working together when I saw his name and
I was like, wait, what isn't that And then I
(15:03):
found out and uh, my animation teacher who's in Devon,
he was, you know, brilliant. These three were probably the
most influential, and I took a lot of what I
what I learned from them in the technical realm on
on into into my work life. Most of my business
(15:25):
stuff I learned from my associates, you know, I watched them,
the ones that started businesses themselves, or the ones that
you know had ideas or that had agency. I looked
at what they did and we talked and we learned
from each other and whatnot. So it was a double
edged sword in in in my case thankfully, where both
(15:47):
worlds offered something. And I think perspective also helps, you
know that saying where if you if you change how
you look at the world, the world, the way you
look at the world will change that, you know, And
I think that's the thing. Like, yes, our school wasn't
like the best in the world or whatever, but we
had tools. We had I was doing three D. We
(16:08):
had access to all this technology and we were experimenting,
we're talking, we're asking the teachers that were good you know,
questions and just to give you more information, just so
you have some context. My school doesn't exist anymore. It
was the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. That's a husk
on seventeenth Street in Fort Lauderdale. Now I don't know
(16:30):
if I could get a transcript from that place because
it doesn't exist. Like they got sued into oblivion because
they were ripping people off. But there were good people
there at the time when I was going. I was
probably there before things really got bad, and I'm grateful
for that time because like say Tepper, he gave us
one hundred skulls the first week of class. You know,
(16:53):
people were angry. I wasn't one of the only people
that did those skulls. And what people are like was
the point of this is stupid, and it's like, no,
the point is to do the skull. The point is
to do the task. If you can't do the task,
no matter how hard, then you're not ready for this.
Art is a tough game. Like if you ain't got
(17:13):
the temperance, don't just walk away, don't do it. You know, uh,
who's the one. I'm oh sorry, John Hunt. He taught
me how to to really just create and and just
because we did like storyboards in his class, who did
like comics in his class? We did design stuff that
was so fun. That was I was like doing that.
(17:34):
I was like, yo, I want to do this for
the rest of my life. This is amazing. I just
love creating stuff. I love to sequential art form. All
this stuff so cool, so fun. I love character design.
And then Devin, Devin taught me some really cool tricks
of animation. Devin taught how taught me how to like
(17:54):
one of the funny tricks, this is old animation, the
old old three D animation. I remember he was like
one of his things to make an animation stop look
natural in three D is he double up the frame
so the end of the end, the end of the animation,
he would copy that key frame and put it after it.
So then there's a little jutter. The judges stuck like
(18:18):
so whatever, if it's an arm moving, there'd be a
slight thing because you were saying, nobody in real life
when they stopped doing something, they just stopped. That's a
that's a robotic movement. So when you have that, when
you doubleop the frame, it causes the you know, the
rig to do like a little jump, yeah, a little
jump and I and little things like that. That's not
the only thing he taught us, like, but that was
(18:40):
probably like cool little tricks. And I remember he worked
on like early uh Call of Duty games, like I
think Ali Assault on PC he was, he did like
freelance animation for him. I don't know how any of
these guys are doing something. Maybe some of them have passed,
uh you know, you know, very very and if any
(19:01):
of them here and their des sentence here in this,
you know, great dudes. So yeah, I mean I kind
of monopolize that.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
No, I think it was really interesting that you had,
you know, some really pivotal and important teachers to show
you the ropes. Yeah, because yeah, I would definitely say
that the professors definitely make all the difference.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just I'm the students.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that that as well. I think that one of
the benefits I think that I think that you can
get by these days, you know, not having a formal education.
And then again, like and it's also different for everyone.
Everyone has like a different path to.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Follow, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
But I would say one of the benefits by and
large of being in an academic environment is the people
because just being surrounded by other creatives, Yes, it really
just does something like even if they're just doing something
like completely different from whatever it is you're doing, you
still like pull inspiration and like energy from that.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's really great. That's a very that's a very good point.
You know, it's like it's because of the Keiths and
the Joel's and the Rubens and the Nates and you
know a whole host of people you know at my
at my old school that you know that doesn't exist anymore.
(20:25):
Why I am doing what I'm doing. And you know,
yes there are people I didn't mention. There's just too
many names, but lots of talented people and smart people
get great at what they do, and uh, we all
kind of just share it our our skills and knowledge
(20:46):
and some are doing what we're still, you know, some
are in this field, some aren't, but everyone I think
contributed to everyone's path along the way.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Books check them out. You can listen to us on
all podcast platforms.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
You can find us at paper Lab Studios on Instagram
or paperlab studios dot com, or just drop us a
line at design at paper lab studios dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And support us on Patreon at paper Lab Studios, thank
you for listening to.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Paper Lab Podcast A Mango Musica, Turn that music up
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Flunk
Hi, I'm Nicky McCoy and I'm an illustrator, fashion designer,
and traditional artist.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Mervin McCoy illustrators, storyteller and digital artists.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
For more than a decade, we've traveled in the convention
scene from coast to coast.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We'd love to share what we've learned and are still
learning on our journey.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
You're listening to paper podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You hear that music?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
She stole it off the internet, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's spicy beats b E E.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
T S and he hates beats. Let's check you out
that SoundCloud.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We don't need no education from you're gonna talk about.
You can do the rest of the song. That's what
you wanted to. Yeah, that's uh, that's us in schools.
Uh yeah, schools and art, art and schools like not
(01:05):
necessarily art in schools, But you can go into that
if you want. Maybe it will based on, you know,
how the conversations goes. But yeah, I mean, do you
think it's necessary to go to school for art? What
was your journey? Did you need it? Was it helpful? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I mean I guess I have a very privileged artistic
background when it comes to schooling, since I went to
a magnet middle school, a magnet high school, and uh
An Art College.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Magnets. How do they work?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
How do they work? I guess I found out over
the course of seven years. But I think that I
would say, off the top of my head one of
the things that it definitely gave me was focus. So
you know, even in the time that I would there
and learning like different techniques, it was still under like
(02:06):
the sort of umbrella of like learning fine arts during
that time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Is this where you're a hatred of digital art came from?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So funny enough, back when photoshop, I guess was shiny
and new, uh I was. I was learning it in
in high school. Actually, we had a digital photography class
with I think it was like it had to have
been like Photoshop, like like Adobe Photoshop one or two.
And I just remember taking photos of like really mundane
(02:41):
things like like telephone polls and stuff because I was
like fascinated with the wires and putting like really just
like bad filters on them, like no, okay, not like
lens flares, but just like you know, just like.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Is there like a negative fun yeah, yea inverting it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, inverting it, just like stuff like that. And think,
you know, it was so edgy and cool and yeah,
and we would like print them out and display them
and it was a thing. But I mean, I guess
that was like a foray into digital photography.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But isn't that that kind of like that thing we're
talking about with tools where you were kind of pushed
trying to push your limits and experiment. You just wanted
to see what would happen, which is the point of
expanding your boundaries and any receded to your traditional cave
where you never left again. Right, you're like enough turning
like poems. It's true.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Negative Well, I mean, like ironically enough, even if you
are a traditional artist, you still have to document your
work in a digital way. So whether it's through photography
or even just like scanning it in you know, to
get like high quality images, you're still ironically also using
(03:57):
digital technology to do that.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's fair, so so so okay, So with you and
the schooling, then there's value to it, Like you don't
you don't believe in overschooling when it comes to art,
like ye, and mind you, that's that's not even me
trying to say, oh, there's no value in a master's
or anything. No, obviously there is, you know, but I'm
(04:19):
just saying in a general sense as an artist, because
you know, a lot of like parents will come to
us at the booth and whatnot, and they'll ask about that,
you know, are there classes or things that whatever, or
even other people will ask, hey, what should I do?
And my take is, and I do believe the value
of the schooling for the art, but I always say
sometimes a lot of artists focus on the wrong things.
(04:40):
Just at a show, like recently or a few months ago,
someone who was asking about art stuff and they showed
me and stuff. I'm like, this is great stuff, But
for one, you probably should be just taking a market
in or business class anyway, Like this is cool and
all you clearly you've already worked on do you in
(05:01):
your reps? You're not going to stop drawing or sketching
any books. So you got that out of the way.
I mean, you can learn new techniques and what not.
But at the end of the day, he wanted to
go into more commercial rum. So I think you really
should learn how to what it is you're selling. Yeah,
I mean are you selling you? Are you selling the work?
What are you like? What's the point? Why are you
doing this, and you know, maybe it was too abstract
(05:21):
for him, but eventually he kind of was like, oh man,
you should do a Ted talk and I'm like, no,
we don't take that far. I'm just I was just
because the thing is, you need to think about those concepts.
I know, they team seem very abstract and remote, but
especially when you get older, the value of them is
so much more important because when you don't ask yourself
those questions early on, it's when you get older that
(05:44):
you have those word crises. We're like, why am I
doing this? What was it for? You know, it happens.
You might laugh, but it does happen. Somebody listening to
this might be having that challenge right now. These are
normal things. You know. Some times you can prevent these things,
you know, thankfully, you know it's you know, I think
(06:05):
it's that's something you can learn. You can learn by
just experience. School can teach it that part.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Right, So yeah, yeah, I mean it was interesting because
I think like, even as I graduated from college, I
don't really you know, I would grudgingly admit that I
didn't really have a set game plan for my life.
And during school I really wish that my schooling, my
(06:34):
art schooling specifically had balanced you know, the business or
like the marketing aspects more because like things like professional
practice or like even my internship it was it was
pretty joky for the time. Oh gosh, I was with
like a like a non for profit. It was almost
(06:56):
like a it was supposed to be like a kid's
like television show or like that sort of thing, and
so we like performed and just had like different like
local kind of like acts. It was really bizarre. I
I didn't actually I was not one of the performers.
I was helping more with like the set designs and
(07:17):
like the backdrops and that sort of thing. But yeah,
it so I sit to say, I can't really say
it helped me with like my future career, but so
ironically to do that's true, So in a way, I guess.
But uh, I I feel like any of like the
practical like business aspects were ironically enough. After graduating from
(07:41):
college was actually just like working in retail and seeing
how those businesses ran and you know kind of like
picking up stuff from that and taking it over into
like my own personal practice.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Okay. What's what's interesting though, is you say that and
you know that was that's a perfect example of a pitfall.
Might be dramatic, but I'm just going to use that
word like a pitfall kind of pushing you in the
(08:14):
direction that maybe you were meant to to go in
because you know, even when I mentioned that's stuff about
you know, my journey or even talking to that guy
about you know, trying to figure out what you're doing. Like,
I don't necessarily think you need to have like this
whole thing planned out and know where you're going blah
blah blah blah piece by piece. That's not necessarily my take.
(08:36):
My thing is at least have an idea of what
your north star is. It can change. That's another thing
we've talked about in previous episodes where you know, you
got to be kind of open to change, like you're
the idea of why you're doing things and how you're
doing things can change. That's fine, but you should at
least have some idea at some point of or how
you're doing it, because then if you don't know and
(08:59):
then change comes in, things, are you very confusing, you
know what I mean? Yeah, So what.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You're saying is like it's important to kind of reassess
as you go along, because otherwise, like when something major
does happen, you're not going to have a guidance start.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, well, assess so that you can understand when reassessing
is necessary. Because if you're never assessed in the first place,
then things you're just happening to you. And like I said,
that can happen in many different ways. It doesn't have
to be as formal as I'm going to write out
everything I'm going to do. It's good to write things down.
It's good to write down your goals. Sure, it's good
(09:32):
to have an idea where you would like to be.
You know, I've had friends in the past I say, oh,
I want to be a millionaire by thirty and I'm like, okay,
that's cool, but what like what's the goal? Like that's
not the actual goal, that's an end result. It's like
when you talk about sickness, a lot of times people
talk about symptoms and not the actual problem. The millionaire
(09:56):
is a symptom of whatever you did to get there.
Like what's it?
Speaker 1 (10:00):
You know?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
People say these things and it's like you don't have
a true north star. Being rich is not a north star.
What are you going to do? Because here's the thing
that is what tells you what kind of person you
will be. Will you do anything to get to that?
I don't know if that's a good goal. Does that
make sense?
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, we just finished watching squid games.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Okay, yeah, I didn't even think about that. Okay, yeah,
well season three, season two, two point five, season three anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
But but and you're like, we're only talking about school.
But this is important because school is a tool that
can either help you reassess or not. Some people don't
require a foremost schooling environment to figure out what they're doing.
Some people don't don't need to be corraled into in
a certain direction. Some people do, and that's that's fine.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Well, yeah, I think I would ask you as someone
that kind of got uh, I guess formal art training
maybe like later on in life, like you, what do
you think are like some of the benefits of that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, okay, I my parents tried to give me as
many opportunities too to have training, like our art program
in Jamaica was you know, it's okay, And during summer
my mother did try to and breaks my mother sent
me to Edmund mand In School of the Art the Arts.
(11:24):
The problem is that school is like a fine arts
type spot. Maybe it's different now, and maybe it's mean
of me to even talk trash about it, but that
school was not inspirational for me because they tried to
put me in this box, this traditional box, and there
was there was no flexibility in terms of I'm not
saying they should adhere to my needs or whatever, but
(11:46):
there was no nurturing. The point is supposed to nurture
talent for me in that situation, the conversation or even
just the statement that hey, we know you you do
this and you like doing this thing, but if you
if you work with us here, you will have other
tools to add to that thing. But it was more
like this is trash. What you're interested in is trash,
(12:09):
this is art. Screw you, and and that kind of mentality.
It is not helpful. I'm not sitting here saying you
need to change your curriculum to fit me, but at
least try try to get me to realize that, listen,
having more knowledge in this in the art game is
(12:30):
only gonna benefit you, right, But that wasn't communicating. It's
just the condescending fine art type thing that which I'm
sure you've experienced because you used the gallery stuff. But anyway,
my parents tried to put me in art things all
the time and whatever whatever. You know, Uh they didn't
you know, that wasn't their world, but they did their best.
And so when the opportunity to go to art school
(12:53):
up here came, because uh you know, yeah, you know,
before I was gonna do something more traditional like law,
you know whatever, I jumped at it like something just
clicked in my head and I knew this is something
I wanted to do. I really was enjoying a level
law at the time, and general paper and and my
(13:15):
you know, the West Indian and European history a level
that I was doing, and even geography, even though all
of geography has nothing to do with you know, arts classes.
And that's also interesting thing. I was law is law
and history considered an art or arts in the in
that kind of system of education. So it's fascinating that
(13:38):
I was still in the arts, even it was in
the formal like the philosophical leg of arts, right, which
is law. So I ended up going back to what
my roots were, which was drawing stuff when I went
to art school, and that's kind of where I was, like,
you know, I kind of made a decision. I was like,
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my all into it,
like I all this stuff. Like you know, I wasn't
(14:00):
drawing from life a lot, you know, other than when
I was at school, I would be drawn from comics
and trying and making my own comics based on whatever. Right,
But when I was in art school, I like something
just exploded and you know inside me, like I was like, yes,
I'm good, and I did my best to be the best,
and I think it worked. Like it's it's a fascinating
(14:20):
situation where the formal training. While I always joke with
my art school mates that we didn't learn anything in
the school, right, what we did is we learned most
of our stuff from each other, right with the camaraderie
and whatnot. Blah blah blah. I mean there are teachers
(14:42):
that I did value there. There are a lot of
my life drawing teachers, my character design teachers, my animation teacher.
I mean, I mean I'll name them like temper excellent
John Hunt, who worked with me on a comic like
a few years ago. Unknowingly, we just real I realized
we were working together when I saw his name and
I was like, wait, what isn't that And then I
(15:03):
found out and uh, my animation teacher who's in Devon,
he was, you know, brilliant. These three were probably the
most influential, and I took a lot of what I
what I learned from them in the technical realm on
on into into my work life. Most of my business
(15:25):
stuff I learned from my associates, you know, I watched them,
the ones that started businesses themselves, or the ones that
you know had ideas or that had agency. I looked
at what they did and we talked and we learned
from each other and whatnot. So it was a double
edged sword in in in my case thankfully, where both
(15:47):
worlds offered something. And I think perspective also helps, you
know that saying where if you if you change how
you look at the world, the world, the way you
look at the world will change that, you know, And
I think that's the thing. Like, yes, our school wasn't
like the best in the world or whatever, but we
had tools. We had I was doing three D. We
(16:08):
had access to all this technology and we were experimenting,
we're talking, we're asking the teachers that were good you know,
questions and just to give you more information, just so
you have some context. My school doesn't exist anymore. It
was the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. That's a husk
on seventeenth Street in Fort Lauderdale. Now I don't know
(16:30):
if I could get a transcript from that place because
it doesn't exist. Like they got sued into oblivion because
they were ripping people off. But there were good people
there at the time when I was going. I was
probably there before things really got bad, and I'm grateful
for that time because like say Tepper, he gave us
one hundred skulls the first week of class. You know,
(16:53):
people were angry. I wasn't one of the only people
that did those skulls. And what people are like was
the point of this is stupid, and it's like, no,
the point is to do the skull. The point is
to do the task. If you can't do the task,
no matter how hard, then you're not ready for this.
Art is a tough game. Like if you ain't got
(17:13):
the temperance, don't just walk away, don't do it. You know, uh,
who's the one. I'm oh sorry, John Hunt. He taught
me how to to really just create and and just
because we did like storyboards in his class, who did
like comics in his class? We did design stuff that
was so fun. That was I was like doing that.
(17:34):
I was like, yo, I want to do this for
the rest of my life. This is amazing. I just
love creating stuff. I love to sequential art form. All
this stuff so cool, so fun. I love character design.
And then Devin, Devin taught me some really cool tricks
of animation. Devin taught how taught me how to like
(17:54):
one of the funny tricks, this is old animation, the
old old three D animation. I remember he was like
one of his things to make an animation stop look
natural in three D is he double up the frame
so the end of the end, the end of the animation,
he would copy that key frame and put it after it.
So then there's a little jutter. The judges stuck like
(18:18):
so whatever, if it's an arm moving, there'd be a
slight thing because you were saying, nobody in real life
when they stopped doing something, they just stopped. That's a
that's a robotic movement. So when you have that, when
you doubleop the frame, it causes the you know, the
rig to do like a little jump, yeah, a little
jump and I and little things like that. That's not
the only thing he taught us, like, but that was
(18:40):
probably like cool little tricks. And I remember he worked
on like early uh Call of Duty games, like I
think Ali Assault on PC he was, he did like
freelance animation for him. I don't know how any of
these guys are doing something. Maybe some of them have passed,
uh you know, you know, very very and if any
(19:01):
of them here and their des sentence here in this,
you know, great dudes. So yeah, I mean I kind
of monopolize that.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
No, I think it was really interesting that you had,
you know, some really pivotal and important teachers to show
you the ropes. Yeah, because yeah, I would definitely say
that the professors definitely make all the difference.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just I'm the students.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that that as well. I think that one of
the benefits I think that I think that you can
get by these days, you know, not having a formal education.
And then again, like and it's also different for everyone.
Everyone has like a different path to.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Follow, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
But I would say one of the benefits by and
large of being in an academic environment is the people
because just being surrounded by other creatives, Yes, it really
just does something like even if they're just doing something
like completely different from whatever it is you're doing, you
still like pull inspiration and like energy from that.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's really great. That's a very that's a very good point.
You know, it's like it's because of the Keiths and
the Joel's and the Rubens and the Nates and you
know a whole host of people you know at my
at my old school that you know that doesn't exist anymore.
(20:25):
Why I am doing what I'm doing. And you know,
yes there are people I didn't mention. There's just too
many names, but lots of talented people and smart people
get great at what they do, and uh, we all
kind of just share it our our skills and knowledge
(20:46):
and some are doing what we're still, you know, some
are in this field, some aren't, but everyone I think
contributed to everyone's path along the way.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Books check them out. You can listen to us on
all podcast platforms.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
You can find us at paper Lab Studios on Instagram
or paperlab studios dot com, or just drop us a
line at design at paper lab studios dot com.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And support us on Patreon at paper Lab Studios, thank
you for listening to.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Paper Lab Podcast A Mango Musica, Turn that music up
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Flunk
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