A person who does things.

On Doing things and making things real.

The quote is actually;

In order to grow your audience you must betray their expectations.

I think Miyazaki is talking about growing your audience the way one might talk about growing a plant. He’s talking about creating positive change in them through surprise.

In my work so far I’ve mostly been thinking about meeting the expectations of my clients. And I think this is the goal of being a professional illustrator. Definitely NOT to betray their expectations, it’s not that kind of art. Maybe I can do that in my portfolio, but when the work starts. it’s all about matching the expectations set.

When do you aim to meet the creative expectations of an audience, and when is a good time to betray them?

Stephen Fry, Doesn’t like to be thought of as a noun. He finds it imprisoning. Rather he thinks of himself as a person who does things. We work so hard for our nouns, it’s easy to then want to crawl into them and stay there. But life is so much more beautiful lived as a person as the default state.

Have you allowed yourself to be defined by a noun? How might it be different if you thought of yourself as a person first?

This last note is about motivation. Someone asked me some years ago how I stay so motivated. And I said you mistake motivation for desperation. One day during the lockdown, I was looking through some of my vivid childhood dreams. And one of them was to become an Author and Illustrator. I asked myself this question. And the answer was no. So I started paying the price to make it real.

Do you have a “this”, a dream or ambition that you need to ask this question about? Is there a thing you want to do but can’t find the motivation, maybe this question will help.

🌎 Some recent posts on building a universe as an illustrator here and here.

💬 Some recent discussions