Forrest Dickison, a fine artist and author, joins Will Spencer to discuss his new children's book, "Crispin's Rainy Day," and the unique artistic journey that brought it to life. The conversation explores the essence of creativity, emphasizing that everyone possesses some artistic talent and can find fulfillment in expressing it, regardless of their medium.

Dickison shares insights into the importance of recognizing one's gifts and using them to glorify God, while also reflecting on the moral complexities often found within the creative world. As they delve into the process of creating "Crispin's Rainy Day," Dickison highlights the balance he achieved in portraying the dynamic relationship between the book's siblings, Crispin and Rose, without resorting to stereotypes.

The discussion touches on the challenges of maintaining artistic integrity in a world that often prioritizes commercial success over genuine expression. Listeners are encouraged to embrace their failures as essential learning experiences and to cultivate a thick skin in the face of critique, ultimately recognizing that the true value of art lies in its capacity to bless and inspire others.

Takeaways:

• Forrest emphasizes the importance of recognizing and cultivating one's artistic gifts for God's glory.
• The creative process involves trial and error, and artists should focus on delivering value to their audience rather than seeking personal praise.
• True artistic growth comes from accepting constructive criticism, which provides valuable insights for improvement and learning.
• Balancing character roles in storytelling, particularly in children's books, can highlight both feminine and masculine strengths effectively.
• Creating art is a discipline that requires consistent practice, much like sports or other skills, to achieve excellence.
• Artists should aim to make their work about blessing others rather than seeking validation for themselves.

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Will Spencer: 00:00:40

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer: 00:00:44

This is a weekly show featuring in.

Forrest Dickison: 00:00:46

Depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers.

Will Spencer: 00:00:50

Who help us understand our changing world.

Forrest Dickison: 00:00:52

New episodes release every Friday.

Will Spencer: 00:00:55

My guest this week is Forrest Dickison and he's a husband, father, fine artist and author of the outstanding new children's book Crispin's Rainy Day.

Will Spencer: 00:01:04

I think everyone has at least some artistic talent, whether in singing, dancing, cooking, sculpting or poetry.

Will Spencer: 00:01:12

If anyone tries hard enough, they'll find a creative outlet they enjoy that can glorify God and even bless their loved ones.

Will Spencer: 00:01:20

But artists?

Will Spencer: 00:01:21

They're a different breed from my time in the music industry.

Will Spencer: 00:01:24

I discovered people who actually recharged by being in the studio.

Will Spencer: 00:01:28

Now I always found producing music to be a grind, which is why I left when I realized I couldn't compete with those who lived to write music.

Will Spencer: 00:01:37

Learning that I didn't have that gift, though, helped me appreciate it in others while leading me to discover my own gifts in writing and sometimes photography.

Will Spencer: 00:01:46

Today, I admire and appreciate those who are blessed with artistic gifts woven into their being, and I do so with a sense of awe.

Will Spencer: 00:01:54

Not in a way that idolizes the man or woman, though.

Will Spencer: 00:01:57

A little time in any creative field reveals that artistic talent doesn't always equate to moral uprightness.

Will Spencer: 00:02:04

Often it's quite the opposite.

Will Spencer: 00:02:06

Instead, I see artistic gifts as a unique calling, different in character from that of pastors, doctors or scientists, but the same in substance.

Will Spencer: 00:02:16

In other words, a gift is a gift, and while it's meant for you, you didn't create it, God did and he gave it to you.

Will Spencer: 00:02:23

If you should be blessed to discover that gift, then it's what you do with it that matters.

Will Spencer: 00:02:28

It's like in the Parable of the Talents, whether you have one, two or three.

Will Spencer: 00:02:33

Will you use it to magnify God's kingdom or hide it in fear?

Will Spencer: 00:02:37

Will you be faithful over little or faithful over much?

Will Spencer: 00:02:41

And will you use your gifts to one day here, enter into the joy of your Lord?

Will Spencer: 00:02:46

That brings me back to Forrest Dickerson and his new book, Crispin's Rainy Day, just released on Canon Press.

Will Spencer: 00:02:53

You may have seen it hanging around in the background of Doug Wilson's recent videos.

Will Spencer: 00:02:57

Now, I haven't been blessed with kids just yet, so I don't read many children's books, but this has to be one of the finest I've come across, both in picture and in story.

Will Spencer: 00:03:07

It tells the tale of a young boy and his sister on the aforementioned rainy day, who then go on a swashbuckling adventure with pirate frogs wherein the siblings unique gifts shine.

Will Spencer: 00:03:19

Now, I don't want to spoil it, but the fact that there's even a spoilable plot point in a children's book says enough.

Will Spencer: 00:03:26

And not only did Forrest write the story, which we'll discuss, but he also illustrated it beautifully.

Will Spencer: 00:03:31

If you're a parent, your kids will love it.

Will Spencer: 00:03:34

And if you're looking for wholesome Christian entertainment, this makes a great Christmas gift for for any young family.

Will Spencer: 00:03:40

This book is the result of Forrest's life devoted to the visual artspainting, drawing and more.

Will Spencer: 00:03:46

It's the latest achievement of someone who to me exemplifies recognizing, cultivating and sharing one's gifts for God's glory.

Will Spencer: 00:03:55

And I hope Forrest's story inspires you to recognize your own gifts or those of your children, sparking the next generation of Christian artists to make Christianity beautiful again.

Will Spencer: 00:04:06

If you enjoy this podcast, thank you.

Will Spencer: 00:04:09

Please leave a five star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and share your favorite episodes with friends.

Will Spencer: 00:04:15

To support the show financially, become a paid subscriber@willspencerpod.substack.com for ad free interviews and perks or click Buy Me a Coffee in the show notes.

Will Spencer: 00:04:26

Most importantly though, please support our advertisers.

Will Spencer: 00:04:30

Your purchases help build multigenerational wealth in the Christian community as we work to rebuild a Christian foundation for the West.

Will Spencer: 00:04:38

And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the author and illustrator of Crispin's Rainy Day, out now on Canon Press, Forrest Dickerson.

Forrest Dickison: 00:04:49

Forrest, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Guest: 00:04:51

You bet.

Guest: 00:04:52

Well, thanks for having me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:04:54

I've got your book here, Crispin's Rainy Day.

Forrest Dickison: 00:04:59

I don't read a lot of kids books, but I actually, I genuinely love this one.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:03

This was heartwarming, it was exciting, it was beautifully drawn and the messaging in it was just, it was really touching.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:11

So I just wanted to congratulate you on this.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:13

Not that I'm a connoisseur of the art, but this was an excellent book.

Guest: 00:05:18

Thank you sir.

Guest: 00:05:18

I appreciate it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:20

So I wanted to get started.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:22

I've also, as I mentioned to you, I'd also seen your paintings in the gallery and Moscow.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:27

So I've been looking forward to having this conversation because the visual arts are not one of my skill sets.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:32

I do enjoy travel, photography, but painting and drawing and things like this are beyond me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:36

So I've been looking forward to talking with you about your art and the process of getting to where you've been and Also the books that you've created.

Guest: 00:05:43

Great, let's do it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:45

All right, so maybe we can just start at the beginning.

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:51

When did you begin drawing, painting?

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:53

What was the beginning of that?

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:54

What did that look like for you?

Forrest Dickison: 00:05:56

And I guess also how was it nurtured to the point where like, hey, I can actually maybe do something with this?

Guest: 00:06:02

Yeah, so I.

Guest: 00:06:05

I don't remember a time when I wasn't drawing.

Guest: 00:06:08

I think every kid begins their life drawing.

Guest: 00:06:13

I was just one of those that didn't stop.

Guest: 00:06:16

So my friends, classmates, they kind of petered out, you know, in early grade school.

Guest: 00:06:23

And I was the kid that wanted to stay in from recess and draw skateboarders, snowboarders, monsters, anything that, you know, piqued my interest at the time.

Guest: 00:06:35

So I'd always been doing it.

Guest: 00:06:39

I loved Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, Asterix.

Guest: 00:06:43

I loved, you know, old Disney animation, hand drawn animation.

Guest: 00:06:49

My mom did a good job of hanging some nice prints on our walls growing up.

Guest: 00:06:54

So we had old masters, John Singer Sargent, Soroya, Winslow Homer, you know, we had some pretty good prints on the walls, so she had great taste.

Guest: 00:07:06

So I was always surrounded by stories and pictures.

Guest: 00:07:10

And then later in high school was when I realized that I was probably not going to be able to do anything else with my life.

Forrest Dickison: 00:07:23

Praise God, I love it.

Guest: 00:07:25

So there was only one option.

Guest: 00:07:26

Nothing else really interested me.

Guest: 00:07:29

I thought maybe a marine biologist could be interesting, but I just thought manatees were cool.

Guest: 00:07:34

And that was a phase.

Guest: 00:07:35

I had a manatee phase.

Guest: 00:07:37

And they said, we all have them, maybe I'll do that someday.

Guest: 00:07:42

Yeah.

Guest: 00:07:42

So I went to the.

Guest: 00:07:44

I graduated from Logos and then went to the University of Idaho, which is the local university here in Moscow, and jumped in with their, at their fine art program.

Guest: 00:07:54

The program was kind of in between professors at the time, so there weren't dedicated drawing or painting professors there while I was attending.

Guest: 00:08:05

So I got a lot of instruction from the Internet books and was given a lot of free time to just pursue it on my own.

Guest: 00:08:14

So.

Guest: 00:08:16

And then, yeah, I think it was my junior year, I started working with Canon Press on.

Forrest Dickison: 00:08:23

In college.

Guest: 00:08:24

In college, yes.

Guest: 00:08:25

Yes.

Guest: 00:08:27

I think the first project we did together was the Riot and the dance biology textbook that Dr.

Guest: 00:08:33

Gordon Wilson wrote.

Guest: 00:08:36

It has since ballooned into a whole Nature Doc series that you can find on Canon.

Guest: 00:08:43

Plus Vid Angel, I think has it as well, but I'm not sure.

Guest: 00:08:48

So it started as a biology textbook.

Guest: 00:08:50

So I was illustrating Beatles things whose names I cannot remember.

Forrest Dickison: 00:08:58

Right.

Guest: 00:08:58

And then from there I Started working with Nate Wilson pretty early on as well.

Guest: 00:09:05

We started doing.

Guest: 00:09:06

I started helping him out with some pitch decks for some of his novels for film pitches.

Guest: 00:09:17

And then we started working on hello Ninja, the board book.

Guest: 00:09:20

And that was: 2013

Guest: 00:09:24

That came out in: 2014

Guest: 00:09:30

Yeah.

Guest: 00:09:30

And then that was kind of how my career started, was biology textbooks.

Guest: 00:09:36

Hello Ninja.

Guest: 00:09:37

And then Cannon Press is.

Guest: 00:09:39

They produce curriculum books, all kinds of different books, trade books, a few novels, things like that.

Guest: 00:09:46

So I was immediately stretched into all kinds of different artistic categories right off the bat, which I'm very grateful for.

Guest: 00:09:57

So.

Guest: 00:09:57

Yeah, that's an introduction.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:00

I'm glad you said that, because I'm looking at the Crispin's rainy day art style.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:06

It's got a little bit of the.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:09

As at Howl's Moving Castle Miyazaki kind of feeling to it, at least in the eyes.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:14

But as I looked at this book and looked at the drawings, looked at the art, and then I compared it with what I saw at the gallery.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:22

There was one particular painting of yours.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:24

It had sort of like a.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:25

It sort of had a magenta sky.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:27

You probably know the one that I'm thinking of looking out over an idyllic landscape.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:31

And something about that sunset really caught me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:33

But there couldn't be a bigger difference, at least to me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:38

There couldn't be a bigger difference between what you painted in that painting and the art style of this textbook.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:43

And I think it makes sense that you would have done so much different stuff, and that's how you would be able to cross the line.

Forrest Dickison: 00:10:51

So many different lines in visual arts to different styles.

Guest: 00:10:54

Yeah.

Guest: 00:10:55

That's interesting to hear you say that, because I don't think about it too much.

Guest: 00:11:01

I just think in terms of genre.

Guest: 00:11:03

I'm trying to make a nice painting that will be.

Guest: 00:11:06

It's a composition that can stand on its own.

Guest: 00:11:09

There's no characters in it, so it's just a landscape painting.

Guest: 00:11:13

But I'm using a lot of the same muscles to illustrate a page of a picture book.

Guest: 00:11:20

There's so.

Guest: 00:11:21

And that started out as, I guess, a curiosity for any kind of image making I was interested in.

Guest: 00:11:34

So whether it was cartoons, like I said, animation, printmaking, board game art, video game art, biology textbooks, anything that was interesting to me, I chased it, which has been really helpful.

Guest: 00:11:56

And one reason I did that, because I just needed money.

Guest: 00:11:59

So anybody who was willing to pay, I said, yeah, let's do it.

Guest: 00:12:03

Sure.

Guest: 00:12:04

But what that gave me was kind of an ability, an ability to jump between mediums or genres.

Guest: 00:12:10

Without too much trouble.

Guest: 00:12:13

So, yeah.

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:16

So when you.

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:18

When you started out as a kid, I guess you were probably drawing in, like, school notebooks with a pen or a pencil or something like that, or did you just jump right into watercolors or acrylics?

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:28

Like, how did.

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:28

How did that take take shape?

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:30

And also, as I look at Crispin's Rainy Day, what was this done in?

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:35

Was this digital?

Forrest Dickison: 00:12:35

Was this Illustrator, or was it hand drawn or some combination?

Guest: 00:12:40

It was a combination.

Guest: 00:12:42

All the colors are.

Guest: 00:12:44

The colors are digital, but I made an effort to make them look as traditional as possible.

Guest: 00:12:53

The line work is all traditional.

Guest: 00:12:55

So it's dip pen and dip pen and ink on Bristol board.

Guest: 00:13:01

So I penciled and inked traditionally and then colored it digitally.

Guest: 00:13:06

I was going to color it traditionally, but we were running out of time and I had to get it done.

Guest: 00:13:11

So.

Guest: 00:13:14

And then what was the other part of that question?

Forrest Dickison: 00:13:17

So was there.

Forrest Dickison: 00:13:17

Was there a medium that was interesting to you off the bat, or was it just, you know, right into whatever you could get into your hand?

Guest: 00:13:25

Yeah, no, right off the bat, there was no medium that caught my interest.

Guest: 00:13:30

It was just drawing.

Guest: 00:13:31

So it was pencil and paper, and then color just was a way to enhance what I was already drawing.

Guest: 00:13:39

So colored pencils when I was younger.

Guest: 00:13:42

And then Logos School does a great job of giving art instruction to its students that I found out is rare and not something that's done in most schools across the country.

Guest: 00:13:58

So when I have friends, I told them I spent.

Guest: 00:14:04

I had instructors during elementary school that taught me, you know, they would draw a sunflower, and then I would have to copy the sunflower.

Guest: 00:14:14

All my art friends were blown away because they never had any kind of instruction like that from their public schools.

Guest: 00:14:22

So I'm grateful to Logos for giving me art lessons that I definitely did not appreciate at the time.

Guest: 00:14:28

I thought they were boring, but it was a good foundation for what I would eventually do.

Guest: 00:14:34

So it was all just pencil, pen, and ink.

Guest: 00:14:36

And then I loved animation, but that was hand drawn.

Guest: 00:14:42

Animation was an art form that was kind of on the way out when I was just getting old enough to enter the workforce.

Guest: 00:14:52

So I kind of set that aside and went and pursued oil painting.

Guest: 00:14:57

That was what I chased in college.

Guest: 00:15:03

I.

Guest: 00:15:05

It was a good way to combine my interests, my interest for being outside, taking hikes, going on trips with image making.

Guest: 00:15:16

So I was able to go outside and paint and respond to the landscape and the light directly, which was something that I found compelling.

Guest: 00:15:27

So it was pencil, paper, and then oil paint, and those have been my two go to mediums for a while now.

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:38

Can you?

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:39

So again, I'm not a visual artist.

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:41

Like, I like landscape photography and travel photography.

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:45

Can you talk a little bit about the process of painting a landscape in the landscape?

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:51

This is one of like, maybe at some point in my life I will pursue that, maybe I will chase that, because that's something that I think speaks to me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:15:59

So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you got into that, what the process has been like, learning that, what your process is for doing a painting like that as well.

Forrest Dickison: 00:16:06

That would bless me quite a bit.

Guest: 00:16:08

Yeah, it's thrilling.

Guest: 00:16:11

I remember the first time I went out, I had bought these water soluble oil paints, which, if you think about it, makes no sense at all because water and oil don't mix.

Guest: 00:16:19

But somehow they were able to take these paints, introduce a molecule or remove a molecule that ruined it and became water soluble.

Guest: 00:16:30

And I went out with some friends, it was freezing cold.

Guest: 00:16:34

I grabbed water from a creek to mix my paints and I made an atrocious little painting of some birch trees.

Guest: 00:16:42

But it was thrilling because it felt like hunting.

Guest: 00:16:47

I was out there in the wild, ready to kill something.

Guest: 00:16:52

It felt primal.

Guest: 00:16:55

It was challenging.

Guest: 00:16:56

You have 360 degrees of view around your easel.

Guest: 00:17:02

You have temperature, you have sound, you have wind, all these different factors that are just bombarding your senses.

Guest: 00:17:09

And you have to pick one little thing out of that cacophony of sensation and scrape it onto a little canvas with some colored dirt and then, you know, make it convincing so that you can take that experience that you had in the wild, put it onto a little piece of vegetable guts stretched over some canvas, and then give it to somebody else.

Guest: 00:17:36

And if it's done well there, they can experience what you did almost as effectively, which I think is fascinating.

Guest: 00:17:48

So I enjoy the process of hunting.

Guest: 00:17:52

It's challenging.

Guest: 00:17:53

And it's clear whether you succeed or fail, there's not a lot of wishy, washy gray area.

Guest: 00:18:01

You either make a nice painting or you don't.

Guest: 00:18:04

And then I enjoy being able to kind of bottle that sensation or experience and frame it nicely, give it to somebody else so that they can then enjoy it as well.

Forrest Dickison: 00:18:19

When you take the canvas out there in into the wild, do you finish it all at once?

Forrest Dickison: 00:18:25

Is that, is that the goal?

Forrest Dickison: 00:18:26

Like, I've got X amount of time to finish it before the sun sets or a storm rolls in.

Forrest Dickison: 00:18:30

Or can you actually.

Forrest Dickison: 00:18:31

Can you, can you bring it back and try again or add to it?

Guest: 00:18:36

Yeah, both.

Guest: 00:18:37

It's Nice to finish an omnispotter, as they're called, but that rarely happens.

Guest: 00:18:43

Usually you only have an hour or two before the light changes.

Guest: 00:18:49

Your subject matter is completely different, so you have to be quick.

Guest: 00:18:54

And then once.

Guest: 00:18:55

Once you've got that impression down, you can take it back to the studio.

Guest: 00:18:58

And I'll.

Guest: 00:18:59

I'll generally just most of my plein air.

Guest: 00:19:02

This is what it's called when you paint plein air.

Guest: 00:19:04

It's the open air.

Guest: 00:19:07

When you're painting plein air, I generally just make studies and then bring it back to the studio for larger pieces or I'll fix it up in the studio.

Guest: 00:19:17

It's challenging to get something finished out there in the field.

Forrest Dickison: 00:19:21

Okay, that makes sense because I was imagining, well, you only have X amount of time, just with the light being the way it is and the care and the thought and the attention to detail that goes into a beautiful piece.

Forrest Dickison: 00:19:32

Maybe it'll come together in the course of a couple hours.

Forrest Dickison: 00:19:35

But it didn't seem likely to me that lightning would strike that often.

Guest: 00:19:38

Yeah, yeah.

Guest: 00:19:39

No, it doesn't.

Guest: 00:19:40

And there is something charming about a sketch.

Guest: 00:19:44

So I do like an unfinished sketch.

Guest: 00:19:46

There's a lot of energy if it's done well.

Guest: 00:19:50

If it's not entirely finished, then there's more for the viewer's imagination to do when it's looking at that particular painting.

Guest: 00:19:57

So they can finish it on their end and then it becomes a little more sticky in their own mind, I think.

Guest: 00:20:03

So there's a charm to an unfinished sketch, but generally it's a good idea to finish things.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:10

Oh, okay.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:11

So you mean so you will do like a pencil sketch of the landscape, and then someone could look at that and their mind could fill in the details, the colors, versus a finished painting, which leaves less room for the imagination.

Guest: 00:20:25

Yes.

Guest: 00:20:26

A pencil sketch or a color sketch.

Guest: 00:20:28

So a really quick little color scribble.

Guest: 00:20:32

Either way.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:33

A color scribble.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:35

Well, so, okay, I'm glad we're talking about this because I'm thinking about the art exhibit that was in Moscow during Grace Agenda.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:42

And one of the things I noticed, again, this is coming from someone who doesn't have a fine arts background.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:47

I don't have enough language.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:49

I know what I see, I know what I like, and I can look critically at things as opposed to like, that's cool.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:53

And just walk away.

Forrest Dickison: 00:20:54

So I noticed that there was a difference between some of the paintings you had done, which I guess I would call them more impressionistic, and some of the more hyper realistic, hyper detailed kind of Approaches which had a different kind of appeal.

Forrest Dickison: 00:21:07

I wonder if you can talk through the differences between those, because I imagine it's like a six of one, half dozen, another of the other.

Forrest Dickison: 00:21:14

An artist's approach, someone's personal taste.

Forrest Dickison: 00:21:17

But maybe you can talk about the selection of styles in that regard.

Guest: 00:21:21

Yes.

Guest: 00:21:21

So, yeah, personal taste has a lot to do with it, but.

Guest: 00:21:27

And I've been through a lot of different styles on my fine art journey, but I've recently landed in, I guess, what you call more of an Impressionistic camp.

Guest: 00:21:39

Because when I'm painting, what interests me is the soul of a place or the overall impression of a landscape.

Guest: 00:21:51

My goal is to frame a window that is sort of a.

Guest: 00:21:59

Well, an entrance into another world.

Guest: 00:22:01

So I'm not looking.

Guest: 00:22:02

I'm not that interested in detail.

Guest: 00:22:04

I'm not interested in subject matter as much as the light.

Guest: 00:22:12

So the subject matter obviously matters.

Guest: 00:22:15

But I'm looking for that broad impression, color harmony, something that feels more like the place than looks just like a representational photograph of the place.

Guest: 00:22:28

The strength of an Impressionist painting, if it's done well, is what we talked about earlier, where you have something that is not entirely finished.

Guest: 00:22:38

And so when somebody looks at it and it's, you know, there's a brushstroke every other inch or something, but then you step back and it all kind of coheres into this unified piece of art that is the viewer's mind finishing the painting kind of with the artist.

Guest: 00:23:01

And so instead of.

Guest: 00:23:03

Instead of me just giving the viewer everything, you know, here's everything, down to the little hairs that doesn't.

Guest: 00:23:11

It's not as much of a poetic take on the landscape.

Guest: 00:23:14

It's more just a one to one representation, which can be impressive, but it doesn't scratch the itch that I'm trying to scratch, which is a broad impression of a place that is delivered straight to your soul.

Guest: 00:23:34

You know, I'm trying to bypass all the information.

Guest: 00:23:38

Tree, grass, clouds.

Guest: 00:23:40

And just give you the impression of what it felt like to be there, which is, I think, that style, simpler design, broader brushstrokes, color harmonies that are not exactly the same as what you'd see in nature.

Guest: 00:23:57

It actually does a better job of feeling like a place than a photograph.

Guest: 00:24:02

Wood.

Guest: 00:24:05

Yeah.

Guest: 00:24:06

So I'm trying to get the most out of a painting when I do it.

Guest: 00:24:10

And that impressionistic style, I think is.

Guest: 00:24:16

It lends itself well to that more poetic take on the landscape.

Forrest Dickison: 00:24:22

When you say you're trying to get the most out of it, what exactly do you mean by that?

Forrest Dickison: 00:24:27

Like, the most evocative feeling, the most.

Forrest Dickison: 00:24:30

The viewer feels the most engrossed in it, or you have effectively communicated what it felt like to be there?

Forrest Dickison: 00:24:37

Maybe all of the above, yes.

Guest: 00:24:39

But making the most of the medium.

Guest: 00:24:41

So if I'm going to make a painting, I want it to feel like a painting.

Guest: 00:24:44

What does painting do?

Guest: 00:24:46

Well, that nothing else can do?

Guest: 00:24:48

And it would be, you know, cobbling together sloppy, abstract shapes that, if you took them apart, wouldn't make any sense.

Guest: 00:24:56

But you put them all together, you soften an edge here, you harden an edge here, you get the color harmonies just right.

Guest: 00:25:03

It all of a sudden pops into this representation of a memory.

Guest: 00:26:25

So that's.

Guest: 00:26:26

That's what painting does, that nothing else really can do.

Guest: 00:26:29

So if with Crispin's Rainy Day, I needed something a little more specific, something that lended itself to gesture and expression and characterization.

Guest: 00:26:37

So that's.

Guest: 00:26:39

I'm gonna grab the pen so that I could get really detailed expressions out of the characters.

Guest: 00:26:44

I couldn't get.

Guest: 00:26:46

I mean, you could.

Guest: 00:26:47

I could have painted the whole thing, but it would have taken forever, and the expressions wouldn't be as iconic.

Guest: 00:26:56

So by making them.

Guest: 00:26:59

By turning these characters into lines, you're sort of boiling them down to their simplest form so that they can be delivered quickly and effectively.

Guest: 00:27:07

Almost like, I don't know, emojis.

Guest: 00:27:12

Yeah.

Guest: 00:27:13

So when I'm painting, I don't want to be making comics.

Guest: 00:27:16

I don't want to be making a photograph.

Guest: 00:27:18

I want to be making a painting feel as much like a painting as possible so that it can be just what it is.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:28

So as you say that, I've got the book.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:30

I've got Crispin's Rainy Day here.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:31

I want to hold.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:32

Hold something up to the camera for those who are watching.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:36

So I guess you use the word iconic.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:39

And so this is the.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:40

I don't know, spoiler, I guess, but where he finds the lightning sword.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:44

And I guess I've never.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:45

This language is great because it's helping me interpret linguistically things I've only seen visually.

Forrest Dickison: 00:27:51

So when you say iconic, obviously, like this image of Crispin with a sword, I look at this, and I immediately know what's happening.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:00

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:00

There's not really a whole lot of room for ambiguity.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:02

It's there, it's clear, the lines are sharp, the action is communicated.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:06

Versus, if you were to try and do this in a painting, there would be a lot more interpretive work on the viewer's end.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:12

Like, what am I actually looking at?

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:14

What is the meaning of being Crispin.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:17

It moves less, I suppose.

Guest: 00:28:19

Right.

Guest: 00:28:20

And it depends.

Guest: 00:28:21

If I had painted it photorealistically or if I had painted it with a high degree of detail, it could have done something similar.

Guest: 00:28:28

But the goal here in that image, in every image in this book, is the goal is to deliver the story effectively.

Guest: 00:28:36

And so tying it all down by means of black and white line work is, I thought, was an effective way to do that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:46

So maybe we can talk a little bit about how that came together.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:50

This makes a little bit more sense how something like this would happen.

Forrest Dickison: 00:28:53

Maybe beginning with a story outline, maybe in the form of text, and then breaking it into a storyboard kind of form and settling on that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:01

But maybe you can walk people through.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:02

Like, what does it take to produce a children's book?

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:05

Because I can look at this and I can say, this is deceptively simple.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:09

You know, it's.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:10

It's a.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:10

You know, it's a.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:11

It's a 5, 10, 15 minute experience.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:13

You know, you're meant to be read probably multiple times.

Will Spencer: 00:29:16

Do it again, Daddy.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:17

Like that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:18

But like.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:19

But it's not going to take three hours to go through the book.

Forrest Dickison: 00:29:21

And that's only possible because of probably many hours on the front end to make that process, that reading process so simple.

Guest: 00:29:31

Yeah.

Guest: 00:29:32

I wanted to make the highest quality peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I could.

Guest: 00:29:36

I know it's going to take seconds to consume or minutes, but I know from personal experience, the books that I loved growing up, those little.

Guest: 00:29:47

Those few minutes where your parents are reading to you or you're reading by yourself can have outsized impact down the line.

Guest: 00:29:57

So, yeah, with this book in particular, I started with an image of a boy jumping through a puddle.

Guest: 00:30:02

That was what I wanted.

Guest: 00:30:05

I didn't have any idea what was in the puddle.

Guest: 00:30:07

There wasn't Rose, the sibling, the little sister was not around at that point.

Guest: 00:30:12

I just liked the idea of a backyard adventure.

Guest: 00:30:15

A puddle is something that everybody can relate to.

Guest: 00:30:17

We've all seen one, we've probably all jumped in one.

Guest: 00:30:20

There it is.

Guest: 00:30:23

So I thought, that's a great little entrance to a world that anyone can access in their backyard.

Guest: 00:30:29

So I started there, and then also.

Guest: 00:30:31

And then the next thing that came was the color palette.

Guest: 00:30:33

I had this very specific idea in mind for this pop of yellow, the yellow rain jacket against grays and greens and blues of a kind of a rainy day.

Guest: 00:30:46

So I had the color palette.

Guest: 00:30:47

I had the boy jumping through a puddle.

Guest: 00:30:48

And then from there I was bouncing between images and text.

Guest: 00:30:53

So I would Sketch some ideas and then write some words that would maybe that could go with those images.

Guest: 00:31:00

And it was really just a lot of trial and error.

Guest: 00:31:02

I would take one direction until I was bored or confused, and then I would back up to where I was still interested and then take that and run with it.

Guest: 00:31:12

And that was kind of the process.

Guest: 00:31:16

Anytime, Anytime I got bored, I scrapped it, went back to where I still liked it and then kept running from there.

Guest: 00:31:23

So the story really took shape once, I think once I decided that he was going to jump through the puddle and fall into an ocean and meet up with a crew of his own, you know, his own crew of pirate frogs.

Guest: 00:31:39

That made me happy.

Guest: 00:31:40

So I ran with that.

Guest: 00:31:42

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

Guest: 00:31:45

So, yeah, I remember the feeling very vividly of him.

Guest: 00:31:51

The wish fulfillment for a kid of having your own crew of pirate frogs just waiting to do your bidding.

Guest: 00:31:57

Seemed like it was a worthwhile endeavor.

Guest: 00:32:01

And then because there needed to be a story and not just a boy and his pirate frogs doing whatever they wanted, I introduced the Rose, the.

Guest: 00:32:12

His sister.

Guest: 00:32:14

And so then the story became more about.

Guest: 00:32:15

It became about their relationship.

Guest: 00:32:17

How does a brother.

Guest: 00:32:18

How do a brother and a sister work together in this world?

Guest: 00:32:24

That's fantastical and a whole lot of fun and very rainy.

Forrest Dickison: 00:32:36

So the story was your original creation?

Guest: 00:32:39

Yes.

Forrest Dickison: 00:32:41

That's beautiful.

Forrest Dickison: 00:32:42

That I didn't expect.

Forrest Dickison: 00:32:44

I read through this and I thought it was so moving because how do you, in our modern context, how do you portray a woman's participation or a little girl's participation in a hero story in a way that doesn't make her into the Rey Skywalker boss babe, but that also doesn't relegate her to a second class character.

Forrest Dickison: 00:33:08

And you struck that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:33:09

That I will not spoil, but you struck that balance beautifully, I thought.

Guest: 00:33:15

Thank you.

Guest: 00:33:16

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that you are picking up on that because that was what I set out to do once the sister came along is when I got really excited because I knew that it could be done.

Guest: 00:33:28

It's been done before.

Guest: 00:33:30

How do you have a female character who's strong in a uniquely feminine way?

Guest: 00:33:39

How do you have a boy character who's strong in a uniquely masculine way, such that they do work together and it elevates both of them in their particular station.

Guest: 00:33:50

It's just there's, you know, it's too easy to take them out.

Guest: 00:33:55

Mostly what happens is you have a girl character that's turned into a second rate boy character just because.

Guest: 00:34:02

And you know, it's then it's miniature Wonder Woman, or like you said, Rey Skywalker, whatever.

Guest: 00:34:09

Or you just have to make the girl character actually heroic, but then put down the boy so that he's a loser and guilty for existing.

Guest: 00:34:22

And I wanted to figure out a way to have both of those things in harmony in one story.

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:30

Well, again, I don't want to spoil it for the listeners because I want everyone to go and buy this book for their kids.

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:35

But what was the.

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:36

And maybe even for themselves or for.

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:38

I mean, Christmas is coming up, so you can buy it for family members with young children too.

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:42

But this book is what, for like, 5 to 10 year olds?

Forrest Dickison: 00:34:44

That's what the rough age range.

Guest: 00:34:47

Yeah, I wrote it for my girls, and they're ages 6 to 2.

Guest: 00:34:52

I have a 6 year old, a 4 year old, and a 2 year old and a 2 year old.

Guest: 00:34:57

But yeah, this is probably bad to admit, but age never factored into what I was thinking along the way.

Guest: 00:35:05

I just was 6 year old in general, but something that the parents would.

Guest: 00:35:10

Parents needed to like it as well because they're the ones reading it to the kids.

Guest: 00:35:14

So.

Forrest Dickison: 00:35:16

So as you were.

Forrest Dickison: 00:35:17

So as you were writing the story, like, what resources did you turn to to try and find how to strike that balance between the siblings where the little girl could have a very valuable role in the story without.

Forrest Dickison: 00:35:29

Without stepping on the boy's role in the story and vice versa?

Guest: 00:35:35

Well, honestly, it was a lot of Miyazaki.

Guest: 00:35:39

He actually, he's one of the few creators that really gets feminine strength.

Guest: 00:35:44

I think it was important that Rose in this story not have a character arc.

Guest: 00:35:53

So all the angst and frustration is on Crispin's side.

Guest: 00:35:57

He's the one that is desperate to find this lightning blade and loses it at his little sister because he's frustrated.

Guest: 00:36:06

Rose, on the other hand, she says what she wants on the first page, and by the end of the book, she gets exactly what she wants.

Guest: 00:36:15

She never loses her cool, she never gets in the way of the mission.

Guest: 00:36:19

In fact, she's vital to the mission.

Guest: 00:36:21

So Miyazaki does that in most of his stories.

Guest: 00:36:29

His female characters are great.

Guest: 00:36:32

There's a few that are not so great, but in general, that was the flavor that I wanted to highlight in this story.

Forrest Dickison: 00:36:42

Thank you for pointing that out, because there was something about the two characters that I couldn't put my finger on.

Forrest Dickison: 00:36:49

But you nailed it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:36:50

Yes.

Forrest Dickison: 00:36:51

Crispin has the angst, he has the arc, he has the journey in this particular way.

Forrest Dickison: 00:36:56

And then you have Rose, and she's a consistent Force throughout.

Forrest Dickison: 00:37:01

And I guess I picked up on that, but I couldn't quite.

Forrest Dickison: 00:37:04

There was a relief in encountering her character, not just in the completion of the story, but also the role that she plays.

Forrest Dickison: 00:37:12

Okay, so there's a lot going on in this story.

Guest: 00:37:16

Yeah, there's a lot, yeah.

Guest: 00:37:18

Rose, Part of the critiques I got from early on, when I was showing drafts of this around, was that she was not interesting as a character because she, you know, she had no character arc.

Guest: 00:37:30

But that only just told me that I was on the right track.

Guest: 00:37:35

Because I think not every character needs to have an arc to be compelling.

Guest: 00:37:39

Rose is somebody who is who.

Guest: 00:37:41

She knows who she is, she knows what she wants.

Guest: 00:37:44

And because she's unflustered by the chaos around her, everything sort of conforms to her vision.

Guest: 00:37:54

So she compels this rowdy crew of pirate frogs by not reacting to them.

Guest: 00:38:05

I think that's something that is incredibly important for especially younger girls to learn is reacting is never helpful.

Guest: 00:38:15

By reacting, you're just putting that other person in charge.

Guest: 00:38:18

So if you stay calm, keep your emotions in check, you can control any situation that you've been given.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:29

That's wonderful.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:30

That I did pick up on in a couple of the scenes that she was very non reactive in environments where I think the opposite is portrayed in culture where girls are encouraged to be reactive.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:45

There's one particular scene I'm thinking of, you probably know, the one where she's confronted with a big challenge very suddenly didn't quite go the way that she wanted it to.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:53

And her response is like, oh, drat, here we go again.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:56

You know what I mean?

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:57

Like in a very resigned, in a very grounded way.

Forrest Dickison: 00:38:59

And I was like, as a reader, of course I'm invested in Crispin's story, but as a reader and as a man who's sensitive to some of these themes in culture today regarding feminism and the male versus female roles and women being second rate versions of men and all that, to have a little girl character who is authentically a little girl and isn't trying to be a bad version of little boy was incredibly refreshing.

Guest: 00:39:27

Good.

Guest: 00:39:27

Glad to hear you say that.

Guest: 00:39:29

I thought so too.

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:32

And I think the other thing that was really, that was really nice about it was you didn't shy away from.

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:38

And I think this is probably okay to say because it's in the first part of the book of the little girl having a more domestic role, an explicitly domestic role, but that didn't feel demeaning.

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:48

And that's the part as I was Working the way through the story.

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:51

How is it going to balance this without it seeming demeaning?

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:54

Because I know that's, of course, what everyone in Moscow gets accused of being, not what they actually are.

Forrest Dickison: 00:39:59

I think Pastor Doug just did the theobros essay a couple days ago, and he was sort of talking about that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:40:05

But you managed to strike that balance very well.

Forrest Dickison: 00:40:08

Of her being in a.

Forrest Dickison: 00:40:10

I guess we call it the domestic role, but it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:40:12

Not.

Forrest Dickison: 00:40:12

But it being an enhancement of her character in the story in general.

Guest: 00:40:17

Yeah.

Guest: 00:40:17

I mean, yeah, it's just a big, dumb, boring lie that the domestic role is uninteresting and unfulfilling.

Guest: 00:40:26

I think it's.

Guest: 00:40:28

Yeah.

Guest: 00:40:29

One of feminism's biggest crimes is that it produces incredibly boring characters, boring people.

Guest: 00:40:36

I just.

Guest: 00:40:36

It's.

Guest: 00:40:36

I hate it.

Guest: 00:40:37

It's just.

Guest: 00:40:38

It's so uncompelling.

Guest: 00:40:41

So I made sure I.

Guest: 00:40:43

Yeah, I wanted Rose to offend all the wrong people.

Guest: 00:40:47

So she's.

Guest: 00:40:50

You know, at what point the pirates yell at the dragon to give us back our maid?

Guest: 00:40:56

So it's.

Guest: 00:40:58

I just leaned into the stereotypes as much as I could, because in this day and age.

Guest: 00:41:04

Well, in any day and age, the stereotypes, you know, they're.

Guest: 00:41:08

They ring true for a reason.

Guest: 00:41:13

Yeah.

Guest: 00:41:13

And also, I have three little girls, so, yeah, I've noticed that they tend to be, well, feminine.

Guest: 00:41:23

You know, they're not.

Guest: 00:41:23

They're not out there playing with trucks and making up, turning everything into a gun.

Guest: 00:41:28

They.

Guest: 00:41:29

Everything they touch turns into a nest or a baby or some kind of cooking utensil.

Guest: 00:41:35

And nobody taught them that.

Guest: 00:41:37

That's just who they are.

Guest: 00:41:38

And it's glorious.

Guest: 00:41:39

Why would I want to make that.

Guest: 00:41:40

Why would I want to turn them into something that they're not?

Guest: 00:41:44

So, yeah, I wanted Rose to be strong, compelling, and maintain while maintaining her femininity.

Forrest Dickison: 00:41:57

And Crispin got to be a little.

Forrest Dickison: 00:41:58

He's very obviously a little boy.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:00

You know, he's not a man doing little boy things.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:04

He's a little boy with little boy emotions on this big quest.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:08

And I got the balance of the characters, and that's the only two characters of the book really are Crispin and Rose.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:17

And you balanced it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:18

And that was the thing that I think really struck me.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:20

Again, this is like a little kids book, which is that there's so much to unpack in a little kids book.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:26

Feels completely appropriate at the same time.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:29

But you.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:29

You managed to also.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:30

I mean, Crispin feels authentically like a little boy.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:33

He's a little boy on an adventure with little boy emotions.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:36

And he Brings his sister along almost reluctantly, but she plays a role in the story.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:41

It's just a.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:41

There's something.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:42

I don't know.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:43

I don't feel ashamed to say that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:44

It's just a very powerful story that you crafted and along with the visuals as well.

Guest: 00:42:49

Thank you.

Guest: 00:42:50

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:52

So.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:53

So maybe we can talk also about hello Ninja.

Forrest Dickison: 00:42:55

So I had a copy of the first hello Ninja book, which I won in an NSA raffle, but I can't find it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:43:04

I moved recently, so maybe it's in a box or maybe I donated it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:43:07

I don't have a lot of little kids running around, so I'm not.

Forrest Dickison: 00:43:10

Who am I going to read this to?

Forrest Dickison: 00:43:11

So maybe you could talk a little bit about that project as well.

Guest: 00:43:14

Yeah.

Guest: 00:43:15

So that was the first thing that Nate and I worked on together.

Guest: 00:43:18

That was.

Guest: 00:43:19

I think I was still a senior in college when I jumped onto that.

Guest: 00:43:24

And he was just curious about the board book market.

Guest: 00:43:29

He wanted to try something.

Guest: 00:43:31

So he wrote.

Guest: 00:43:32

I think he wrote three, actually.

Guest: 00:43:34

One was hello Ninja, one was Blah, blah, Black Sheep.

Guest: 00:43:37

And then maybe the third one never got written, but there was another third one with zebras, I believe.

Guest: 00:43:44

But yeah.

Guest: 00:43:47

So my goal with Ninja was just I wanted to make a board book that didn't look like a lot of the board books that I had seen.

Guest: 00:43:55

I wanted something that was colorful, had depth, was fully painted.

Guest: 00:44:00

It was all digitally done, so it wasn't traditional paint.

Guest: 00:44:03

But I was a art student at the time, so I was just trying to paint things that I was basically practicing what I had been seeing.

Guest: 00:44:13

So I wanted different lighting situations, different color palettes, and that was kind of.

Guest: 00:44:20

That was it.

Guest: 00:44:20

That was as far as I was thinking with that book.

Guest: 00:44:25

And then it went out there.

Guest: 00:44:26

It made its way into the Starbucks Pick of the week, which was one of Nate's other books.

Guest: 00:44:33

A sample of it was going to be out there.

Guest: 00:44:34

Somehow that fell through, so we just slotted a Ninja instead.

Guest: 00:44:39

That went well.

Guest: 00:44:40

So from there it made its way into Target.

Guest: 00:44:42

It sold well at Target.

Guest: 00:44:44

And at that point, I think Nate and I were both thinking, this is it couldn't go any further than this.

Guest: 00:44:49

We had moved on creatively, at least I had.

Guest: 00:44:53

But then Nate's agent in LA picked it up and decided to run with it.

Guest: 00:44:57

And she shopped it around to a bunch of different studios, and it ended up at Netflix, against all odds.

Guest: 00:45:08

And I think: 2018

Guest: 00:45:20

So.

Guest: 00:45:21

And Nate was a producer And a writer.

Guest: 00:45:24

I was a design consultant and a designer as well.

Guest: 00:45:29

So we both had some creative control throughout the whole process.

Forrest Dickison: 00:45:38

What was that process like, watching that just kind of experiment, reach the heights of culture?

Forrest Dickison: 00:45:44

In some ways.

Guest: 00:45:47

It was fantastic.

Guest: 00:45:48

I learned a lot along the way and, well, probably more looking back is where all the lessons came from.

Guest: 00:45:55

But very grateful for it.

Guest: 00:45:58

I assumed that anything I touched from that point on would just be swept up into the machine and make millions of dollars and be a huge hit.

Forrest Dickison: 00:46:07

Oh, obviously.

Guest: 00:46:08

Obviously, that's what I assumed.

Guest: 00:46:09

It hasn't worked out exactly like that, what I know.

Guest: 00:46:15

But lots of lessons were learned.

Guest: 00:46:17

It was a great process.

Guest: 00:46:19

Working with Netflix was actually pretty great.

Guest: 00:46:23

Working with Atomic Cartoons was fantastic.

Guest: 00:46:26

They were all talented and very professional people.

Guest: 00:46:29

So overall, it was a really fun experience.

Guest: 00:46:36

Yes.

Guest: 00:46:36

Has yet to be replicated, but we're working on it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:46:40

So what is the hello Ninja series about?

Forrest Dickison: 00:46:44

What was the overall vision?

Forrest Dickison: 00:46:47

What were you guys trying to achieve with it originally?

Forrest Dickison: 00:46:49

And then how did that take shape as it blew up?

Guest: 00:46:53

Yeah, Nate could probably tell you more about the original vision.

Guest: 00:46:56

I just know it was.

Guest: 00:46:58

It was.

Guest: 00:46:58

The original vision for me was make it as fun as possible.

Guest: 00:47:01

He just handed me the manuscript, and I just thought, how can I squeeze as many fun things to paint as possible into this little short board book?

Guest: 00:47:11

So that was my goal.

Guest: 00:47:12

Make it fun, make it full of light, make it a good time.

Guest: 00:47:17

And that vision, make it fun was maintained throughout the whole process.

Guest: 00:47:22

But once it was turned into a show, we were very consciously trying to make a show that was genuinely healthy for kids, imagination.

Guest: 00:47:34

So the goal was not to just provide a little escape from reality.

Guest: 00:47:39

We wanted something that would encourage kids on their own journeys to become better characters themselves.

Guest: 00:47:48

So we wanted to enforce play patterns, behavior, imaginative adventuring that would be imitated by the viewers in a way that was constructive, healthy, normal.

Guest: 00:48:03

Because we knew all the competition was doing the same, but pointing kids in the wrong direction for the most part.

Guest: 00:48:10

So it just became one of Netflix's most expensive snacks that they ever made for kids, at least.

Forrest Dickison: 00:48:21

I mean, it was expensive.

Forrest Dickison: 00:48:22

Go ahead.

Guest: 00:48:23

Yeah, they, you know, it was a year of production.

Guest: 00:48:29

Many lots of money and time and manpower was made for was put into this show that, you know, it's.

Guest: 00:48:38

It's four seasons.

Guest: 00:48:39

Each episode is maybe 10 minutes long.

Guest: 00:48:41

So we wanted to just leave the audience better than we found them.

Guest: 00:48:46

So there were a few battles we had about, you know, when there's some feminine feminist tendencies that were trying to creep in or this or that.

Guest: 00:49:00

And the other thing, you know, but overall, it wasn't a whole lot that we had to fight about.

Guest: 00:49:08

So, yeah, I'm proud of it.

Guest: 00:49:11

I'm happy to have got to be a part of it, and I think it's a good, solid show.

Forrest Dickison: 00:49:19

Yeah.

Forrest Dickison: 00:49:20

That was going to be my next question as you bring this healthy, wholesome kids story into Netflix, which for me, I imagine that it's somewhat of a meat grinder to take a good idea and twist it around into some woke zombie version of what it once was.

Forrest Dickison: 00:49:39

To hear that it came out true to the original vision.

Forrest Dickison: 00:49:42

That's actually pretty encouraging to me.

Guest: 00:49:45

Yeah, God was very kind and I think we were teamed up with the right people and Netflix.

Guest: 00:49:54

This was before.

Guest: 00:49:55

This was before: 2020

Guest: 00:49:57

This was before things at Netflix went extremely woke.

Guest: 00:50:01

They already were.

Guest: 00:50:02

But there's no way that two white guys like myself and Nate could go make a show about a little Japanese boy today with Netflix at least, and maybe it'll swing back, who knows?

Guest: 00:50:16

But I think we snuck in right at the tail end of when that would be acceptable and workable.

Guest: 00:50:24

So, yeah, I don't know.

Guest: 00:50:27

The biggest lesson was all I can do is the best that I can do at the time, and if God chooses to bless it, then no one's going to stop him.

Guest: 00:50:37

So that was it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:50:39

Maybe you could say more about that because I imagine that there are probably some parents listening and listening and probably some.

Forrest Dickison: 00:50:45

Some creatives as well, you know, who, of course, I've had my own creative processes that I've been involved in.

Forrest Dickison: 00:50:51

Again, like, photography was a big one for me, but maybe you can speak more about that, about, you know, trust, like doing the best you can and trusting God with the results.

Guest: 00:51:01

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it.

Guest: 00:51:05

You want to do the best you can so that if God does bless it, you're not embarrassed once it's out there and famous.

Guest: 00:51:14

But also so that, you know, if you.

Guest: 00:51:16

If you make something to a certain.

Guest: 00:51:19

If you make something excellent, it will get out there.

Guest: 00:51:23

I think cream rises, but the rising, that's all God.

Guest: 00:51:31

So as an artist, all you can really focus on is making great cream.

Guest: 00:51:36

Like, do.

Guest: 00:51:37

Do what you can to make your craft as excellent as possible.

Guest: 00:51:41

Position yourself, if you can, with the right people to make it go.

Guest: 00:51:46

But, you know, we plant water, but it's God who brings the increase.

Guest: 00:51:52

So everything I've worked on since Ninja is, you know, has not gone as nearly as explosive, but it doesn't really bother me because I'm still just.

Guest: 00:52:07

I know I'm doing the same thing that I was doing then, for whatever reason, nothing has worked out quite the same way.

Guest: 00:52:12

But God is the one that's going to bless it or not when he feels like it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:53:38

I think there's real wisdom of that.

Forrest Dickison: 00:53:40

I've had some tweets go mega viral around the world, and if I keep trying to achieve that same thing again, not even like, maybe I'll get there, but I'll drive myself crazy trying to do it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:53:53

When ultimately, when something like that is happening, it's like, well, this is clearly a God thing and praise him for making this possible.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:00

But I'm not gonna be able to make lightning strike twice.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:04

I just have to do the best job that I can with everything that I put my hand to, and God will take care of the rest.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:10

You said something really interesting, too.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:11

You said, put your all into it so that you're not embarrassed, because I guess it is kind of possible that something could do really well.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:18

And it's like, oh, there's a typo there, or there's a mistake there.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:21

Like God can do that as well.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:23

Which I tend to forget that.

Guest: 00:54:27

Right.

Guest: 00:54:27

And Ninja was actually interesting because the first version of the book that you apparently have somewhere in a box.

Forrest Dickison: 00:54:33

Yes.

Guest: 00:54:35

I was a student when I made it, so.

Guest: 00:54:37

Oh, yeah, it was a little bit.

Guest: 00:54:40

You know, I look at it now and I think, oh, wow, that's.

Guest: 00:54:43

You know, I could do so much better.

Guest: 00:54:44

But God didn't care.

Guest: 00:54:45

I did what I could and he took it and ran with it.

Guest: 00:54:48

And then we ended up selling the book rights to HarperCollins, and they went and made four new ninja books.

Guest: 00:54:56

So we remade the first book, we made another one, and then we made two kind of spin off, I can read Ninja books.

Guest: 00:55:03

And so I was actually able to go back and just recreate the first book with, you know, four years of artistic expertise under my belt, which I was grateful for.

Guest: 00:55:17

So I could kind of tinker with it once it was already out there, which is not an opportunity that is often given to artists.

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:25

Yes, I can.

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:26

I can relate to that, where I go back and listen to something, maybe an interview that I did or something like that, and I look at that, it's like, oh, I would do that so much better now.

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:37

That's just part of it.

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:39

So maybe you can talk a little bit about thinking back on your experience as an artist, especially for the parents who are listening.

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:49

What can they do?

Forrest Dickison: 00:55:50

What helped you cultivate your gifts and abilities that was unique to your upbringing, who maybe Some teachers that made a difference, maybe some things that your parents did that really gave you an added push in your gifts.

Forrest Dickison: 00:56:04

Because I imagine there's probably more than a few parents listening that have spotted what they think or what might even really be genuine artistic talent and interest in their children, and that they don't know how to cultivate that because they don't have it themselves.

Forrest Dickison: 00:56:16

So maybe you can share a little bit about maybe some of the individuals or some of the decisions that were made for you to help.

Forrest Dickison: 00:56:23

To help shepherd you in a particular direction.

Guest: 00:56:27

Yeah.

Guest: 00:56:28

So I think there's two answers to that question.

Guest: 00:56:31

The first is that my parents were never concerned, really, about my desire to become an artist.

Guest: 00:56:38

They were only ever encouraging, which I was very grateful for, because instead of making me complacent and lazy in my pursuit of artistic excellence, I only ever wanted to, you know, please them.

Guest: 00:56:55

So it was encouraging that they were only ever encouraging.

Guest: 00:57:01

Obviously, they weren't trying to hold me back or they weren't asking me questions like, how are you going to make money?

Guest: 00:57:08

Maybe they ought to have been.

Guest: 00:57:12

They never worried about it.

Guest: 00:57:13

They only ever encouraged me.

Guest: 00:57:14

Bought me art supplies, gave me art lessons, and that just made me want to work hard to not let them down, I guess.

Guest: 00:57:24

And then my high school basketball coach, I credit him the most with the work ethic.

Guest: 00:57:33

So talent only gets you so far.

Guest: 00:57:37

Even interest only gets you so far.

Guest: 00:57:39

You can love something, you can be good at it, but unless you're.

Guest: 00:57:44

Unless you have the skill set, the muscle memory that it takes to show up and actually put the work in, all that interest and intent is not going to go anywhere.

Guest: 00:57:55

So I learned my work ethic.

Guest: 00:57:59

What little work ethic I have comes from high school basketball.

Guest: 00:58:03

So high school basketball was where I learned to just keep pushing even when I wanted to lie down and give up and, you know, be done.

Guest: 00:58:12

So athletics, combined with nothing but encouragement from my parents, I think enabled me to actually make it as a professional artist.

Guest: 00:58:27

And then I'll say one more thing.

Guest: 00:58:28

We weren't very good.

Guest: 00:58:30

Our high school basketball team was not very good.

Guest: 00:58:32

So we lost a lot.

Guest: 00:58:35

And at the end of the game, the score was always objective, and it did not care about how you felt.

Guest: 00:58:43

Artists can tend to be coddled.

Guest: 00:58:46

Their emotions can be coddled by their parents, by their peers, because the artistic temperament is given a free pass, because that's just the way that artists are.

Guest: 00:58:54

And let's not, you know, we'll just leave them there.

Guest: 00:58:57

They're weird.

Guest: 00:58:58

They are weird, but they need Artists need to be in absolute control of their emotions so that when you put something out into the world and it doesn't go well, it's.

Guest: 00:59:16

You're not affected by it.

Guest: 00:59:17

So it's losing at basketball all the time, knowing that there's objective standards for excellence, objective standards for beauty, truth, goodness.

Guest: 00:59:27

That all apply to what you're making is you have to get there emotionally, intellectually, so that you don't get out into the world.

Guest: 00:59:36

And just think that likes on Instagram translates to success as a human being.

Guest: 00:59:43

So develop a thick skin, get used to losing, but don't ever settle with losing.

Guest: 00:59:51

Just keep grinding, keep pushing, always be chasing that excellence.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:00

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:02

Because it seems like it ties into some of what we said about non reactivity.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:09

It ties into discipline and it ties in also to the only way that we really achieve excellence is through failure.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:19

And so I think that there's a tendency that we have in culture today, and I think it shows up across culture, to not tell somebody when they've failed at something, which does them a great disservice.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:32

You have to, like you said, a basketball score is objective, doesn't matter how you feel about it.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:38

But because we think of art as subjective and to some extent it is.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:42

But I think we all know when we listen to a song that we like or a good song, whether or not we like it or look at a beautiful painting or whatever it is, we know when something lands.

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:52

But if we're afraid to tell somebody when it doesn't, how will they know what it takes to produce something that does?

Forrest Dickison: 01:00:59

And I think a lot of the hesitation that people have is like, well, I don't want to hurt their feelings.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:03

Like, well, maybe they kind of need their feelings to be hurt.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:06

You don't intentionally hurt their feelings.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:07

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:08

Like, I'm going to get them.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:09

But you have to.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:10

Maybe you can talk some.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:11

Because you had to work through that.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:12

Like every professional artist that I've ever met has had to work through countless failures emotionally.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:19

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:20

The thing that they really liked, like, you know, they put that out there and it's like, no, it doesn't work what this is.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:25

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:25

So maybe you can talk some of.

Forrest Dickison: 01:01:27

Because that's the professional side of being an artist.

Guest: 01:01:30

Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's cliche.

Guest: 01:01:33

It's not how many times you get hit, but how many times you get back up.

Guest: 01:01:36

It's just, can you do it over and over again?

Guest: 01:01:38

And being an artist, you're putting your whole soul into something.

Guest: 01:01:44

When you're creating it, it's like, you are.

Guest: 01:01:48

God, this is amazing.

Guest: 01:01:50

The inspiration is flowing, and then you put it out there.

Guest: 01:01:54

Nobody cares.

Guest: 01:01:55

It gets 10 likes on social media, which is.

Guest: 01:01:58

Or you put it out there, you hand it to your mom, and they just go, that's nice.

Guest: 01:02:02

Slap it on the fridge, and then it's in the trash the next day.

Guest: 01:02:06

Yeah, it's funny.

Guest: 01:02:08

My girls won't stop drawing, which is good.

Guest: 01:02:11

They're good at it and they love it.

Guest: 01:02:14

They're making books constantly.

Guest: 01:02:17

But this is something that we're dealing with.

Guest: 01:02:20

There's six and four.

Guest: 01:02:21

But when I throw away their drawings all the time, because at first I was trying to keep everything because I didn't want to hurt their feelings, and I wanted to have this record of this pure artistic expression.

Guest: 01:02:35

But I realized quickly that that was not actually helping them grow.

Guest: 01:02:38

Like, no, yeah, you made a nice drawing.

Guest: 01:02:40

Will put on the fridge for a day, maybe, and then it's in the trash because it's onto the next one.

Guest: 01:02:44

Like, you know, if it's really excellent, I'll stick it in a frame, put it on the wall.

Guest: 01:02:50

But.

Guest: 01:02:52

And once.

Guest: 01:02:52

Yeah, now they're.

Guest: 01:02:53

They're totally comfortable with their drawings being trashed all the time.

Guest: 01:02:56

Not.

Guest: 01:02:57

Not by me.

Forrest Dickison: 01:02:58

Right.

Guest: 01:02:59

But, you know, thrown into the trash.

Guest: 01:03:02

And that's.

Guest: 01:03:04

I think it's.

Guest: 01:03:05

That's the mindset that I think every artist needs to cultivate, is that the work is just work.

Guest: 01:03:10

It's not who you are.

Guest: 01:03:12

It's.

Guest: 01:03:13

It's.

Guest: 01:03:15

It's something that you're producing in order to bless other people if they are not blessed by it.

Guest: 01:03:21

You can't get offended at that.

Guest: 01:03:23

So if you put it out there and nobody likes it, all that tells me is that you put it out there is because you wanted praise.

Guest: 01:03:31

You wanted your own ego to be scratched, and you wanted your friends to say, wow, I could never do that.

Guest: 01:03:36

You know, but the whole point is that you're making food for somebody else's soul.

Guest: 01:03:44

You want them to be uplifted, encouraged, inspired.

Guest: 01:03:48

So then if you frame it that way, you punt something, you put a painting up on the wall, and nobody is uplifted or encouraged.

Guest: 01:03:57

That wouldn't make any sense to throw a fit about that.

Guest: 01:03:59

You say, oh, I'll just have to make it better.

Guest: 01:04:03

And then hopefully it will achieve its goal.

Forrest Dickison: 01:04:08

Can you talk about if you'd be willing to one of your experiences where there was something that you were particularly attached to, and you put it out there, and it maybe Went over like a lead balloon.

Forrest Dickison: 01:04:17

And you had to work through that.

Guest: 01:04:21

Hmm.

Guest: 01:04:26

Maybe there have been too many to count, but I couldn't.

Guest: 01:04:29

I can't remember.

Guest: 01:04:29

I don't know.

Guest: 01:04:30

It just.

Guest: 01:04:31

I think my ditch might be on the other side where I.

Guest: 01:04:34

Maybe I preemptively, you know, despise my own work just so that it's.

Guest: 01:04:40

When somebody else doesn't like it, I can.

Guest: 01:04:41

Well, I beat you to it.

Guest: 01:04:43

I also think it's not any good.

Guest: 01:04:44

So, whatever.

Guest: 01:04:45

You can't hurt me, you can't fire me.

Guest: 01:04:47

I quit.

Guest: 01:04:49

So there's that other.

Guest: 01:04:52

I think that's my ditch is to be a little more.

Guest: 01:04:57

To cut the cord a little too readily, maybe, or to be.

Guest: 01:05:01

To just throw it out there and move on, you know?

Guest: 01:05:07

Yeah.

Guest: 01:05:08

So I can't.

Guest: 01:05:08

I can't.

Guest: 01:05:09

Sorry.

Guest: 01:05:09

I can't recall a time when I was devastated that somebody didn't like what I did.

Guest: 01:05:13

I'm sure it happened.

Guest: 01:05:14

I know it happened, but I just.

Guest: 01:05:16

I don't know.

Guest: 01:05:16

I don't remember.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:18

No, I mean, what I'm getting at, I think, and that makes a lot of sense, that you would preemptively dismiss your own work for fear of being hurt.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:27

And you're right, that is definitely a ditch.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:30

Because I'm interested for the parents listening and for the creative people listening who struggle with these issues either in themselves or their kids.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:38

Because I think that there are so many gifted and talented children, and adults for that matter, who have learned to dismiss their own work or have learned to overvalue their own work and finding that way through that path, navigating that.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:52

But then also how we can learn to cultivate our own creative process, whether or not we want to go pro with it.

Forrest Dickison: 01:05:58

Because I think everyone has a different.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:00

We'll call it a creative gift and a different feel, whether it be music or the visual arts or writing, but the process of birthing it, of shipping it, as they say in the tech world, that's the terrifying thing.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:11

It's easier to leave something unfinished or keep it private than to actually subject it to someone looking at it.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:17

And so I think that's really important for people to learn how to do for their own well being, for their own creativity, for glorifying God, and also especially for parents who are watching their children grow and are trying to express gifts and want to know how to cultivate them, but also knowing that it's a hard world.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:36

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:36

And just because you think something is amazing doesn't mean anyone else will.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:40

But you also have to think it's amazing, too.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:42

Maybe.

Forrest Dickison: 01:06:43

I hope I'm putting my thoughts together the right way.

Guest: 01:06:45

Oh, yeah, that's all.

Guest: 01:06:47

It all makes sense, I think.

Guest: 01:06:51

Yeah.

Guest: 01:06:52

Well, going back to the other ditch, where if you're out there trashing your own work before anyone else can, that's just as selfish as looking for the ego trip, where you're just looking for praise.

Guest: 01:07:05

So either you're just looking for praise or you throw it out there and then you just say, oh, it's so bad.

Guest: 01:07:09

I'm no good, I'm no good.

Guest: 01:07:11

That's just as selfish and just as great.

Guest: 01:07:13

You should stop it.

Guest: 01:07:16

And it's also a disservice to your audience.

Guest: 01:07:18

So if you throw something out there and it does connect, it does bless them, they do like it.

Guest: 01:07:23

And then you're out there saying, as it's no good, you're just telling those people that their taste is bad and that this thing that they genuinely had affection for is dumb from maybe one of their heroes.

Guest: 01:07:37

So trashing your own work is selfish.

Guest: 01:07:41

Looking for praise is selfish.

Guest: 01:07:44

So the whole point is, like I said, to bless somebody else.

Guest: 01:07:49

So if it's about you, it's going to end in tears.

Guest: 01:07:57

It is challenging because at the end of the day, you're the one that has to make it.

Guest: 01:08:00

It's your tastes, your skill level, your time, blood, sweat and tears that is going into this project.

Guest: 01:08:08

So you do have to like it, and you do have to know it intimately inside and out just to make it, you know, before you can ship it.

Guest: 01:08:19

But at the end of the day, you're just cooking a meal.

Guest: 01:08:22

You're making something to feed somebody else.

Guest: 01:08:26

And when you look at it that way, you don't want to be the chef that puts something on the table and just say, yeah, it's, you know, I could have done better, or there wasn't as much salt, and everyone's just enjoying the meal and you're over here saying, yeah, it wasn't salty enough, sorry, apologizing for it and ruining everybody's experience.

Guest: 01:08:45

Just put it out there and just make a, you know, flag a note, okay, needs more salt.

Guest: 01:08:52

So next time the meal will be a little bit better.

Guest: 01:08:55

Next time it'll be a little bit better.

Guest: 01:08:57

And just don't make it about yourself.

Guest: 01:09:00

Once you start, once it's out there.

Forrest Dickison: 01:09:04

Can you think, okay, so addressing the other ditch, then, can you think of when you had to learn how to accept praise?

Forrest Dickison: 01:09:10

Because that is definitely a thing where people don't know how to graciously.

Forrest Dickison: 01:09:14

Someone says, that's amazing.

Forrest Dickison: 01:09:15

And if the tendency is to say, oh, no, no, it's terrible, like, no, you want to honor them in their experience, maybe you can talk about that.

Guest: 01:09:25

Yeah, this.

Guest: 01:09:26

Going back to basketball, one of my friends, one of my teammates, his dad just told him, look, at the end of the game, if somebody says, good game, doesn't matter if you won or lost, all you have to say back is, good game, Great job.

Guest: 01:09:38

You know, you don't.

Guest: 01:09:40

You don't need to say, I shot so poorly or, yeah, you know, and then.

Guest: 01:09:43

Or flatter them and, you know, you did really great, too.

Guest: 01:09:45

You know, all you need to say is thank you.

Guest: 01:09:48

And then, you know, if somebody.

Guest: 01:09:53

Yeah, the more I make things, the more I realize that it's not.

Guest: 01:09:58

It's.

Guest: 01:09:58

I'm just sort of showing up and putting stuff together.

Guest: 01:10:00

But the idea and the art sort of comes from somewhere else.

Guest: 01:10:05

I'm sort of just an archaeologist discovering something.

Guest: 01:10:08

That's what it feels like.

Guest: 01:10:10

So when somebody else comes and says, I loved this, you know, I'm.

Guest: 01:10:15

I'm just free to say, oh, thank you.

Guest: 01:10:17

I also thought that was great.

Guest: 01:10:18

Wasn't it awesome?

Guest: 01:10:19

And it's something that's just totally divorced from my own ego, my own pride, and we're free to enjoy it together, because now it's out there.

Guest: 01:10:30

It doesn't really belong to me anymore.

Guest: 01:10:32

It's just this artifact floating in the wild.

Guest: 01:10:38

So, yeah, if somebody praises you, just say, thank you.

Guest: 01:10:41

That's it.

Guest: 01:10:42

And it's.

Guest: 01:10:42

Yeah.

Guest: 01:10:43

Then you bite your tongue.

Guest: 01:10:44

You don't say, I'll do better next time.

Guest: 01:10:46

Yeah, I still feel that.

Guest: 01:10:48

Don't say, I'll do better next time, or don't trash your work.

Guest: 01:10:52

But definitely, definitely don't rely on praise as a fuel to keep you going.

Guest: 01:11:04

Praise is nice, it's encouraging, but it's not.

Guest: 01:11:09

You're not really going to.

Guest: 01:11:10

You never learn from it.

Guest: 01:11:12

You only really learn from critique, honest critique.

Guest: 01:11:17

So say.

Forrest Dickison: 01:11:19

Say more about that.

Guest: 01:11:21

I mean, if you throw something out in the world and, well, let's take social media for another example.

Guest: 01:11:26

You post a drawing, and of course no one's going to.

Guest: 01:11:29

I mean, maybe this happens, I guess, but people don't jump in the comments and just say, you stink.

Guest: 01:11:33

Go home, quit drawing.

Guest: 01:11:34

Everyone just says, wow, amazing.

Guest: 01:11:36

Amazing.

Guest: 01:11:36

You're the best.

Guest: 01:11:37

Oh, I wish I could draw like you, whatever it is.

Guest: 01:11:40

And then that becomes sort of your.

Guest: 01:11:43

The end goal of what it is you're doing.

Guest: 01:11:46

That praise is.

Guest: 01:11:48

It's just going to stunt your growth because you're not actually going to learn anything.

Guest: 01:11:51

So if you don't, if you throw something out there, no one's offering constructive criticism.

Guest: 01:11:57

They're just making your head a little bit bigger.

Guest: 01:12:00

And the worst thing you can do as a creative is learn to rely on that, or even worse, to love it.

Guest: 01:12:08

To love praise.

Guest: 01:12:10

You should always feel a little bit uncomfortable when somebody says, great job.

Guest: 01:12:13

This is awesome.

Guest: 01:12:16

Yeah.

Guest: 01:12:17

So you don't.

Guest: 01:12:18

And praise is good because it means that somebody else was blessed.

Guest: 01:12:25

That's all it tells you.

Guest: 01:12:27

But if you throw something out there and you get a criticism, that's really, actually helpful data.

Guest: 01:12:34

Because now you can go back and say, okay, this didn't land either because the audience missed it or because I failed to deliver.

Guest: 01:12:43

And if I failed to deliver, then you can go and say, how was it this story?

Guest: 01:12:49

Was it color drawing?

Guest: 01:12:51

And then you can dissect it.

Guest: 01:12:53

And maybe the audience picked up on something that they think is the problem.

Guest: 01:12:59

But you have to be intelligent enough to identify the problem somewhere else so that you fix it over here.

Guest: 01:13:07

And then that particular reaction goes away, if that makes any sense.

Guest: 01:13:13

So when people don't like something, that's when I really pay attention.

Guest: 01:13:18

Because then you have to ask, why didn't they like it?

Guest: 01:13:22

Is it their problem?

Guest: 01:13:22

Is it my problem?

Guest: 01:13:23

Is it the works problem?

Guest: 01:13:25

And then once you identify a problem, then there's an opportunity for education and growth, and that's exciting.

Guest: 01:13:33

Growth is always fun.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:36

And that's why it's so important to subject yourself to valid criticism, even though it might hurt your feelings, even though you have an emotional attachment to something.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:44

I mean, the royal you, of course, that's the way that you're going to grow is by finding out what works and what didn't from an objective observer.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:51

Not just friends, not just family.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:53

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:53

Who, of course they're going to love what you do, because they love you.

Forrest Dickison: 01:13:57

But there is something about, like, no, you put it up and you let the public look at it and you let them tear it apart.

Forrest Dickison: 01:14:03

Yeah, it's terrible, but you got to do it.

Guest: 01:14:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Forrest Dickison: 01:14:08

So maybe you can share a little bit with maybe some of the projects that you have coming up for either Cannonball or Cannon Press or what you're working on, what you're working on yourself.

Guest: 01:14:18

Yeah.

Guest: 01:14:19

So right now I'm working full time with Canon Press on some animation content that is.

Guest: 01:14:27

We're trying to get a.

Guest: 01:14:28

Right now there's a show and a feature that we're building out, sort of elaborate pitch decks for.

Guest: 01:14:35

So I'M doing some short sample animation for these projects that we will then go out and attempt to wrangle some funding for.

Guest: 01:14:45

So that's what I'm doing full time right now.

Guest: 01:14:48

I'm painting on the side.

Guest: 01:14:49

There's the gallery that you saw as a new addition to Moscow, owned by or run by New St.

Guest: 01:14:58

Andrews College.

Guest: 01:14:59

So I'm supplying some paintings there.

Guest: 01:15:02

And then I'm working on a graphic novel on the other side as well.

Guest: 01:15:09

Those are the main projects that I've got going at the moment.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:14

So you're.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:15

So how do you.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:16

I mean, I guess you're all.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:17

It sounds like you're always creating something.

Will Spencer: 01:15:18

Whether you're at work or whether you're.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:20

Working on the graphic novel or you're painting.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:22

Like, is this.

Forrest Dickison: 01:15:22

Is this just a constant state of, I guess a state of mind that you're in?

Guest: 01:15:28

Yes, it's.

Guest: 01:15:30

Yeah.

Guest: 01:15:31

The short answer is yes.

Guest: 01:15:33

I mean, I will say that Sundays are extremely important.

Guest: 01:15:40

And you start to understand the way that.

Guest: 01:15:43

Why God did it the way that he did.

Guest: 01:15:45

Because I know that I can just, you know, all six cylinders for six weeks just run flat out knowing that on Sunday I can just collapse and, you know, spend time with my family and rest and I'm not allowed to draw.

Guest: 01:16:03

I don't draw on Sundays.

Guest: 01:16:04

That's, you know.

Guest: 01:16:06

So, yeah, Sundays are extra, extra sweet these days.

Forrest Dickison: 01:16:14

Do you have a day set aside or a time of the week set aside to do your painting?

Forrest Dickison: 01:16:19

Because I would imagine there's something very personal about that.

Forrest Dickison: 01:16:22

This is, for me, this is what I'm doing.

Forrest Dickison: 01:16:23

Or maybe I'm wrong about that, but it would seem to me that this is something that requires such focus and there's a degree of intimacy to it as well.

Forrest Dickison: 01:16:32

Or is it just whenever it comes up during the week?

Guest: 01:16:35

No.

Guest: 01:16:36

Yeah.

Guest: 01:16:36

Generally the weekends are when I paint these days, but it's either.

Guest: 01:16:43

But that is flexible as well.

Guest: 01:16:46

So I've been doing just early mornings.

Guest: 01:16:49

I'm up early, working, then the kids are up getting them ready for school.

Guest: 01:16:53

Then it's off to work with Cannon Press and then home for dinner, spending time with the family until they're in bed.

Guest: 01:17:02

And then maybe I'll do a little bit of work.

Guest: 01:17:04

But usually I try to get to bed early so that I can get up early again the next day.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:10

The rhythms of a professional artist.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:12

Sound like a professional anything?

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:14

Amazing.

Guest: 01:17:14

Yes.

Guest: 01:17:15

It turns out it's work.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:18

You mean you're not just up at 3:00 in the morning waiting for the.

Guest: 01:17:21

Muse to appear well, no, I am, but it's.

Guest: 01:17:28

Yeah, sometimes it shows up, but I'm there whether or not the muse is there.

Guest: 01:17:32

That's the goal.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:34

And you're working on.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:36

Just, just real quickly, you're working on animation now.

Forrest Dickison: 01:17:39

So I think you had mentioned earlier that you wanted to be getting into animation and now you finally worked your way around to that.

Guest: 01:17:45

Yeah, it's.

Guest: 01:17:46

I've.

Guest: 01:17:46

I'm very grateful for how that's worked out.

Guest: 01:17:48

So we don't.

Guest: 01:17:50

Nothing is nailed down yet, but we're all hopeful.

Guest: 01:17:54

We have projects that we like.

Guest: 01:17:56

But it's.

Guest: 01:17:58

Yeah, I'm doing traditional hand drawn animation and it's.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:02

Oh wow.

Guest: 01:18:03

Extremely fun.

Guest: 01:18:04

Some of the most fun I've had in my entire career, I would say.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:08

So, so hand drawn, like cell animation?

Guest: 01:18:11

Yes.

Guest: 01:18:12

Yeah.

Guest: 01:18:12

So it's not, it's not on paper.

Guest: 01:18:14

We're drawing directly onto the computer, but still all we're doing is we're skipping the scanning process.

Guest: 01:18:22

Other than that, it's the same.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:25

Oh my goodness.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:26

See, that is something.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:28

So now I'm going to say that is something I could never do.

Guest: 01:18:31

Yeah, it is absurd.

Guest: 01:18:35

I can't.

Guest: 01:18:36

It doesn't.

Guest: 01:18:36

Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:39

Yes.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:41

A lot of very detail oriented micro work in a way.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:46

Just the subtle changes of a facial expression.

Forrest Dickison: 01:18:49

Oh, I couldn't do it.

Guest: 01:18:50

Right.

Guest: 01:18:51

And back to how we started this conversation.

Guest: 01:18:53

This is why when I'm painting, I'm trying to be sloppy and loose and relax and just have fun.

Guest: 01:18:58

Because during my day job I'm worrying about turning a character in three dimensional space on a page and it's just, there's math involved.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:10

It's a little more complicated.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:12

See, that makes a lot of sense.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:14

Like we started talking about the difference between like a crispin and the impressionistic painting in the gallery.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:20

That makes a lot of sense to me that you know, producing something as detail oriented and as precise as this, how appealing it would be if you're always in the headspace to be drawing or painting, to produce something so much more loose and evocative, I guess.

Guest: 01:19:35

Right.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:37

Well, this has been fantastic.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:39

I know you've got a lot of work to do today.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:41

Thank you so much for the generosity of your time and walking me and walking us through your artwork.

Forrest Dickison: 01:19:47

Is there some place that people can go online to find a gallery of your paintings or images of your paintings or something like that?

Guest: 01:19:55

Yeah.

Guest: 01:19:56

Forrestdickison.com you can go there.

Guest: 01:20:00

There's a newsletter to sign up for.

Guest: 01:20:02

The only time I send out a newsletter is When I have new paintings, which is rare these days, but then you can find me on Instagram.

Guest: 01:20:10

I do have a Twitter, but mostly I repost paintings of dead people, so that's not really my own work.

Forrest Dickison: 01:20:19

Oh, paintings of dead people.

Guest: 01:20:21

Yeah, you know, the masters, the old.

Forrest Dickison: 01:20:24

Oh, okay.

Guest: 01:20:24

Yeah, the old dead guys who really knew how to paint.

Guest: 01:20:28

You know, I just repost.

Guest: 01:20:29

What?

Guest: 01:20:30

I like Twitter.

Guest: 01:20:31

So paintings of dead people.

Guest: 01:20:33

I should say paintings by dead people.

Guest: 01:20:35

That's not a terrible.

Guest: 01:20:37

Yeah, secret.

Guest: 01:20:41

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Guest: 01:20:46

We don't need to go there.

Forrest Dickison: 01:20:47

No, we don't.

Guest: 01:20:47

Paintings by peop.

Guest: 01:20:49

By old masters who are now deceased, but because their paintings are still around, they stood the test of time and they're great.

Guest: 01:20:58

Paintings of dead people.

Guest: 01:21:00

That's terrible.

Guest: 01:21:00

What a way to sign off.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:02

That's perfect.

Guest: 01:21:06

Who are some of your favorite masters?

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:08

No, it's so good.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:10

That's great.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:11

Who are some of your favorite masters?

Guest: 01:21:14

My favorite dead people.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:15

Yes, exactly.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:17

Your favorite paintings of dead people.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:22

It's so good.

Forrest Dickison: 01:21:23

That's great.

Guest: 01:21:24

I love John Singer Sargent.

Guest: 01:21:26

I love Joaquin Soroya.

Guest: 01:21:29

I love the old Japanese masters.

Guest: 01:21:31

Yoshida Hiroshi in particular.

Guest: 01:21:36

I love the California Impressionists.

Guest: 01:21:38

So Edgar Payne, William Wendt are some of my favorites.

Guest: 01:21:42

NC Wyeth, I love the end pages of Crispin's Rainy Day are a nod to NC Wyeth.

Guest: 01:21:49

Okay.

Guest: 01:21:51

And recently I've been reading a biography of the artist Maynard Dixon, who was painting a little before NC Wyeth in the American Southwest.

Guest: 01:22:07

So, yeah, those are some of my go to's.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:12

I've always been a big fan of Alfred Bierstadt.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:16

And Caspar David.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:17

And Caspar David Friedreich.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:19

I originally liked the Wander above the Sea of Fog.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:22

I think that's still a classic painting, but there's so many others of his that are so beautiful.

Guest: 01:22:27

Yeah, that's a good one.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:29

And Bierstadt's landscapes of the American west is like time traveling.

Guest: 01:22:34

Yeah, those are great.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:36

Wonderful.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:37

Well, thank you so much again for your time.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:39

We'll be sure to send people to your website and your Twitter.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:41

Thank you so much, Forrest.

Guest: 01:22:43

Yeah, thanks for having me, Will.

Guest: 01:22:44

Take care.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:45

Lord bless you.

Forrest Dickison: 01:22:46

Take care.