Adding the finishing touches on a human skull adorned with ram horns and fiery blue flames, junior and character designer Piers Boyer wraps up a lengthy artistic process. For Boyer, each of his art pieces is the culmination of hours of work — beginning with finding inspiration, sketching out numerous prototypes and mapping out a clear concept of the piece.
“In the character design industry, they want ideas, so it’s more quantity over quality,” Boyer said. “When we make art, we typically use a concept design to brainstorm. We call it the six plus six equals one method. You always start with six concepts. Choose one from those, take that one and make six concepts based on that. And then based on those, choose one. This is your font character.”
Boyer explains how creating a single character takes up to eight hours on average to complete, with large chunks of time dedicated to finding inspiration and larger works with finer details. While he acknowledges the benefits of working faster for efficiency, Boyer values the quality that comes with dedicating more time to each piece. Senior Anqi Chen agrees with this sentiment, as they believe the process of creating art contributes to their learning as an artist.
“I can actually learn a lot during the time I take working on my pieces,” Chen said. “This makes the artwork better in the end, better than how I initially thought it would be. Whether it be using a new technique or finding a really good reference, it would not come through had I just finished the piece without taking the time.”
However, senior and digital artist Anya Wojciechowski says spending too much time on the art can lead to perfectionism, which she finds to be a toxic trait. Instead, Wojciechowski says spending less time on her art has allowed her to explore more styles and create more pieces.
“A lot of artists are perfectionists, and I think that can actually be detrimental sometimes because art is not about making it perfect — it’s more about being able to capture stuff better than something perfect,” Wojciechowski said. “For example, if you’re doing a gesture drawing, which is meant to specifically capture movement and tension, your anatomy might not be perfect, but that’s OK because it’ll capture the tension. There’s a fine line between going at the right pace and going too fast or too slow. At the right pace, you’re allowed to fix things that are just a normal part of art, but if you’re going too slow, that means you’re just getting caught up in details without looking at the bigger picture.”
While Boyer acknowledges the benefits of speeding up the artistic process, reflecting on past experiences, he finds there are significant disadvantages to rushing through an art piece. When working on commissioned assignments, Boyer says he has encountered tight deadlines, compromising the quality of his work.
Similarly, Chen finds that dedicating more time to his artwork allows for a deeper connection to each of his pieces. As an artist, Chen says he has shifted towards a more time-consuming approach to completing his art. He emphasizes the importance of taking the time in his art, as it allows for a greater level of satisfaction in the final result.
“I didn’t always use to take this long,” Chen said. “I used to be able to create a lot more artwork in a much shorter time. I still do that, but now I have started to take a lot of time as well. I think maybe I had some sense of urgency back then, but now I like to take my time. When you spend a lot of time with something, you get attached to it. So, when I spend more time on my art, I like it more.”
Chen explains how her attachment to her pieces grew with the time she spent on them. However, Boyer thinks differently, stating that several factors can make him more proud of his work.
“Every part of my characters usually has some part of me to it, and I feel more proud of the ones that have a closer connection to me,” Boyer said. “A lot of times there’s also new concepts that I’m adding to them, playing with different elements such as planes — it could be different anatomy, different styles, body types — it all depends. In the end, you feel proud of the piece, especially if it has taken hours, and even if it’s a small piece and it didn’t take as long, you still feel proud of it.”
Boyer explains how learning and playing with different elements of art increases his appreciation of the piece, no matter the time it takes. Wojciechowski agrees, as she acknowledges the elements of perfectionism can be beneficial to the artistic process, despite it taking a logner time.
“Perfectionism helps you learn in some ways,” Wojciechowski said. “It’s fine if your pace is slow, it’s fine if your pace is fast, if you’re proud of what you’ve made at the end it’s better than nothing. If you struggle with perfectionism, I still do honestly, I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away. But if you can learn to mitigate it in your own ways, and try to not care as much about it being perfect you’ll learn more.”
