I see all the student films flooding my dash so I guess it’s that time of year again, and I know that can mean some emotionally racking things ahead. I know everyone’s path to success is different but I’ll just put this story out there for people in case it offers anyone any solace.
So at Sheridan when you got in (or at least when I did eleven years ago) you were given a number grade attached to your portfolio from 1-100. 60 automatically got you in and 56-59 put you on the waiting list. I was at the very bottom of the waiting list with a 56, and planned to do art fundies for a year to build a better portfolio and reapply. I ended up getting into the program the day before classes started, I was the last person who made it in before they closed the gate that year.
For whatever a numerical ranking of skill attached to artistic ability can be worth, on paper I was ranked as the absolute weakest and unskilled artist in my peer group.
And, to be honest, it fucked with my head a lot. I worked really hard and found my strengths and managed to hammer out my foothold as a contender. I’d like to think at least that the people in my year don’t just remember me as “the weakest and least likely to succeed”, anyway. But when I graduated into the writer’s strike and the economy collapse of 2009 and even basic retail jobs were impossible to find, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like every failure and missed job opportunity was proof that I really was The Worst and had wasted four years of my life, thousands of dollars, and an immeasurable amount of mental anguish trying to convince myself otherwise. I worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon diner with red vinyl seats and a checkerboard floor. I found reasons to love my job, to stay positive (even though I had that anxiety monster strangling me every moment of every day reminding me that I had never been good enough and art school had been a delusional waste of money), I worked hard on improving my portfolio, I kept throwing lines out for jobs, I forced myself to manage my crippling fears of talking to strangers so I could learn to network, I made a conscious effort to learn how to build portfolios that played to my strengths and resist the urge to put down my own work when I was trying to sell myself as a worthwhile employee.
I always had that albatross around my neck, “you were empirically and mathematically proven to be the worst”, but I made the conscious effort to figure out and emphasize my strengths to employers.
In October of 2009 I got a job doing inbetweens on Ugly Americans for Comedy Central. The producer told me that it came down to me and two other guys for the job, but I just had a great attitude. By the time the first season of the show ended, my “great attitude” and stonecold work ethic had gotten me promoted to character design, storyboards, character layout, and keyframe animation. Almost immediately after the first season wrapped up I was hired by a studio in Hollywood, and now I’m a board artist at Cartoon Network.
I won’t say “work hard and you can have everything you ever wanted” because I completely acknowledge that I’ve had a lot of lucky lightning strikes in my life, but I will say don’t let the expectations of failure that people will stack on you choke you out. Speaking as someone who was Literally The Worst at one point in their life, a lot of good things can come from focusing on the positives, resisting the urge to lick your wounds and wallow in failure, and put a concentrated effort into figuring out how what your strengths are and how they make you valuable.
Remember that when it comes to creative endavours “most talented” or “best for the job” is very subjective and doesn’t necessarily equate to a quantifiable number of years worked or 1-100 technical ability score. It can have a lot to do with attitude, work ethic, unique perspective, life experience, so many things that can’t be taught in school or ascribed a numerical value. There’s no single path leading to a single success goalpost. Even if you aren’t following the one you thought you would take you aren’t “a failure”, and your perspective and contribution to creative arts however you decide to make it is uniquely yours. You don’t need to win a Best At Art ribbon before you can be A Success™, and you can find a way to claw out your own little nest in the art world even if you don’t fit the profile of what you always expected a professional artist to be.
