Author, animator, and overwhelmingly grateful everyday to God for the life to do those things. www.JKRiki.com
Have you noticed how much SHOUTING there is online right now? Over the past week, I have grown a tremendous amount by learning from experience, and I want to share one of the lessons. Whether you listen or not is up to you. I’m not going to be saying anything groundbreaking or new. I’m going to be passing along wisdom known for thousands of years that I should have applied…
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As my wife and I continue to work on our new full-time Indiedev venture, I am learning lessons on a daily basis. (Most of them revolve around patience when technology doesn’t do what I expect it to. Or rather, how little patience I currently have for such times.) One interesting and unexpected lesson from this new job is discovering a pretty massive difference in views on productivity between Artist and…
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I’ve had my fair share of existential crisis experiences in my life. One might say more than my fair share. Today I am experiencing something new, which I think is best explained as “an existential crisis, but art.” Long story short, I like this image: That is a good looking image, right there! It has appeal and style, and I am content to look at that image for a long…
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Sometimes we KNOW what we need to do, we just don’t do it. Last week I wrote about listening to others with more experience. The truth is, sometimes we don’t even need someone else to tell us the right path. Often we’ve already learned it, but we don’t listen to even ourselves! Case in point, this past week I decided to jump back into animating for the first time in……
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When I was a younger artist, I was arrogant. I’m sure I haven’t completely rid myself of this terrible habit, but I remember many instances when I scoffed at the advice of more experienced artists, thinking I knew better. Or, at the very least, thinking MY journey in art was different, so I didn’t need their advice. I was super wrong. I live life without regrets. I do my best…
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For almost a decade now I’ve taken to writing down yearly goals as the calendar rolls over. Some years it’s a list to check off, while others have been more like guidelines. This year I wrote ideas down while on an airplane from Tokyo to Minnesota. The flight was 12 hours long, which might explain why my list this year is longer than all the previous ones combined!* *That wasn’t…
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A new year is upon us, and I noticed something as the calendar rolled over. A lot of artists (and folks in general) did not think fondly of 2017. I saw comic after comic of people fighting with an anthropomorphic version of the year. Some of them were beaten up by Mr. 2017, some of them delivered the blows, but in all cases the same theme appeared: Violence. It was…
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A few weeks ago I talked about the future of the blog here, and last week I mentioned the big news that my wife and I will be starting full-time work on our own small business called Weekend Panda. Today I want to chat about another change I’m making as I prep for 2018 and beyond, plus the “why” of that decision. You may have read a previous post about…
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This past Friday my wife gave her two week’s notice at a job she’s had for thirteen years. She is leaving to team up with me and run our own business. I am a healthy mix of excited and terrified. Excited because it’s always been a dream of mine to work alongside her full time. My wife is my best friend, and to spend nine hours of every weekday apart…
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Once upon a time I launched JKRiki.com, right around the launch of my first book. A large part of creating the site was centered around the book, and supporting the book. After all, “the experts” tell you to have blogs and newsletters and all sorts of things to support sales of your product, whatever that product might be. What the experts don’t often tell you is that it can feel…
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