“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
-John. D. Rockefeller

I’ve completely spoiled you guys with game dev posts recently. Completely spoiled. Time to compensate with another rambling post about personal development! You, in the back there : Shutup and take your medicine.

I want to share something inspirational with you heathens. It absolutely blew my mind the first time I saw it and it shows the power of dedication and practice.

This awesome thing is this. A thread I found in the bowels of ConceptArt.org one day, while idly drooling over all the pretty pictures. Started by a fellow who calls himself MindCandyMan, aka Jonathan Hardesty.

His own words probably explain it best :

Hi Everyone,
If you didn’t see my last post(s) on www.conceptart.org then I will bring you up to speed. Basically I have been inspired by the art produced and the work ethic of Jon Foster, Andrew Jones, Jason Manley, and my brother “Smeagol71″ (among many others) and have decided to learn how to paint (primarily digitally). I am starting from rock bottom and I am going to paint at least one painting and do at least one sketch every day…probably two on the weekends. The order you see them in is the order that I am painting and/or sketching them…every day starting on 9/15/02. I am bearing my soul to everyone. I will post everything I do…whether it is awful or not. Most of the paintings and sketches, in the beginning, are going to look like crap but hopefully over the days/weeks/months/years they will start to get better. I have no formal art training but have signed up for classes this semester. I have a passion to paint and welcome any encouragement or critique that you want to give. Any feedback you want to give me you can leave in the threads I or just email me.
Thanks.

So. This guy is inspired by the cool artwork he sees others producing. He doesn’t think ‘well, that’s beyond me, I just wasn’t born with the talent I guess’. He commits to working hard, prepared for it to be a long haul. I was very lucky in that I stumbled over this thread years after he started so I got to see the full picture. Let’s have a look at some samples (I can’t post all of them as there are ton), starting in 2002.

His very first piece :

Clearly, a child prodigy born with natural abilities no one else has, no? No.

Some more :

Let’s skip forward in time a bit…

Right, enough pussyfooting around, let’s head to the end. 2007, 5 years of hard work and many, many updates later…

I think you’ll all agree with me when I say : Holy crap, that is fucking awesome.

Now, ConceptArt.org is littered with threads where beginners post up some pictures of their work and claim they are dedicating themselves to getting better. What separates this guy from all those others? About 70 pages of updates. He doesn’t show any more ‘talent’ than anyone else does when they start out, his work is just as fugly. The difference is that he set out to put in the hard work and he actually did it.

And 5 years later his works are up in exhibits. It’s worth noting that although directly witnessing his progress is fantastic, ALL good artists go through this process. It’s so damn easy to blame genetics for why we can’t achieve our dreams or lose weight or whatever, it makes it ‘not our fault’. Difficult to face the fact that what is lacking is not ‘talent’ but something infinitely rarer : Dedication. Focus. Perseverance.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
-Calvin Coolidge

I promised myself I’d only use two quotes for the footer and header, but this one is just too appropriate not to end with it. Bugger it.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.
-Vince Lombardi