The Strange Path to Walking 100 Different Ways

This week's creative tip: use your unique perspective to your advantage.

On my first film job, I was called to the edit suite to meet with the director and maybe four other department heads. I presented poses for a performance I was assigned to animate.

The director disagreed with me and asked me to sit on the floor and act out the performance: a child aggressively chewing on something in their hands. My chest tightened, but I hopped on the floor and acted like a child while being given notes about what I was doing right or wrong.

This was my first experience with acting reference for animation. If you're not familiar, most animators will first film themselves as a way of very quickly presenting their acting intentions for a character (before spending time drawing or posing).

It's often very entertaining but no one ever sees it!

Well, I had the idea in 2017 to bring this incredibly niche concept to YouTube in the form of me walking in the style of 100 different characters.

What was part of my job every day - transforming my physicality through movement - sparked my creativity in a way that was obvious to me but probably no one else. Looking back, the video feels bizarre but now has 7.5M views.

All that to say that everyone has such a deep well of unique experiences from which to inspire creativity. We all have highly niche interests and hobbies that we can pull from and use to our advantage. Lean into it.