Todd’s boring secret to mastery nobody wants to do

Let’s talk about Todd McFarlane. Todd McFarlane was once the highest paid artist at Marvel Comics. He also practically reinvented the look Spider-Man gets drawn with by virtually every artist today, and is at least partly responsible for Spider-Man being the billion dollar brand it is. Plus, he owns his own $300 million dollar brand (Spawn — with its own line of comicbooks, toys, TV, and movies) which is based entirely on his skills as an artist and storyteller. You can hear him talk about how he got to where he is directly via an interview he did with the late Stan Lee as part of Stan’s “Comicbook Greats” series where Stan interviewed the most popular comicbook writers and artists of the early 90’s. The tl;dr version is: Todd wanted desperately to break into the comicbook business and was completely self-taught as an artist after his dream to play professional baseball didn’t pan out. And to get not only good — but great — he did two things: 1. He decided to deliberately make all his drawings look completely different, unique, exaggerated & unrealistic to an almost silly degree - which the hoity toity art directors (i.e., clients) hated, but fans loved. 2. Todd self-taught himself drawing by methodically focusing on one part of the process most artists can't be bothered to and in fact avoid like the plague, like, for example, drawing the human knee over and over and over from different perspectives for a week straight. And then doing the same with other body parts, buildings, whatever it is. Yes, doing those two things (but with copywriting training) can make any copywriter great too. A true master, and not merely a “good copywriter.” Huge lesson there for those with eyes to hear and tongues to see. Another example of this: Last year Sifu said something very similar. There is a move in the first form where you basically do a circular movement with your forearm and wrist (based on how a fox’s paw moves). Very simple. Nothing complicated about it. And yet, it lets you do everything from intercept and redirect a punch to pull someone twice your size and strength completely off balance and put them on the ground. Just one little movement. And Sifu started demonstrating it on the wooden dummy. And as he did it over and over and over he said: “Practice doing this for an hour straight and I DEFY you not make new discoveries of your own on how to apply this movement and become a far better fighter.” That’s his whole teaching style: Break off a “piece” of one of the forms or dummy set and just do that one thing. Over and over and over. Yes, like McFarlane did to become one of the hottest self-taught comicbook artists in history. The lessons here should be obvious. If they are not to you, I don't know what to tell you. Except, of course, you'd get very little value out of my Email Players newsletter. For everyone else, more info here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2022 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA