533 - Make People Feel Things, Hope in AI Crazed World AND Create to Your Taste

3 Dec 2025 · 1 h 15 min

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Creative Pep Talk Episode 533 Summary

Episode Details

  • Title: Make People Feel Things, Hope in AI Crazed World AND Create to Your Taste
  • Host: Andy J. Pizza
  • Featured Guests: Hosts of Grupo de Autoayuda de Dibujo Podcast
  • Episode Type: Special Edition Ask Dr. Pizza
  • Release Date: [Insert Date Here]

Episode Overview In this episode, Andy J. Pizza answers questions from the hosts of the Grupo de Autoayuda de Dibujo podcast. The conversation is rich with insights on creativity, the impact of AI on artists, and maintaining a personal creative discipline.

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Key Themes and Discussions

  1. The Nature of Creative Discipline
  2. Oxymoron of Creativity and Discipline: Andy discusses the balance between creativity (doing something new) and discipline (doing something consistently).
  3. Creative Practice: Emphasizes the importance of making creativity a practiced discipline to combat feelings of being lost on the creative journey.
  1. Importance of Emotional Connection in Art
  2. Making People Feel Things: The core of creating impactful art is to evoke emotions. Andy stresses that artists should focus on creating work that resonates on a deeper, emotional level.
  3. True vs. Manipulative Art: Differentiates between art that reflects genuine human experiences and propaganda that seeks to manipulate feelings.
  1. AI's Role in the Creative Sphere
  2. Concerns about AI: Addresses the anxiety many artists feel regarding AI taking over creative jobs.
  3. Human Factor in Art: Andy believes that human-made art will always have an edge because of the emotional connection it fosters. He suggests that the humanity of the artist will always matter.
  4. Cultural Consumption: Reflects on how people might feel conflicted about engaging with AI-generated art, versus art created by humans.
  1. Staying Motivated and Managing Creativity
  2. Motivation as Fuel: Andy refers to "clean fuel" (passion-driven work) versus "dirty fuel" (ego-driven pursuits like impressing others).
  3. Sustainable Creative Practices: Discusses the importance of personal significance in projects to maintain long-term motivation.
  1. Overcoming the Pressure of Social Media
  2. Tastes and Metrics: Warns against allowing social media metrics to dictate artistic success; emphasizes creating work that aligns with personal taste rather than trends.
  3. Palate Cleansing: Suggests engaging with other forms of media (like music or podcasts) that inspire genuine creativity and reset one's artistic perspective.

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Key Takeaways

  • Creativity should be practiced consistently, balancing spontaneity with discipline.
  • Emotional connection is vital in art; it should reflect genuine human experiences.
  • Despite the rise of AI, human artists have an irreplaceable quality due to their emotional depth.
  • Motivation should stem from personal significance, not from external validation.
  • Social media should not dictate artistic worth; focus on personal taste and connection instead.

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Featured Recommendations

  • Seth Worley's Film: A recommendation to check out "Sketch," a family movie that reflects humor and heart.
  • Other Podcasts: Suggests listening to "Working It Out" with Mike Birbiglia for insights on creative processes.

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Conclusion In this episode, Andy J. Pizza delivers an insightful discussion about the challenges and joys of the creative process, particularly in the context of today's digital landscape. Whether dealing with AI's impact or the pressures of social media, the emphasis remains on maintaining personal significance and emotional connection in all creative endeavors.

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Transcript

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0:00Hey y 'all, this is a special episode. I was a guest on this week's episode of Grupo de Atayuda de Debujo podcast, which in English translates to, I think, self-help drawing group. And it was such a good interview that I wanted to share it with y 'all. I had a freaking blast. They showed up with great questions in a really unique format, and we were just having the best time and i thought this is a bunch of stuff that i wanted to talk about on creative pep talk and i thought this just felt like great energy around it so we talk a little bit about ai stuff towards the end some things i wanted to address and explore we talk about uh the craft of making people feel things with your work and a whole bunch of other stuff i think you're gonna love this episode.

0:56I also wanted to share it because I know we have some Spanish speakers listen to this show. And I think this podcast, if you don't know about it, could be right up your alley. So I wanted to introduce you to that. Now, usually this show is in Spanish, but for this episode, they made an exception when they asked me to come on. And so just a heads up, the little bit at the start is still in Spanish, but then we go in and the rest of it is in English. So I hope you love it as much as I did. And yeah, here it is. On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

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3:08now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash P-E-P-T-A-L-K. Free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash PepTalk. Hola, este es el podcast del grupo de autoayuda de dibujo. Mi nombre es Iván Mallorquin y me encuentro aquí. Bueno, es una episodio muy especial. Entonces voy a decir tu nombre tal cual, Raúl. And then we'll follow the special guest of today. I'm with Raúl Pardo. Please, I'm excited. And here we have Andy J. Pizza. Nothing more and less. A legend, not only in this podcast, but in our professional careers. So Andy, we're very happy to be here. And for being a English-speaking guest, we're going to do a little switch to English.

4:03but the whole episode will be with subtitles in Spanish. So, for all of you who want to follow subtitles, it's when it's now. So, Andy, welcome to this podcast. We're very, very excited to have you here. Hey, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for making accommodations for me for this special episode. It's very, very deserved. And first of all, thank you for all the things you have given to our gremio, to our industry for this past 10 years in specific that you've been making your podcast. It's been 10 years and like 500 episodes or something. Yeah, a little bit over 500. So, yeah, we've been doing this for three years, and we just hit the 200-episode mark, and we thought it was like a huge amount.

4:53But then we see projects like yours with just so much content. So just in case you never listened to Andy's podcast, we recommended Cinco de Cinco Cinco Estrellas. It's called Creative Pep Talk, and it's been a long ride, right? Andy, how has it been for you, like, been making that podcast for that long? it's been really interesting and i've had a lot of ups and downs in my kind of relationship to it i've mostly i've always felt passionate about doing it i've always like felt strongly about the messages and and why i'm doing it but the productivity aspect of like just getting it done and continuing to be on schedule, that I've gone all over the place over the 10 years now.

5:54And I think that's normal. So for right now, I'm in a pocket where I'm like really enjoying it at this moment. So I'm aware of like, oh, it just kind of ebbs and flows. And sometimes that has to do with the other projects that I'm doing and whether I'm too busy or, yeah, a lot of different factors. But it's been, you know what I love about it the most is probably, other than just being an extension of my love for creative people and creative weirdos, and I love, these are the people I like in the real world. I love yeah I love creative people I want to see them succeed I feel like our world is not set up for them to succeed so I have a lot of compassion for them so I love that that's obviously at the center of it and then selfishly I love that both on a storytelling front and then an illustration front because I do episode art every time with every episode It feels kind of like a creative gym.

7:08So I'm just always working on those creative muscles. I'm always trying to find the metaphor. I'm always trying to find the analogy and put it in the story or in the episode and into the artwork. And I think I just like, I like that it's become a practice for me. And it keeps me engaged creatively. I'm always, I'm able to get excited about what I do most weeks, partially because of it. Most weeks. Yeah, most weeks, not all weeks. Not all weeks. I try to do it every week. You know, I'm always trying to find something to be excited about. It's not always possible, but because I like the idea of, you know, Seth Godin talks about, he's a marketing guy, talks about how you don't really need your surgeon to be authentic.

8:03You just need him to be good. And I think creativity is different than that. But I like this idea of being a professional, having a practice, making it a habit, whether you feel like you're in the mood or not. I think a specific thing of your podcast, that it's not only that stands out in between creative podcasts, but like in podcasts in general, is that podcasts are very hard and a lot of labor to like keep them going. but you take it like a step further because there's like soup traumas going on and soup projects inside the podcast and just like different experiments. And all of that takes just so much extra effort that I don't know if everybody like sees it because it's just a lot of job to do a podcast, even though if it's like super practical, just giving like good data, but you give it like storytelling and concept and whatnot.

9:01So we appreciate that a lot because it just takes like double of the normal podcast effort. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Thanks for seeing the extra effort. I think one thing that helps is that I have a few different formats. I think the thing that I try to do is I'm always trying to deliver on the feeling that I think people push play for. So that's the thing I'm always thinking about is why would someone play this podcast? What's the emotion they're after? What's the experience? What are they trying to get from this? that can be consistent every time. And then how can I deliver that in a few different ways?

9:40Because the really concept-heavy solo episodes take a lot more work than the interview episodes or the Q &A episodes. But I'm trying to give the same sort of thing, trying to make it additive to have these different formats. Like you're getting something more than if I was just doing the hard version every single time. But you're also getting kind of the same thing, no matter what format it is. And you think that exercise can translate to the illustration world? I mean, like, when you don't feel like I can... Today, I don't feel like I can do, like, a big drought. I don't know. It's something you think about it?

10:29Oh, yeah, definitely. And I think in both ways. So I think about, I love what Christoph Niemann says about this. He's an illustrator. He has a talk. I think it was at a conference called 99U. It's on the internet. And I think about this all the time. And he said, like, the job of the professional is to be good every time. You have to be good. But you can't control whether you're great. great happens on accident or it happens while you're there sometimes it happens to be great but if you're a professional you can do good every time that's your that's the craft and so I do think I think that that connects to the thing I was talking about where I'm thinking about what is the feeling or the outcome that I want to have happen from this thing I'm making.

11:28And that is true for a podcast episode, but it's also true for a talk. It's also true for a picture book. It's also true for an illustration. I think a lot about, it's a craft thing. I think about when I go tell stories, I'm not just thinking, what's a good story? I have and I still feel like a student of all of these things because because you can't be great every time you always are going to be in that student position. You're always learning. You're always trying. But I when it comes to like, oh, I'm going to tell a story and I want this sort of emotional outcome. the only way that you can do that as a professional and do that every time is if you reverse engineer the recipe of how do you produce that so I've studied a lot of like I've taken if I hear if I heard a talk or a podcast and there was a really or a stand-up set you know stand-up comedy and there was a great bit that I was obsessed with it made me cry I would record that little bit and then I would just listen to it over and over again and all I'm listening to it I'm using my brain like it's a metal detector of like how okay that's the feeling what contributed to that feeling how did that happen and so everything that I do is like that like if we have a book we have a new kid's book out called mysterious things and every page we were trying to explore a different way to make you feel that feeling when you encounter a mystery and so there's a bunch of craft elements to that um so yeah i think about i think about these things i also like doing them in podcasts and talks and picture books and illustrations because you're kind of in a way you're doing similar things in all those places and things I'll learn in podcasting will make me a better better illustrator and things in illustration and vice versa like um they all kind of fit together in a way that's really fun and satisfying to me and when when did you have like that switch of putting that much attention to what things made you feel to learn from them because I think we are like in the opposite situation like like the actual contest context of social media it's the time that we consume more and more and more and more artist stuff but the time that we less analyze it and dissect it and like really learn from it like if you go to a museum you may stand for five minutes since like seeing a picture, but in Instagram you see like 0.1 second each image.

14:22I think that I didn't start doing that until probably about 10 years ago when I started the podcast is when I was just starting to think a lot more about craft, think a lot more about like the mechanics of how art makes you feel something. um and you know just as just as an aside uh a lot of people when you start talking about art like this a lot of people some people get excited other people feel nervous that we're in the realm of manipulating people and you know taking advantage of them tricking them brainwashing them because you're making them feel something and i think that i think that's a valid concern but i think what they're talking about is not art it's propaganda and i think the idea of the difference to me is that art really works i think because you're trying to make them feel something true something that they can get on board with that their humanity can reflect and embrace because they're like, yeah, that's my experience.

15:40That's what it's like to be alive. And I feel like propaganda is trying to make them something feel, trying to make them feel something that isn't true. And we know it's not true, but we're going to try to convince them it is through manipulative tactics. So I think they're very different kinds of things. Anyway, um, what did you ask? We're talking about propaganda manipulation. You already answered it, that you changed the switch on putting attention when you started a podcast. But yeah, that makes sense when you put attention to, like when you, the first time that you give a workshop or you have to put down the theory that maybe you had it, but you've never put it down on paper.

16:21Yes, I completely agree with that. And this is something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I really recommend that. that uh so yeah i was already an illustrator before i started the podcast but then you're right as you start having to articulate it you have to think a lot more about it but the thing is is that not only does do you think more about that and you can talk more about that when you start teaching it you get better at doing it and so the thing i i really recommend teaching to all artists find ways to teach everything you just learned try to try to teach it right away and the reason why is because the best practices in learning require you to do what they call active recall like the best way to study is actually to try to figure it out and then see if you can explain it and if you can explain it you will start internalizing it so that's like a study hack but that's you can use that in your own art and I think also the reason why I had already been in the illustration game at the time I at the time I launched my podcast I'd already been illustrating for like six years um and I that's when from when I first got my first freelance jobs and I think that it's normal for those first years to be thinking a lot more surface level you're really thinking about aesthetic and your skill level whether you can draw whether you can paint whatever you know whatever it is and you're really thinking about the surface of things like for a lot of people I feel like we fall in love with the art and at first we just think it's the style that we love and so i think that was the other piece is that that's when i was starting to get into wanting to connect on a deeper level but it's a hard thing to overcome because the thing that stops people i think from pushing further and going deeper and learning that craft stuff is feeling like you're not going to be able to learn it like you're not you don't have the natural capabilities to learn how to tell a story that way or learn how to draw that way or learn how to come up with concepts or i don't know if everyone relates to that but that was a huge hurdle for me is that when i started hearing people tell talk about this is how you this is how you tell a story these are the concept these are the theories my initial reaction to that craft was a rejection because I, and it, it came from a place of, I was saying, I don't want to be formulaic.

19:13I just want to do my own thing. And I think there was some truth in that, but ultimately I think it was a, I don't believe I can learn that. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. Especially, especially when, when you, yeah, when you realize that, that, sorry, our, our dog producer. The public is crazy about that. He loved it. I'm a huge dog person So I'm a huge fan of it She's always here watching over us She was listening to you I feel that we get a little bit afraid Especially when we realize How much effort Good storytelling takes How much effort Whatever craft takes So it's like, oh fuck If I'm going to spend the next 10 years Learning that craft Maybe, I don't know if I want to go that road and maybe get disillusioned.

20:08I totally agree with that. I think a while ago, the 10 ,000 hour rule was something that you heard about all the time. Like if you wanna be a master, you gotta spend 10 ,000 hours. I think that, to me, that idea is so overwhelming. It's like, oh, I can enjoy what I'm making in 10 years after I put all, you know, like that's so discouraging. And to me, I think the other thing that helped was realizing you can learn to do something cool with craft in one day. In one day, you can learn a little piece of that. And I think for me, that's why I think storytelling is something you could study forever because it's so rich.

20:55It's so much like an externalized version of our minds. Like that's how rich and complex story is. that I think it's kind of like our psyches on pages. And so it's very, very complicated and interesting and powerful. And so I think I could learn about it my whole life, but also I was learning pieces of it throughout the 10 years of making the podcast. And I learned, oh, this is how you hook somebody, okay? I can learn how to hook somebody in a few months. And then I can learn, oh, this is how you get the metaphor. And this is where you start tapping into the symbolism or what's the motivation or where's the tension.

21:40There's so much to go at, but you can actually become a master at a little part of it and put it to practice in your creative work as soon as you learn it. But yeah, you're right. It's easy to get overwhelmed by that journey if you're trying to take it all at once. Yeah, it happens to all of us. We have for you, Andy, nine questions. This physical Instagram. It's a fake Instagram. So cool. I love it. Because you don't have comments, you don't have hate here because it's just paper. You also don't have hate in the real life. It's a safe Instagram. Yeah, it's a safe place. So yeah. So cool. You can choose or greet and every pick has like a question.

22:31Okay, I'm going to put it a little bit closer. Okay. I think I recognize these. Let's choose the you already have the key, mainly because I don't know where that one's going. Perfect. It's curious to me. You already have the key. All right. That was a great choice. Good. So we're going to see what's... The question is... So it says, you have a book about creativity that is filled entirely with quotes on creativity. which do you think it's the best quote or thought you've ever heard about being a creative person that's a great book by the way thank you so much yeah that was a creative pep talk book and it's filled with 50 different lettering pieces from 50 different artists uh the ones that come to mind first i think the the one that comes to mind first is john bergerman has one and it says something like um don't try to be good just try to be different it's something like that that's the concept of it and i think that that is at the center of being an artist because i'm not a huge i don't really believe in any personality tests but i enjoy indulging them because less because of the answers they give you and more because of the questions they give you.

24:04They're good at self-reflecting, even if they're not super effective or real, maybe. Are you guys familiar with the Enneagram? No, not really. Okay, I'm not a huge Enneagram guy, but I had my little spell of diving into it and trying to figure it out. Essentially, in the Enneagram, there are they claim there's nine personality types and each one each one is kind of built on a flaw that you have now i don't love that first of all because that's only nine flaws and that's it you're uniquely wrong yeah exactly exactly that's that's why i'm not crazy about it and i don't think that they really sell it that way but the more you dive in you realize like at the core of this it's a negative self-psychology that's like you're broken here's the particular way um and so i don't love that element of it but um i i think there's some interesting ideas in there and one of them is if you're a type four this is a typical artist type and it kind of says like you want it you're like a perfectionist that knows they can't be good or perfect you're like you want so badly to be uh perfect but you are you know that you can't be and so you've settled for then i will be different if i can't be good i'll be weird and i think there's just something about and so the flaw of that is and this is a flaw of mine for sure this is actually something that i think i struggle with and it's that uh i think in order to be all of the flaws the core flaws are about what you think you need to be to be lovable okay instead of just being who you are and so what afford thinks they need to be is different they need to be original they need to be unique and if and so if anything threatens my originality that really stings I'm like oh no like that's where that's the center of my lovability is being weird um so I think that uh and when so when I get like a dose of like yeah you're you're not special bud you're you're just another guy um then i can get like oh i have to like really work through that but i love that so that's what it makes me think of but that's my favorite i that's one of my favorites there's a bunch of good ones in there but i like that because i also like it because um this is so that was more like therapy andy but this is the the relevant side for creative uh stuff um i like it because when we i'm just about to do an episode on this when we compare ourselves to our heroes or our peers even and we start thinking about okay as a creative i need to offer something different when we think that the first thing that comes to mind is i need that we translate that to i need to offer something better but that's not true you can actually offer something worse that's your taste so that's an easier question to answer so instead of trying to be good like them try to be different and so i think about it like okay write your few like contemporaries that you're like i'm in the realm of this in this market maybe it's editorial illustration maybe it's design, designing logos, whatever it is, whatever your thing is.

27:57And you think these are, this is the crew that I wish that I was a part of. Instead of thinking, how could I be good like that? Or how could I better them? You can think what's something I'm willing to do because it's my like guilty pleasure taste that they wouldn't be caught dead doing. That's how I can find my own path. Um, that also takes the pressure off. It takes the pressure off. Yeah, absolutely. Here on the podcast, we always say that to make something different for an artist is a great way to stop comparing because you can always try to be something different or something weird instead of trying to be better than someone in particular.

28:42So I think that's a great way to stop feeling that way. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think it's much more achievable than – I also think it gets closer to what – we're going too long on – are we going to get through all nine of these? Is that the plan? We don't have to do them all. Some maybe will go shorter. Okay. All right. Because we're going pretty hard on this one. Yeah, I know. I know. Sorry about that. But, yeah, yeah. I think that's – I'll say one other thing. I'll just say that I think also that shift is really important because I don't think making art is primarily about impressing people.

29:27So when we think about, you know, we were talking about earlier, when you go to make something and you're thinking about the feeling that you're trying to produce in them, the default feeling that we tend to go towards is impressing them. It's one of the least interesting things you can do with art, in my opinion. Like there's so much more, so many more feelings that you could produce in somebody. And impressing them is just so ego driven. Yeah. Yeah. So I like being, and comparing yourself and trying to better somebody that's wrapped up in being impressive, being, yeah, better, being the best.

30:09And I just don't think that's really what art's about. And you think social media, like, have that, like, make you feel like you should be impressive or you should be lovable? This is something, like, sometimes, like, affect your art or the way you make illustration? Me personally? Yeah. Yeah, of course. And I, you know, I think, I think that one of the, one of the great things you can do is what we just talked about, which is disappoint your heroes. That's one of the best things you could do is I always think about this in terms of Star Wars, like Luke becomes his own hero when he disobeys Yoda.

30:53You have to do that at some point. And like, for me, it was dumb things like calling myself Annie J pizza. I can tell you the list of my four favorite artists or whatever. And I think all four of them would think that was dumb. And so I can feel like, what do I have to lose now? Now I'm just like doing my thing. And I think that definitely helps. That's so cool. I like that you brought up the, the MDJ pizza switch. It was so cool to see it like from the outside, like what is he thinking? But not, not like in, what is he thinking? It's just like, what is he? I feel disappointed, man. You're one of those artists.

31:28No, No, I'm just kidding. No, it was a fun thing. Thank you. Okay, let's go next. Yeah, all right, let's go. Let's go to keep digging. Let's go to keep digging. So we have this next question. It says, what do you think it's the secret or one of the secrets to keep a project going for a long time? Very similar to what we've been talking about in your project. How to stay motivated on the long run? Because motivation, as we know, it's like a finite supply. So you have to be a good manager of motivation. I definitely think so. I think it makes me think of a couple things. One, Hank Green. So John and Hank Green are like famous YouTubers, if people aren't familiar.

32:19And I've heard Hank Green talk about dirty fuel versus clean fuel when it comes to motivation. And that dirty fuel is like what we were talking about, like trying to impress people or trying to win or trying to get followers or whatever. And he kind of says, like, you can run on dirty fuel sometimes. Like, it's not that it's not all bad. It's just that it's not sustainable. It's not. It's like fossil fuels. Like, OK, we're using them, but we're running out of time. And it's not the greatest choice. But so there are a lot of things like that. And then I think the clean fuel is it has to be attached to, I think it usually is attached to the greater good or something and something deeply personal to you.

33:10And the way I think about that is the only projects that I've been able to stick to are the ones where they have personal significance for me. so the podcast has personal significance because i have so much i'm adhd i i'm neurodivergent a lot of my friends and family are neurodivergent and i watch myself and them struggle to just get up and get on with stuff so much and see how many things are not designed with people like us in mind and how much creativity and strategy and effort it takes to live well if you're one of these people and so and I and I had a you know front seat to watching my mom as a very different kind of weirdo really really struggle through her whole journey and it and even if I you know sometimes we'll have someone at the house like there was a guy who came and worked on our furnace a couple years ago and he mentioned he was ADHD and I listened I could just pick up on all these little he was telling me little stories and stuff he went to the he was in the military which is just a real I can't imagine being an ADHD person in the military and I could just feel his burden and grief and so that's for me that's the kind of fuel that means I could literally do this forever because I just care about it.

34:39It's something that's so real to me. But then it also manifests in storytelling. I think I had a book coach, like a book writing coach for just a few sessions. This was probably like six or seven years ago. And I was telling him this idea of like, this is what I wanna make. This is the next kind of thing I wanna write about. And he's like, oh, it sounds really cool, but why do you want to write it? What does it have to do with your life? Why does it matter to you? And I think that's such a valuable insight because if the story you're telling is you lived it, you are willing to, you can recenter yourself back on that.

35:21Every time you get overwhelmed, every time you're tired, every time you get discouraged, you can go back to, well, this is why I'm telling it. And you can feel the emotion of it. And that emotion is such a motivator. So it reminds me also of James Gunn. He has a really good example of this with the Superman movie. I don't think he ever came out and said this, but maybe he did. But I was listening to him in an interview talk about his life over the past few years. And the story of Superman, the new movie, mirrors his life of getting canceled and fired from Marvel. And then redeeming himself through this comeback.

36:07And that same thing is what happens in the movie. That's what happens to Superman. He essentially gets canceled and the people around him know who he really is and support him. And that's what happened to James Gunn. And so I think you have to tap into your sincere, meaningful experiences. And if you're creating from that place, you're going to have a well of energy that you can't get if you're just trying to be cool. Trying to be cool is like dirty fuel. It just doesn't last. Super small, dirty fuel. Yes, it is. It really is. And do you keep that in mind now with any project that you make? What is the thing that it's like?

36:50I do. Even if it's like one of the projects we did that might not be obviously meaningful, a book that I made with Kyle Shealy, it's called A Pizza With Everything On It. To me, so that book, if you read it and kids read it, it's like ridiculously dumb and weird. And the ending is, and they recreate the universe out of pizza. Great. It's like, what is this about? What is the point? And I've come to think of that. I've come to think of pizza in that book as the symbol of indulging kids. It's an indulgent food. It's indulging their desire for fun and nonsense. And so I remember the books that I had when I was a kid that saw me as a kid, as a person, not as a potential adult.

37:52And so I like that. One of my favorite books was called The Stinky Cheese Man by John Cheska. I don't know if you guys familiar with this book. No, I love the title. It's so good. It's so great. It's so good. And it's full of irreverent, weird, nonsensical things. And I remember just feeling like this book was for me. This wasn't, I don't even know if my teachers want me to have this book. It's like, it has no redeemable value other than it was fun to read. And so I think even in something like that, that's nonsensical, I'm going to try to center on what is, what is, what matters about this to me.

38:35And it really does help me with the longer term stuff. You know, there's client stuff that's a lot more short term that maybe I don't always find the bigger picture other than feeding my children or something. But, you know, that's, that's meaningful. But those longer personal ones, I think you need a little bit more incentive. That's really cool to keep in mind, almost like a professional part of the of like your your uh method like okay this project what does it mean to me and then also the timeline and all the important stuff but just this important okay just just clean feel man clean too man keep feel man

39:33I'm going to pick one that's calling me, even though it's not my favorite of the ones that are on there. And it's the middle, which is the don't fall for it. And it's the little Instagram mousetrap. Yeah. All right. Don't fall for it. It says, it can be really hard not to measure the success of a drawing or project by social media metrics. How do you personally evaluate the success of what you make and like trying to avoid serving the algorithm? Yeah, so I, okay, so for me, the foundation of making stuff is taste. And I know when I use that word, I feel like I'm trying to imbue it. I'm trying to add new meaning to it.

40:30So it's not just like, oh, you like good things. It's taste almost in the same way that your tongue works. So it's not just, oh, you have a discerning eye and you know the good stuff and the bad stuff. It's less about that and it's more about how you receive it, like your taste buds. So I think that you're only, yes, you can learn craft. That's a big deal. but the thing you need as you move through it is the taste to know whether this tastes good to you or not you i like to think of it as like as you're making the recipe you're tasting it as you go to see like um whether this is working right and so that's how i think about taste and what i mean by that is the feeling that I'm trying to produce in the audience I should be feeling that while I'm making it I should be it like so when it comes to like we just wrote a book that we're pitching and it's a longer book it's a it's a story and we've been working on it for a long time and then we got it to a place where I could read through it.

41:57Like it's not perfect. It's got, it's messy, whatever. But all the beats of the story are there. And I felt the emotion that we were going for three times while reading it. And what that did was I told, so my wife and I, Sophie, wrote it together. And I said to her, I was like, okay, we can pitch it. And I do not care what they think about it. I want them to buy it but I don't care if they like it I don't care if they get it it doesn't matter it literally does not matter to me and I the reason I say that so emphatically is because there were lots of times in my creative journey where I could never imagine that being true I could never imagine getting to a place in my career where I would make something and I literally don't care what people think about it but this is but I think as you when you get into those places where you're really making to your own taste you just feel like there's nothing better that i could do this is what i like um so you know i'm very happy to have done that and one of the things that happens is you know we've had a couple books that were pretty successful but there's nothing better than invisible things that book that we made uh when i go to a school or i go do a reading or something and a lot of the kids like it they seem to engage with it but there's always like every once in a while there's like one kid that comes to me later and is like i love this book like this book is weird and like i've never seen anything like this book and i'm like that's it that's the only thing is that i knew that if i like this someone out there is going to feel the same thing I'm feeling.

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43:46Um, and so to me, that's why taste. And I like to think of it as finding your creative super taste. So super tasters is a real term that's used for people that have tons of taste buds. Yeah. So one thing that I didn't know, yeah, a super taster. Yeah. And the thing is, is that, um, people, I didn't know this, but, uh, your tongue, every person's tongue has there's a wide variety of how many taste buds a tongue could have so some people have a few hundred and then other people have thousands and so a super taster is and you might actually be really picky if you're a super taster you might that's kind of funny like um some people know that i love story and they just expect that i'm like reading all these books and consuming all these movies all the time like i'm super picky like i am super picky before i pick something before i indulge in it because i have really specific taste um and i'm sensitive to it um and so i think about taste that way it's like your receptivity how much can you pick up on the nuance of what's going on and how it's working and what the recipe is um that is and so if you can make stuff that's your taste and it really does make you feel something i think that's the key because you're like okay they don't get it i i will try to make it if if people that have my taste don't get it then i will go back and think okay how could i fix it somehow because it's not communicating but just the other piece of it sorry i'm ranting on this bill but i i'm very passionate about this because i think it's a super it's a super problem for creative people this social media thing and one of the things that um the other thing i try to remember is like okay if i gave this story to somebody that i know we have the same taste in this kind of story and it doesn't do anything for them that's relevant feedback that is okay that's relevant feedback but the internet especially now more than ever um things like instagram tick tock youtube all the stuff um it's really maximized you know how earlier we were talking about when you're trying to produce a feeling that the go-to can easily be like impressing people right that's one feeling the internet is like that but it's a different feeling and or it's a it might be a collection of a few feelings or it could be youtube is one kind of feeling instagram is one kind of feeling tiktok's one kind of feeling but they're all around what makes something viral yeah and the thing about that is none of my favorite pieces of art would go viral almost almost none like if i think about my favorite song there's nothing about that that produces the kind of feeling that makes it viral that makes it the kind of thing that people share rapidly the my favorite movie the same there's nothing about that where you're like oh man i've got to retweet this like it's a totally different feeling that doesn't succeed on the internet in a viral way and so for me i'm always thinking about i try to take it with a grain of salt like i'm not even in the business of making virality and a lot of the viral things don't have the weight that i appreciate now i'm not saying it's not a skill it is a skill it's a skill it's a skill i respect it's just not a game that i i don't i can't play it because i'm not good at it and you know every once in a while every you know the other thing is the other part of virality is it's literally like if the business world only interviewed like the business magazines and all the books imagine all the business books were written by people that had won the lottery you'd be like how did they do it they don't know because it was by chance and so for me um that's how i kind of think about like if i continue to make stuff that is my taste typically like every five years something goes a little bit viral and that kind of picks up some new things into my atmosphere.

48:17And that's great. But I can learn, like, if I just keep doing my thing, every once in a while it'll kind of hit a different thread or a nerve and take off. But I don't need to concern myself with that too much. Yeah, I think that a lot of, first of all, I love that we are diving in in this topic specifically because a lot of people that hear, that listen to our show, they're, like, on the younger side. And I think that a lot of us have our taste buds, our digital content, social media taste buds, like, fucked up. And we've only been tasting that. So my question would be, like, what do you think could be a good, like, ginger or wasabi or whatever that cleans your taste buds to, like, focus on what's your taste and not, like, the social media taste?

49:10I love that you said that. I was hoping you were going to go to the palate cleanser. because I thought that's such a good idea. Yeah, I think there's a couple things, but I'll say this. One of the things I'm really aware of is we have these different modes in our brain. One is like the achievement awareness, which is like making money, succeeding, ego-driven kind of stuff. and then the other one is this more transcendent relational emotional brain and obviously we have a bunch more going on up there but we have those two different things and one of the things that really was enlightening to me was reading in this book it's called the master and his emissary and it's about those two kind of modes.

50:04And they say that this achievement brain, when you're there, it doesn't respect the other one. But when you're over here in the more awakened awareness or right brain, you could say, it respects the other one. So as an example, I don't know any artist that doesn't respect the skills of a person that can do taxes now we might not be huge fans of them or whatever you know we'll poke at humor at them we're all like they can do something that we can't I don't even know what they're doing I'm respecting that but this side doesn't really feel the same way about artists and that's why I think actually that's a whole other topic on AI is I think the reason they're the ones quick to want to replace us uh is because they don't respect us whereas we could actually replace them much easier with robots like it's meant to do math like it's it's right there man but we didn't leap to that because we don't want to because we're like we we get it we respect them anyway that's a whole other whole other thing but um uh but the reason i brought it up is because we all have these modes and when we get when I find myself in the achievement brain which is I need to go viral I need to get my stuff out there I need to make more money on it whatever it is I don't even respect the other side of me and so I have to when i find myself in this zone that's when i have to find the palette cleansers and i what i've learned is there's a few things that will will push me into that other side and remember like oh yeah like i actually care more about art than i do money or whatever um and so so for me i think it comes with an awareness of that's something you need and then you can make your own list of like Like these are my, this is my ginger.

52:13One of mine right now is this podcast called Working It Out with Mike Birbiglia. He's a standup comedian. They're always talking about, they're really working out comedy bits and they're getting into the craft. And they're in awe of when something works. And every time I listen to that, I'm like, art. I love art. That's what I want to do. And so anything like that. And then also like, yeah, I have another practice that I created a little project with my buddy, Andrew Nyer, who's a designer and concept artist, where it's a hundred song playlist of your top 100 songs of all time. And you can change it, you know, and you can be, it's a working document, so it always changes.

53:06but there's something about if i put that on almost any time those songs are designed to like get me into that state where i'm like oh this feels like i'm entering another world and so yeah little things like that i think are really important um to to cleanse your palate with and the and and for a long time uh created pep talk never been on social media like really I've never been on Instagram. And I think YouTube is like a recent thing. So what do you think is the positive side for an artist to be on social media? Like maybe it's none. No, I think there is. I think there is. I think if you're strategic with it, it can be very useful.

53:57Okay. So I would say there's three parts to a business. in turn when it comes to like making sales so you have the discovery which is people finding out about you then there's the the trust which is people developing trust enough to okay they heard about you now they're learning about you and then they're buying those are the three so sales is at the bottom and the thing about that is oh we almost only think about this one we only think about well my big problem is no one knows I exist here's what I'll do I'll go viral everyone will know me and then I'll figure out what the heck I'm gonna sell no like it doesn't work it doesn't work I know people that have hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers and it didn't solve all their business problems right it actually works way better if you go the other way and so i think that you know bringing up youtube like we had different growth strategies for the podcast before we went on youtube but they were a lot more slow and steady they were word of mouth and then they were like proximity with other podcasts by pod swapping and stuff like that both of those are like slow term growth like really putting in work to to to grow and so really the podcast was it started it started with sales now I'll just say real quick I always like to point out I'm ADHD I can't do anything I don't want to do so not long term I can do it in a short term for a little while but if I do it if I try to do it long term I start self-destructing and getting terrible habits and you know self-destruct um so when I say that because I wanted to do the podcast because it was an extension of what I was already doing the first time that I ever got an illustration job all I wanted to do and all I did was call my friends back home and was like here's how I did it I created a website I emailed these blogs I'm doing it man you should try this try it like I was just and I just love doing that like I want to I get a lot of i get so much satisfaction from figuring something out and helping somebody else do it i just like doing it but when i um and so what i wanted to do is i wanted to do talks because i got that satisfaction from those talks i loved that feeling of like i'm doing something meaningful um and so the sales part of the podcast was the product which is where i think you should start sales at the bottom not up here um so because it's easier to do this well doing this well is almost doing discovery well is almost impossible um but doing sales you can learn the craft it's a it's a matter of like learning um and so the podcast started with i wanted to get talks i wanted to get the um speaking gigs um then the next layer up was okay i'm going to create the podcast as a way of building trust that I can do talks.

57:16So that's what that, that personal project is always that trust level. It's always like, show them that you can do it. And so the podcast was, that's why it started as a solo podcast was because I wanted it to be like a portfolio of talks. And then, then I can start thinking about once I have those two things established then I can think about discovery and then that one even then social media is not the best way to do that like I said I think the two best way to do that are well word of mouth which are not completely in control of but the one that you are in control of is we'll just call it collaborations like being part of a scene enough to be able to make features on their songs and they're you're on their songs and they're on your songs and you know whatever um they're on your podcast you're on their theirs whatever um and so that one that's how i would do it and then yes so then after we did that for 10 years then we got on a youtube and now youtube has some of the positive qualities of social media where there's no other way for a podcast if you're getting a thousand views a video if you're getting a thousand listens per episode of your podcast almost nothing can happen on an audio podcast where the next one you get 40 ,000 it's just it's almost impossible whereas that happens on YouTube and so after all of that building I think it makes sense to be on social media and keep throwing stuff out and hoping that every once in a while every five years you'll win the lottery and you'll get a little bit of a boost of some kind um but if you don't have a product and you don't have any way for them to go deeper on that product and get to know it it's really a waste of time that's an awesome way that's an awesome advice and also that happened that happened a lot when instagram used to do this like features when they had like a lot of years ago that they have like this feature page and a lot of artists that we know ended up there and went from 300 followers to 100 ,000 and then they became just a follower graveyard and it just worked against them like hard.

59:34That can definitely happen for sure. Yeah, for sure. And if you don't have that, if you don't have the business structure, it's not gonna pay off. Like if they don't know how to hire you, all they're gonna do is follow you and that doesn't actually do, There are things you can do with that, but it's just, it's not very valuable, honestly. You can make like an army of bots or you can be like a influencer for zombies. It's not very functional. Okay, we'll go for the last one because we know that we've extended, but we love all of our questions and all of your answers. So let's go for the last one.

1:00:09Okay, I'm going to pick the one, the last one that's in the middle row. All right. Which is from a project I did called Right Side Out. Yeah, that was an awesome, very feelings project. Yeah, big feelings. Big feelings. Yeah. All right, so it says, AI is discouraging a lot of illustrators, especially young illustrators, but all kinds of illustrators who are just starting out. What do you think human-made art has as an advantage over AI art? Great question. and uh i'm going to um okay i've been thinking a lot about this i've tried really hard to not talk about ai a ton on my podcast because it we just are inundated we're just an avalanche of ai information every day everywhere you look and i just want to part of me is like i'm going to make a podcast where most of the time that doesn't even get mentioned because we get a little break from it you know what i mean um but at the same time i i will address it on occasion because it's such a huge thing obviously um okay i'll say uh two things um my two main thoughts around ai the The first one is, so over the past, I get really encouraged by the idea of cancel culture.

1:01:40Very inspired by this. And the reason why is because it's not really because I have a huge stance on whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Or can you separate the art from the artist? Should you? Is it a case-by-case thing? I don't really know. I don't really know the answer to any of those things. But the thing that makes me inspired by it is the fact that we feel conflicted about consuming art from people that we think are monsters makes me think we're going to feel conflicted about consuming art from robots. if we don't want to consume art from monsters we probably don't want to consume art from robots does that make sense like the humanity of the artist already mattered before robots started doing their thing because when we found out that like it's for me it's a case-by-case thing but like when i found out that bill cosby had all these had admitted to some of these things even on record like i couldn't enjoy what he did ever again mainly because it was such a it was so dramatically different to the person he was pretending to portray that ruined it for me right and so what that tells me is there's something about art that is about a human connecting to a human and we can't get away from that completely and so i think there's always going to be a case for that it's the same reason why you know gorillas aren't like obsessed with us like even if ai and robots just totally blow us out of the water we are still going to be looking for humans because that's what we are you know what i mean and so i think and uh So I think that part of me feels encouraged by that, no matter how all this AI stuff plays out, which I don't think anybody can predict or we can't really understand how this is going to go.

1:03:52I think at the end of the day, I mean, it also helps that my taste is very lo-fi. I like like very human broken stuff. That's the kind of stuff that I like. And so I feel like we're – I think we're – yeah. So that's one thing that's very encouraging to me. The other side of it, I haven't heard anybody really talk about this, but I mentioned it earlier. I thought about how, yes, these achievement brain dominant people were very quick to disrespect the arts. Very quick to be like, we can replace you like that. Boom, we don't even need you anymore. And that hurts. But also the other side, the artists, I don't even see them thinking, hmm, could we replace the publishers, the record labels, the accountants?

1:04:49Like, could we do that? like what would it so on the other side in terms of doing your taxes and and uh writing your contracts and understanding if a contract is trying to take advantage of you or if they're loopholes or those sorts of things like all of that logic-based stuff like ai is gonna crush that it's gonna be it's built for that it's ones and zeros like it it just makes so much sense now i personally don't want to run to replace the people that do that stuff however there may come a time where there is no option because they've completely taken us out of the equation now i don't know still i have big problems with the environmental issue of it and all that but it's just it's a hypothetical at the end of the day here's what i really think is true if we put in front of general the general public two options and one option is this is a record label of executives that are billionaires and their musicians are AI that's your that's one option a option B is real people that are musicians and their label is AI which one are is going to be interesting to people it's super obvious like it's there's no question and so i don't actually want to move into a future where i replace all the people i work with outside of the creative sphere with robots and ai but um it does give me hope to realize like the creative side isn't the thing that the consumer i think is trying to outsource yeah you know what i mean now we could get into all the other aspects of it of like whether there's any creative value there whether interesting things are going to come out of that whether whether it's just a completely unethical thing these are all really like i think interesting important conversations but at the end of the day those two thoughts are the things that make me feel a lot of hope about the future of art with people thank you I almost cried in the robots part yeah I think it when when you talk it out and when you when I listen to it it sounds like kind of obvious because it's like of course I would choose option B or whatever but yeah I think that that sometimes it's like what you said it's so in every day so and especially in the creative world like ai ai ai that sometimes we think it's hard to take a distance and just think about like the human part of it it's just thanks man i think you need to listen yeah yeah i really i really appreciate it and i and i think it's true and i think i don't think i don't mean to downplay i do think there are ways in which it's going to make life difficult for people like us in the short term i think there's almost no way around some hard times with that but i think in the long term i think we're as creative folks i think we're in a kind of a good place in terms of what ai tends to automate you know yeah a lot of people that we talk to especially like under 20 they like we get really sad that a lot of of them are like contemplating not going through like the creative path just because of that so it's very hardcore to see that scenario i think you know i and i totally i'm a big believer in what i would call interpreting your daydream so i don't think just follow your dreams i do think have dreams and interpret them into your reality like how could this actually happen in your life so i am a big believer in being having a dose of realism to your idealism uh but at the same time you have to take you have to balance those two out because guess what 10 years ago all you heard from all the experts was go into coding you better learn how to code if you don't know how to code you're screwed in the future and then robots came for them like you can't decide you can't decide your life and future purely based on speculation of what the what the future is going to be like no one's ever right about that that's the thing we never have anybody that's right the people that were right like five times they're the people in the right that person might have been psychic they were right about they were kind of right no like we don't know we don't know how it's going to be but I like this thing that speaking of billionaire tech billionaires this is a thing that comes from Jeff Bezos who I'm not a fanboy of but at this point I do think is valid and he just said at Amazon they try not to predict the future because you never win you never win when you predict the future but they try to they try to know what doesn't seem to change and so that's those two points about AI that's what I'm thinking about is what has pretty much always been true about people what's always been true about art it's been about people connecting to people that's always been true that probably won't change even if ai gets into the mix which it will for some people's practice um but it'll still be about people connecting to people i think that that's for sure great bottom lane very grateful to hear that that's how we think ourselves but it's great to just like put it out there.

1:10:33Just clean fuel, man. Yeah, baby. Yeah. I'm going to be sticking with that. Yeah. All right. So, Andy, we'll go to the last part of the podcast. It's called, we're going to just do a little singing. It's called Link de Amigos. Link de Amigos Internacional. Linking friends on the podcast. International. It's this place where we recommend projects, artists, or whatever organizations, whatever you want, that are related to Creative World and that you think that they deserve ice and love? That's a good question. I want to make sure I do a good answer for that. I will say I'm just about to have Seth Worley on the show, and he's a writer and director, and he has his new film just came out this year.

1:11:25It was in theaters, I think, like over the summer. It's called Sketch, and it's a great family movie. It's kind of a throwback to, like, the 80s and 90s family films. It's got, like, a lot of humor, but also kind of horror for, like, a PG movie. And it's really, really great. So that's the thing that comes to mind. If you haven't seen that, I would go check that out. It's a really good time. It's starring Tony Hale from Veep and Arrested Development. And I think it's pretty great. Tons of heart. Awesome. So we're going to see if it's on Mexican theaters. Yeah, our producer is going crazy for that movie right now.

1:12:08Yes. Loves it. Like, you've got to see that. It's fantastic. Go see a sketch right now. We're going to give love to Fran Earth. Yes. If you people listening to this haven't heard the last episode of Friend Earth in Creative Pep Talk, go listen to that. And Fabiolita. Fabiola Lara. She has this podcast called Draws in Spanish. And it's a great, like, how do you say, like, Spanglish kind of podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Big fan of both of those creators. Yeah. They make great stuff. All right. Andy, thank you so much for your time. We're honored to have you here. and we think that a lot of people will be and are very excited to have listened to this.

1:12:53Nosotros. Nosotros. Gracias, Andy. Muchas gracias por estar acá. Pues nada más. Thank you. Until next time, have a great day and see you around the internets. See you later, guys. Thank you very much. Adiós, adiós, adiós.

1:13:13Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path hand booklet. And the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up.

1:13:57But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y 'all. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world. and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante and Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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