Art Discipline .18

Falling Forward: Risk Feeds Creativity

What’s your dream as an artist and what’s the fear that’s keeping you from chasing it?

The creative path is messy.

We try to predict the right next step, but we can’t. The only thing we can do is act now.

Risks

In a previous Art Discipline issue, I talked about taking risks. Like leaving my first job to go back to Lanzarote, or leaving Roll7 (the studio behind OlliOlli World).

The third one came in 2023, when I decided to leave my last full-time position.

Recently, I found an old note I wrote to myself about this:

“It’s been a bit over a month since I left my position at Yuga Labs as art director to focus on personal projects.

The last 6–7 years I’d been working non-stop. Just moving forward.

Now I’ve been reflecting on my goals as an artist. I get this feeling that I’ve done nothing, and what’s in the past feels like it was made by someone else.

For a moment, stopping the wheel felt like jumping into the void of failure.”

The Real Risk Is Not Moving

Financially, leaving was terrifying.

Creatively, the real risk was staying.

It was my first Art Director role, with a salary I never imagined earning but I wasn’t happy. I was barely making art, and what little I did didn’t feel mine.

So I weighed it:

• Short term: money, stability. Also ego, thinking being AD really mattered something. I was betraying my believing that titles are crap, just what you do matters.

• Long term: wasting my best years on projects I didn’t believe in.

I had savings, and art came first. I’d rather earn less and feel proud of my work than look back at a portfolio that felt like someone else’s.

So I jumped into the void.

A year later

Here’s what that “terrifying future” actually looked like:

• Read a shit ton of books.

• Finished the first chapter of Megalith.

• Launched Art Discipline.

• Worked on Colorpoop (update on this soon x_x).

• Joined UMA Games for some time and travelled with them to Tuscany.

• Illustrated a story for Tales Up (mobile game by Periple Studio).

• Created character designs for a Korean TV show (that flopped).

• Pitched Megalith at Weird Market (Animation fest in Valencia, Spain).

• Started learning Blender.

At the time, none of this felt like “success.” Just small daily steps: reading, drawing, learning, saying yes to curiosity.

Looking back now, that scary pause became the space I needed to grow to make work that felt like mine, to explore, and eventually to join Clash of Clans at Supercell.

So, why this matters?

Every creative reaches a point where comfort starts to dull their edge. We know what we want to do, but the step toward it usually demands a sacrifice and discipline to keep advancing, even when it’s uncomfortable.

If you stopped today and looked back at your last two years of art, would you feel proud?

If not, what’s one small step you could take this week to realign with the work that feels truly yours?

Will you feel proud two years from now?

Stay Creative, Stay Weird.

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