After Number One and Number Two comes… Number Three! Yes, we can count.
As I explained in my earlier articles, motivation can be seen from two perspectives. Sometimes this is seen as a positive/negative reinforcement thing, sometimes it’s more of a yin-yang thing where both options have their pros and cons. There is always some sort of weird funky duality at play, where it doesn’t really matter which path you take, but just that you walk that path the right way. It’s all relative and personal and works different for everybody. So sometimes you have a choice, sometimes that choice is clear, sometimes it isn’t. In this case, you don’t really have a choice at all. I think that we can all agree that being a professional digital artist means you get a monetary reward for your efforts, sometimes fairly, most times not fairly at all. Money, being the thing we buy necessary commodities such as food and videogames with, is usually a strong motivational factor for most.
But you, by definition, don’t make any money, or at least certainly not enough to be the strongest motivational factor. I myself have recently joined a machinima-like project where I’ll be doing mostly camera and editing work. I am getting a small compensation for my work, but there is a reason why I emphasised ‘small’ back there. A little extra money is great, but I’m not doing it for the money, I’m doing it because I enjoy it, because it’s a learning experience, because I get to meet new creative people to work with, because it will give me entry into further projects, and because I love being part of a creative process. I would do this just the same if I wasn’t getting paid.
Because I’m free.
Free both in the sense that I (normally) don’t charge a price for my work, and free in the sense that I have no limitations and no real obligations.
Money can’t be a significant motivational factor for me. I don’t have to skills (yet?) to generate any kind of real justifiable income, and to be honest I don’t even know if I really ever want to give up that freedom. You see, while obligations and a rigid structure, and by that I mean thing such as the dreaded deadline, can have a very motivating effect, the problem is that, as an amateur, and enthusiast, someone who does this for the sake of doing it and those other nice things I mentioned up above there, you don’t actually have any real obligations. So what do you do?
Revel in your freedom. Think about how much making digital art must suck for a pro if the main reason they do it for the money. You know you’re not, so when you feel a little down, when you are not sure if you are good enough or if you can achieve your goals, remember why you do this in the first place.
Because you want to.
It is entirely your choice, it is entirely in your control. You are free.
Enjoy the feeling, it is a great and wonderful feeling. I haven’t lived for long, but very few things make me feel as good as being creative. Life is busy, life is messy, a lot of aspects of our lives are out of our hands. So take the freedom you do have, and use it as much as you can.
(Ironically, the best way to achieve something with that freedom is to give yourself some responsibility and obligations, but I will discuss all the stuff surrounding discipline and personal responsibility in later posts)
In the meantime, enjoy yourself and your freedom and go out and create some awesome masterpieces, or pieces of crap. It’s your choice!
To wrap things up, I can imagine that in the (distant) future I might actually make enough money from my creative work to actually call it ‘income.’ If I did, I would really miss being free.
