Episode 3: Luiza Diniz

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[00:00:18] Ash: Welcome to another episode of the All Inclusive podcast. My name is Ash and I'm an environment artist in North Carolina, USA.

[00:00:25] Jasmin: And my name is Jasmin and I'm an environment artist from Cologne, Germany. Today's special guest is Louisa Diniz, and she works at Aquaria Games Studios. I'm sorry so much, I practiced this before. Of course it's so [unintelligible 00:00:41].

[laughter]

[00:00:43] Luiza: Don't worry, everybody says it wrong. It's our internal joke already.

[00:00:48] Jasmin: Yes, I'm in it now. She's been involved at the studio there and we're super excited to have you here today. Thank you for joining us, Louisa.

[00:00:58] Luiza: Thank you for inviting me.

[00:01:01] Jasmin: We're so excited to have you. Just to start off super casual, we wanted to ask you how you actually got into 3D and what led you basically into your current job right now? What was the initial moment where you were like, "Okay, I want to do this now as in my actual job, this is my calling, I'm going for it"?

[00:01:22] Luiza: [laughs] I actually went to university for game design and it was a three-year course and we had to learn everything about it, like game design, programming, level design, everything, but I really fell in love with 3D especially character 3D arts. Sometime around the course, a friend of mine actually introduced me to zebrafish and I've been hooked ever since. I graduated like two years ago, I guess. I started doing some freelance job and working on my portfolio because I wanted to have something ready to start working at a studio because I don't really love freelance work.

I actually wanted to work in a huge group in a studio. I started looking for a studio position and I started sending messages to everybody I knew in Brazil that had a studio like, "Are you looking for a 3D artists in games", and a friend of mine in [unintelligible 00:02:54] who is today my lead game designer, he said, "Yes, we are looking for a 3D artist for a new project." He showed me my portfolio in there and people really liked it so I got the job and now I'm working at Wonder Box.

I started working there, not even as a character artist actually. It was actually my first job. I was pretty junior back then. It was really in the beginning of the project, we were still starting to figure out some of the art styles. We didn't even have character work for me to do yet so I started doing props and very simple things at first. Now, here I am.

[00:03:53] Jasmin: Awesome. Did you enjoy doing a bit of prop work at the start as first, was this out of your comfort zone a bit or did you think it's actually nice to do something different for while, not drop into characters straight away?

[00:04:06] Luiza: No, it was fine, actually, it took a little bit out of the weight of it for me because I started doing very simple things. Now, it took a little while to getting to the studio vibe, like knowing everything, learning how they were doing, learning how to deal with a new engine because I was used to working with Unity and we worked with [inaudible 00:04:37]. It was nice that they gave me smaller stuff at first. I was able to learn a little bit more, especially because Wonder Box is a game.

It's mostly aimed to be played in mobile games like it's for Apple Arcade. You can play it even on your TV if you have Apple TV, but we know that most people will be playing on iPhones. We have technical restrictions like the game has to run [unintelligible 00:05:18] so the modeling has to be very low poly. It was interesting for me to get these at first because I learned a lot about some fundamentals in very low poly modeling.

Some of the stuff I didn't pick up at university. A lot of stuff, actually, I never really saw online. It was the stuff that you only start learning because you are at a studio, you have people with more experience, teaching you this stuff. It was very interesting.

[00:05:57] Jasmin: What's also interesting to me, you mentioned that you took some time after university to build your portfolio and get it ready for a drop. How was that experience for you? Did you feel stressed by doing that or did you set up a plan for yourself when you wanted to achieve that many portfolio pieces to feel ready mentally and also skill-wise, how was that for you? Because I'm almost graduating too, and it's a bit daunting to think about what's afterwards but I'm always super keen to hear how other people dealt with that.

[00:06:28] Luiza: Well, I guess it was a little bit easy for me because my parents have a very stable financial situation. I hadn't had pressure from them to be like, "You need to get a job now and move out now", I was able to calmly, as I said, make a plan and do like, "Okay, I need to fill this and this and these gaps that I feel like is missing from my skills", and I knew what I needed to study, I knew what I had to do.

I actually made a plan and said okay, six months I have to have a portfolio and some experience like freelancing actually helped to not have-- I could say I had some job experience not to go into a studio and say like I never worked before. I actually did make a plan. It's still stressful, a little bit. It's weird to get out of college and not know what the future holds so good luck. [laughs]

[00:07:47] Ash: I think something that's being talked more and more about, I think in social media circles is that a lot of what has to do with quote-unquote, success is just how much support you have, and you mentioning that you had a really good support group with your parents that they weren't pressuring you to do something one way or the other immediately, really helps because when you're under pressure, you can often make poor decisions in the short term thinking it's for the long term like working a lot of harmful hours or whatever.

Sometimes, if you have a support group and like your parents, or like your partner, or if you live with friends or whatever, who can be like we can help take care of this that and the so you can focus on whatever you need to do, it really does make a difference. It's important to admit-- I don't want to use the word admit because it sounds like a bad thing, but just like say that that happens because people don't succeed by themselves. It's often a community effort to get someone to where they want to be.

[00:09:07] Luiza: I totally agree because we can't lie, we can't pretend my reality is the same as most people. Most people do need to get a job, even while they are studying or they can't even go to a university. I can't just say, "Oh, I just had to work hard", because it's not really [unintelligible 00:09:34]. It was easier for me but I agree with you, I think people should try to find support whenever they can. If it's not in their family, maybe finding people that want to work on the same thing as you do or are already working on the same stuff. I think this is the thing that I liked more about the university, is that I was able to actually meet a lot of people that follow the same path and are still my friends today.

You actually know one of them, Jasmin Pedro. I have this group, it's a Discord server with a lot of people that study together. We help each other a lot motivationally and sharing knowledge and sharing job positions. Whenever we know, like, "Hey, we have an opening in this studio. We can show your portfolio to them, help you." I was able to meet these people because of university. I'm very glad that I went and I think people should try to find this whenever they can.

[00:11:13] Ash: Yes, even, I think, broadening it, also, when you think about the art process, it's not going to be as effective if it's just you sitting at your computer, working by yourself, critiquing yourself or whatever, you can't do that, but it's so much nicer to be able to have those couple friends or a mentor to go to, to be like, "Hey, can you look at this", and get some new eyes and new perspective on it.

That also is like a community aspect to what we do. I don't think a lot of projects that'd get off the ground, if it was just one person trying to make things happen. You really do need a team, a support network in that way.

[00:12:01] Luiza: Yes.

[00:12:02] Jasmin: I think it helps also later with the mindset when you work in a studio, because it's going to be similar. That too, that you constantly getting feedback from your teammates and that you're working in a group and having that already a bit in your personal projects, maybe, gets you in that right group of that, that you don't get suddenly shocked that you're a new student and everyone's critiquing your work and saying you need to change things or fix things, because I guess that's maybe difficult for some people to have that realization when they're working somewhere, and it's not like that anymore, that you're just working on your own project by yourself with no input from outside, basically.

I think nowadays, with this being all online and being on Twitter and sharing our work on there and online communities like Discord, you get used to it quicker, which is a nice practice in itself too, I think, for later.

[00:12:50] Luiza: Yes, I think making games is, in fact, this is what I like most about working for games, is that you're never really working alone. You have to do work for something that is bigger than just what you are doing. I'm not being paid to just sit down and make 3D art, I'm getting paid to make a good game. If I make an amazing model and it doesn't work in game, I didn't make an amazing model. You have to learn how to not take things too personally, how to listen to critique and know that it's good for you.

It's good for you to listen to others and grow and learn and also expressing your ideas, actually. If you feel like you're doing something that should be heard, you should say it. It's not always gonna work out, it's not up to you. Sometimes people will not take your idea, but it's important to speak your mind too.

[00:14:06] Ash: For sure. I think going to the communication note and talking about your work, I think that is a underrated skill, perhaps. I think that lives in the soft skills, like camp, the communication part. It's so easy to just exist in, like, "Oh, I need to get better at this skill, this artistic skill or whatever." I was actually talking to someone about this the other day who's still in university. They're trying to write a paper and we were all in voice chat. They were like, "Yes, I don't really know how this is going to help me be a better game developer."

I mentioned about how something that's helped me be a better communicator and just get better at talking about my own work is by writing blogs about them on ArtStation, because it makes you think about why you're doing what you're doing. I think that even though like in university, you're going to have to write papers that are boring, very, very boring, and you may not like the subject matter on it, I think if you can take away the core, key message with it, it's just basically trying to get you to be a better communicator and get better at writing out your thoughts about a thing.

I think something like that will benefit you for sure long term, because it's always this collaborative effort. You always have to communicate with someone about whatever. Being able to communicate clearly will save you from a lot of pitfalls later down the road. Also, on top of that, like you were saying, just speaking confidently about it and believing in your stance, whether or not it's something that will get used or not or whatever happens, that just expressing yourself, I think, helps a lot as well, for sure.

[00:16:21] Luiza: Yes. I think I was really lucky, because as I mentioned earlier, I started working on Wonder box right at a very early stage of the project. It was a small team back then. We were starting to build this new IP and build a new art style. Even though I was very much, very new and I was a junior, people actually would listen to me and actually ask me what I was thinking, if I had any ideas. It was always a very collaborative project, even for programmers to give input in art, and we could give input in game features, everything.

It was really fun times. I managed to learn a lot about what it's like building this new universe from scratch. I needed to be like that. I needed to communicate very well, I needed to listen, and I needed to say my mind. I really feel I was heard in a lot of stuff that are in the game, or things that I helped create. If people, they are looking to start working in game development, have the chance to be in something like that, like enter a project right at the beginning, I think it's a very nice experience that will give a lot of knowledge.

It's really cool to see something take life. At a point, there was that realization that, "Wow, this is actually a game this is working, and I get to play something I made." It's a very nice feeling to have.

[00:18:44] Ash: Moving on to a little bit of what you're talking about just now, this is your first big job. I was curious about any of the challenges you faced when you first started, because, like you said, you had done a little bit of freelance work before, but working in a more collaborative setting brings its own challenges and maybe its own unique pressures for you. I wanted to know about your experience working in the first couple months of your first job.

[00:19:24] Luiza: In spite of what I said, actually getting into the mindset of working with a bunch of people that are doing different things at the same time, you have to know very well who do you have to look for when you have a problem. Like I needed to talk to game programmers and animators at the same time, and I needed always to be like receiving feedback from a bunch of people at the same time in knowing, what could I do to help and what I shouldn't do?

Sometimes I had to step back and listen to people who were my leads and actually do what they said instead of trying hard to do something that I was trying to do. "I think that will work", and my lead was like, "No, I think that other thing will work." Sometimes I would just try my thing and it wouldn't really work. The lead was like, "Well, you had to listen to me sometimes." This was something I had to get used to and a lot of patience as well.

Sometimes we get too attached to what we're doing and it's not always going to go our way. There are a lot of factors that take place in making a game and sometimes something is not going to be as cool as the team want it to be or we're going to have to do something quicker because we have a deadline. Managing expectations is something we have to do all the time and learn to live with this, I think it's very important.

Know that even if it's not perfect, it will be nice. People will like it. We are often the people who criticize ourselves the most. We are always trying to make everything really perfect, which is good because we are always striving to do better, but you can take it personally if it's not perfect. It will be good even though it's not 100% what you thought it would be.

[00:22:16] Ash: That's quite a hard pill for me to swallow. It's so interesting that you used the phrase managing expectations because that's been a mental mantra for me this whole year especially after stuff with the virus kicked up. Everyone's really stressed out, everyone feels a little bit bleak about the future, Manage your expectations so that you're not so hard on yourself working under this kind of stress. It's been hard because you want it to be perfect.

I think to myself I'm probably at maybe 75% productivity in terms of how much productivity I can have. If it's on a normal year it's 100%, this year it's 75. I can't hit 75 every day and I can't make something that's perfect at 100% every day either. Giving yourself grace with things like that and like you were saying, being okay with it, not being perfect, but just making sure it's nice and it works.

Thinking from a personal project aspect, which what I'm knee-deep in right now, if it's at least nice, then it has the potential to be better if you have time to swing back around on something at some point. I don't like to plan things out to be like, "I'll come back to it later." In the case where it's like, "I really hate to let it go", if it's at least good, if it meets that level of good, then it's okay to move on from it. I think that it goes into what you're talking about managing those expectations. It's hard. It's really hard to do that right now.

[00:24:25] Luiza: 75%, I think you're doing great. This year 75%, you're on a roll. Don't worry, just go for it because it's hard. Everybody's tired.

[00:24:43] Ash: Everyone is tired, my goodness. Something else that I'm curious about as someone who is hoping to step her foot into the employment pool sometime next year, I was wondering about did you feel like you had to work faster when you started working? Everyone's at a pace that's set by someone else. Did you feel like it was hard to meet the pace that everyone else was working at or is it more chill? I don't really have a good read on what it's like with things like that.

[00:25:22] Luiza: I think it depends rather on where we are on the project. I had some moments where I had to work really hard because we had to deliver stuff quickly. Usually, the art part has to be ready a little before the programming part because the programmers have to implement everything that we do so we have to be a little bit ahead. Usually, when programmers are doing extra time to get things done, we are chilling, we already did what we had to do. Mostly no, I think it was pretty okay.

Honestly, I think we planned things really well. It hasn't been super hard to keep up really especially for characters. It's just me and another artist doing characters right now. Sometimes we have to work a little harder, but we usually stay pretty steady. We don't have a lot of work, a lot of demand, that's the word. I think it's okay. If you go to a studio that worries about planning, you won't have a lot to worry about.

[00:27:24] Ash: It's interesting you said it's just you and someone else doing the character work. To me, there'll be a lot of pressure. If I was working somewhere else and they were like, "It's only you and one other environment artist," I would shake at my best. Everyone's going to see all of my stuff. It's going to be a lot of like me.

[00:27:49] Luiza: I think it's fun. I think it's fun to have just us two working because when we have a problem, it's easier I think, than dealing with a bunch of people. We can just sit me and him and our lead and work through it. We work really well together. It was somebody else in the beginning of the project and he was more experienced than me, but he left to work on an animation studio. It was really good working with him also. When you have good energy inside the team, everything, it's easier. We're still not a huge team. It's not triple way work. I think we managed very, very well with what we got to get to do.

[00:28:56] Jasmin: It's really nice to have a tightly-knit team, because you get to have a lot more say maybe on some things, the ownership as well than being in a huge team of people working towards the same thing. It's nice to see that you have this kind of experience on your first job. I think that's a great to have actually, because you get to learn probably a lot more as well, taking a lot of responsibility, which helps later down the route too as well.

It's interesting I had to do the exact same thing at my internship. I was the only environment artist on the team. Having that as your first job experience can sound very daunting but when you're pushed into the cold water in that situation, you feel like you grow 10 times faster almost because you have to. There's nobody else doing the work. It's still a nice confidence boost at the same time, you are able to do this on such a small scale and the results you have in your game right now is amazing. It definitely is working super well. [laughs]

[00:30:00] Luiza: Thank you. I'm glad. Yes, it's a challenge, but it's a good challenge. It's exciting. People will be understanding, your leads will be understanding of the level you are in, what responsibilities you take. Obviously, not every studio will be as forgiving, so you got to try to pick a place where you're feeling well, you can see that your energy, it's the same as the other people, but yes, it's usually a good pressure. It's a pressure that makes you grow.

[00:30:53] Ash: Yes. Geez, a pressure that makes you grow. That still sounds really scary. I'm just going to [laughter] [unintelligible 00:31:00]. I think for me, since there's a lot of unknowns with situations like that, and then also the pressure that you can easily put on yourself, you've worked really hard to get to this point and you really want to do your best and things like that. I don't know, it seems hard to keep your head on straight in situations like that, just hypothetically, for me, just hypothetically

But it's nice that you have that perspective about it, because it's a more positive perspective and I think it helps you when you're going through maybe a little bit more rough time. You can remind yourself that you still got this and this is just making you a stronger person to work with and a stronger artists and encouraging yourself in that way, I think is really good that you think about it that way, for sure.

[00:32:08] Luiza: Yes. Yes, we can get into our own heads very often. It's good to remind you that as Jasmin said, you're going to be okay, because you will have to be okay. You will find a way to do what you have to do. There will be hard days and bad days, but the results are usually very rewarding. There will be very good experiences.

[00:32:41] Jasmin: Sometimes, as you said before, the expectations we put on ourselves are 10 times higher usually than the expectations others might have from us, especially when you go to a job, I always have this thing in my head saying, "Okay, everyone expects this much from me and the other thing, I have to be this fast and I need to be doing this and everyone is perfect at everything and I need to be perfect too."

You get into this mindset, and then when you're actually there, you see not everyone knows everything either. Everyone's just doing things that they think it's going to be fine to do. I think it's always this unknown that makes you scared, but once you're in there and see that everyone-- it's like the saying [unintelligible 00:33:20] "Everyone cooks with water at the end of the day", it's like the same when you work [unintelligible 00:33:24].

[00:33:26] Luiza: Yes, everybody makes mistakes. I once broke the game. [laughter] We have to send stuff in the game and I made a mistake and I actually had to erase five hours of everybody's work. People were like, "Okay, we expected that somebody would do that eventually, and we can fix it, but let's not do it again ever." Bit it was a very sad day because I'm like, "Oh my god, I broke everything for everyone." Five hours gone and five more hours to get everything back, but it happens.

[00:34:18] Jasmin: Exactly. It happens to anyone. You found a loophole, basically. [laughter] It's like QA testing in a way.

[00:34:31] Ash: Nice. We're going to take a little bit of a short break there and we'll be right back.

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[00:35:02] Jasmin: Welcome back to the All Inclusive Podcast. Before the break, we talked about Louisa's experience working her first job. Moving on from there, I was wondering what's the main role in the production line and is there anything that was your favorite part working on it so far, like any interesting inside so what you noticed that is maybe different about how the studio approaches specific parts of the game?

[00:35:28] Luiza: Now I'm only doing character work. My favorite part, I think it's the overall style. I really love everything looks, it's just the kind of thing that I like to do. It's very simple. We have this world that is made by blocks, but it's not like Minecraft. We don't have sharp corners, everything's rounded. Just like the environment that is made out of blocks. Our characters are also thought to be very basic shapes. It was really interesting translating the concepts into 3D.

We had to work a lot with silhouettes and clean shapes and readability. It took us a while to get to the right spots. We stayed a couple months doing like a base character to be what we would use for all the other characters, because if you look at our characters, even though they are very different from each other, they all fit. It's like Legos, we use Legos a lot as inspiration for the game. The characters have head, torso, and legs, and you can swap ,the player can swap heads and torso. You can have your own character as you wish it would be.

All the characters have to fit just like the Lego parts. It was really fun making this process, having everything believable to be in the same universe and also making it very simple, we have very simple textures as well, but they are refined as in, we work a lot in the roughness detail in our textures. We don't have small details on our high poly sculptures. On our low polys or the high polys because we don't want noise in our characters.

We don't want everything to look dirty or with too much details. We want players to be able to, at a distance, see color spots, like orange hair, blue shirt, black pants. But when you look at the characters from up close, they have very detailed materials and they have cloth patterns and all this work done in texturing. That was also really fun to develop.

As I said, the characters look very different amongst themselves. We always had that diversity intent with our characters. We want the player to be able to be whoever they like. We will have girls, boys, all different ethnicities, we have animals. One of our characters in our poster image is a frog, which I made the 3D model for. It's one of my favorite characters. It was so, so much fun to make him. I know a lot of people also like him a lot, so I'm happy.

[00:39:57] Jasmin: Me included. [laughs]

[laughter]

[00:40:03] Luiza: Yes, he's so fun to look at.

[00:40:05] Jasmin: Absolutely. Everyone should check it out. If you didn't see the game yet, it's on Instagram and on Twitter I think.

[00:40:12] Luiza: Yes.

[00:40:12] Jasmin: It's at least the places I've seen all the clips and it's so pretty. The art style I've not seen it in this way translated into a game of this type especially when you said that with the blocks it's similar to Minecraft but the art style is just so polished and pretty and it doesn't feel like it's on a grid necessarily. It's very organic in that sense and that's what you don't see that much with games of this type of level building genre which I find amazing.

I find great that you said that you had diversity in mind from the start when creating characters because what I noticed with a lot of character creation in games that the diversity or having different ethnicities always feels like an afterthought almost, when you make the character and you change specific parts of it, it just doesn't feel like they actually sat down and made for each ethnicity a separate model or with design intent in mind.

It's just done it because they may be thought after creating the whole model that they needed to include this maybe. Having this in the whole development process from the start makes a big difference and I think you can see that in the characters of your game as well so far what I have seen and it really pays off I think.

[00:41:25] Luiza: Yes, there was never really a sit-down where we said like, "Okay, are we giving characters different ethnicities, or are we just doing the Hollywood all-white cast?" There was never that. Since the beginning, we just had that notion that we had to do all kinds of character. Hopefully, we get to show one day the beginning of the concepting and the initial sketches and people will be able to see that. Since the start, we have faces that are in the game today.

We have characters that were very, very diverse because we've always felt right to do this and from an ethical point of view, but also because this is what the game is about. We want a lot of options for the player. We want the player to be able to choose what they want to be and see what their friends chose. We have multi-player so you get to play with other people and in the studio every week we have a moment to test the game.

Everybody gets together and play and it is so hard to see people using the same character. wW have a lot of combinations so it's fun to see what people will choose that week. That's what we wanted since the beginning. We also want to keep ourselves in check all the time. When we have all the characters and we get to look at them and like, "Okay, so we might need more characters with long hair," or, "Okay, we don't have enough Asian characters," or something like that.

Every time we make a new character we think about that. We want to have balance in what we can offer to the players. That's also one of our pillars of design.

[00:43:56] Ash: I think it's fitting also for a game based out of Brazil, makes sense-

[00:44:08] Luiza: Yes, [laughs] I guess so.

[00:44:09] Ash: -because honestly, Brazilians are so diverse, so so diverse.

[00:44:17] Luiza: Everybody could be a Brazilian. [crosstalk] would fit just fine.

[00:44:20] Ash: For sure, [crosstalk] just fit in just fine. The beauty of the history also and it's nice that that sort of approach was built-in without there being so much fighting about it. I'm glad that you said it felt natural to do something like this, it just makes sense. I think lots of people are going to be able to feel that energy and be able to feel more or less taken care of because they know that they can find an option that makes them feel like themselves.

I think it's very important to have things like that because games they're a way of escaping for so many people. In order to sometimes fully project yourself into this world where you're just having fun and fooling around, it's nice to have someone who looks like you. It's really nice that developers are thinking about it in that way and that projects are getting off the ground that are doing things like that, I think that's really cool.

[00:45:39] Luiza: Yes, I agree. We are very excited to see what's going to be like when we launch, to see the response from people, and to see what they're going to create, and what they're going to ask because we obviously know that we have a lot to offer and people will make stuff we can't even imagine, ask for stuff we can't even imagine the game could have.

That's a whole point of a world-building game, you offer people tools and they make stuff out of nowhere. It's going to be really cool. Especially for me because I never launched a game so I can't imagine what it's going to be like being, I don't know, on a bus and the person sitting next to me is playing my game. I hope I get [chuckles] to live that and be like, "Oh my God, she's playing my game," it's going to be fun.

[00:46:47] Jasmin: I'm sure it will happen, I'm pretty sure of that. I will play it at least and then call you on a webcam call and play it.

[laughter]

[00:47:00] Luiza: I'm really looking forward actually for environment artists to get the game because I feel like an environment artist when I play it. I already got a bunch of concepts from people to try to recreate them inside a game and it's totally doable, so fun. I can't wait to see what people are going to do [chuckles].

[00:47:30] Jasmin: That's so exciting [chuckles].

[00:47:32] Ash: For sure. Moving on to the next topic, I wanted to ask you about what it's been like working with all the craziness of COVID happening? I was actually talking to my therapist about this, and I guess this is a broader question about working at the company, then also working on any personal projects or whatever, I found that back in March when we were doing the more intense lockdown stuff I was so stressed out about everything that I avoided work. I avoided working on my stuff a lot for a couple of weeks.

[00:48:25] Luiza: Yes, me too.

[laughter]

[00:48:27] Ash: Then now it's transitioned into this weird, "Oh my God, it's October, it felt like it was July two weeks ago," and realizing that a whole lot of time has passed and maybe a little bit of a panicky sensation where it's like I have a lot of work to still get done. Then it's also easy to sink into work right now because it's the only controlled thing, you know what to expect.

Your work it can get you sick if you work too hard, but it kind of feels like a safe place because you know everything that could potentially happen with it, you know what to model, and you know how to solve these problems. I think in the process, I have gone a little bit far down the deep end a little bit where I'm working too much because it feels so safe to just ignore everything else that's happening and just sinking a lot of time into it and it's a dangerous situation to be in.

I was wondering if you had any experiences like that or just how are you coping with balancing COVID stuff, with getting your work done, with preserving yourself, with getting personal projects done, how are you juggling all of that?

[00:49:58] Luiza: Yes, honestly I've been the same as you. I have been through ups and downs like, "Okay, I'm not going to do anything," or, "I'm going to do everything." I totally agree, work is something that's keeping the routine. It's the one thing that I managed to keep the same as it was before. I have to clock in at 10:00 and I have to clock out at 7:00. [chuckles] It's the same, but what about the rest of the day[chuckles]?

Many times I was in that situation that was like, "Okay, I did my work, so what now? What can I do?" It's crazy. I actually got back into therapy since it started. I used to do therapy, but since I moved states to work at Achilles, I didn't find any therapist that I liked here so I just stopped, and when I would go back to my home state, I would just check in with her, that one session to just tell everything that happened.

I actually got back to therapy with the same therapist. She's doing phone sessions now and it helped a lot so I recommend therapy for everybody [chuckles], not just if you're feeling down. I think I'm actually starting to get a little more used to it. I managed to find a new routine. I'm a routine person. I actually like to wake up every day in the same time and do the same stuff. It works for me. I know, it's not for everybody, but it works for me.

I'm a little more in check with how much I work so I don't do, as you said, any more overwork and be super tired. I'm trying to do a little bit of everything. I do some personal studies in the morning, then I get to work. After work, I try to do some physical exercise or something. I actually do pole dancing [chuckles], and I got a pole to use in my house. It's ridiculous. It's in the middle of my living room and I have to push the couch every time I use it but we have to work with what we got now.

I'm trying to keep myself in check to do everything as balanced as I can. I live alone, so I don't have anybody, like a risk group that it's dangerous to get COVID, so if I'm feeling really down, or if I'm feeling really lonely, I get to see some friends that also live alone even though everybody is also staying at home since March. Brazil is also like the US, we are pretty much one of the worst countries in the pandemic but I get to see somebody eventually just to take the edge off but also still doing not doing things as we used to.

We have to use masks and we have to be in an open space. It's weird, but I think I'm getting used to it. Accepting that stuff has changed, I think it's the first step [chuckles].

[00:54:26] Jasmin: Yes, definitely.

[00:54:28] Ash: I feel like it's the first step and it's also the hardest step I think. I think it's why I initially had a little bit of frozen in fear feelings. I didn't really want to go anywhere. I didn't want to go to the grocery store or anything like that and having some sort of social interaction even if it's little has done a lot for me in the past.

A couple of months, being able to hop into a voice chat with some friends and just hang out or I hang out with them while I'm working on something and just listening to them talk sometimes or listen to them fool around and laugh with them, it's very healing, especially in a time where you feel separated from everything. It's very, very easy to feel like you're alone in all of this.

I think finding any ways to safely connect with friends, or family members, or whatever really matters a lot right now because I know it's helped me so much, even though I'm still ironing out certain wrinkles with the problems that I'm having right now. It's nice to have, again, that community aspect coming back to that. It's important to have that community in some capacity for sure.

[00:56:10] Luiza: Yes. I think as we said earlier, finding support where you can, and always trying to be active with the people around you helps, and doing things safely because I see a lot of people just ignoring everything. People are just pretending it's not happening. I honestly can't do that. I feel like trying to do something as we did before feels empty now, I don't know, like going to eat in a restaurant, I just can't feel comfortable doing it.

[00:56:56] Jasmin: It's true.

[00:57:00] Luiza: I think people who are not accepting it at all, it might be taking a toll bigger on them than people that are like, "Okay, so this is what it is now and I have to do my part, and I have to be patient. I have to take care of myself and the people around me as much as I can." There's nothing we can do about it except trying to be safe.

[00:57:31] Jasmin: For sure. Managing those expectations again.

[laughter]

[00:57:36] Ash: It's like talking to some people is just like the conversation of when are things going to get back to normal sort of come up, and I've already just locked into the mindset that it will probably not. I joke about it, if someone's like, "Oh, man, I wish you could come to visit in the UK." It's like, "Okay, yes, sure, I'll see you in 2025," [chuckles] or something [crosstalk].

[00:58:00] Luiza: Maybe it just might be.

[laughter]

[00:58:04] Ash: Or even at the earliest, I feel like I'm accepting now that we might be in a similar spot until everyone can get a hold of it for another year or whatever, and thinking to myself accepting that now makes me feel not as maybe stressed because there's a little bit of acceptance about it, where it's like, "Okay, so this is what it is? What can I do with what I have right now?"

Do the best you can with what you got like always, and just try to make it work in a healthy way, and giving yourself grace along the way as you go through it because we're all in the trenches together. If anything this has made me feel very connected to all of my friends more so than before because we're experiencing a lot of similar things right now.

[00:59:07] Jasmin: That's true.

[00:59:07] Luiza: I actually got back to being in touch with a lot of people that I haven't been in touch in a long time, like friends that live abroad. I started talking to them again because everybody's doing everything online. [chuckles] I think reaching out to people is really important right now.

[00:59:32] Ash: Yes, very reassuring to know you're not by yourself in this because when it started the whole thing, at first, I didn't even think it'd be that bad because I'm pretty much at home all the time [chuckles] before that even so it wasn't a big change but it did take a toll on me over time to not even have that once a week, I don't know, a restaurant trip or going to the town a bit. I don't do it anymore and I'm okay with it.

You get used to it. It's just a matter of accepting it soon enough and finding another way to keep yourself busy in a way, but also not too busy because then you might get into the habit of overworking and thinking that just because you're at home right now you need to be productive 100% of the time. That's something I've been doing for quite a while [chuckles] the past months and [crosstalk].

[01:00:22] Ash: Just add me next time.

[laughter]

[01:00:27] Jasmin: It's [unintelligible 01:00:27], but then it's also nice because then you can still reach out to other people because everyone's experiencing something similar in some way anyway. Now is the best time to open up and be like, "Okay, I don't have to deal with this by myself entirely because people will understand that and will maybe help me in some way if I just talk about it."

[01:00:47] Ash: For sure, for sure, so wrapping it up if we can, if we can attempt to wrap it up. I am hearing again, in the episodes that we've released so far, there's always been some sort of a community aspect that comes in, and getting support from those around you seems to be like a key theme in everyone's success stories. Everyone had support in some way.

It just goes to show that if you think you can do it by yourself, then you're kidding yourself, and you should find some help. Again, I know that I started getting a lot better at what I do when I started being around other people and getting courage from them. That's what I'm hearing is just find your group of people and your friends and let them support you because sometimes it can be hard to admit that you need help with certain things when you really do.

That's what I'm hearing a lot, which is great. Love that. That's so positive. It feels good. They don't have to be alone.

[01:02:11] Jasmin: Exactly.

[01:02:1] Luiza: I think it's really hard for people to ask for help and not feel small by doing it. I love asking for help. I love asking everything [chuckles] because it only helps us, honestly. There's a great book that I love by Amanda Palmer. I don't know if you guys know her but for those who don't, she's basically a rockstar and an internet-famous persona. She's also the wife of Neil Gaiman.

She wrote this book, it's called The Art of Asking. It's her autobiography and she talks a lot about how she got her career by being helped by other people and helping other people. She would be very vocal online about her experiences and when she would go perform in a city she would be like, "Hey, I need a place to stay in this city that I'm going. Can everyone help me find it?"

She would couch surf in exchange for tickets for her shows. She would invite fans to play at her shows. It's a very impressive journey of how she became huge just by opening up and being in touch with her friends and exchanging. It's a hard process to be so open. You're letting people hurt you if they want to, but you're trusting them not to. I think it's really interesting.

I really liked this book. It speaks a lot to artists like how we can be very, very absorbed in our own doubts, and not see how opening up can help us grow and help other people grow with us.

[01:04:44] Jasmin: That's really interesting. It really applies to how you're working inside a team as well and being open to asking questions and I found that really interesting. We touched upon that earlier that you have maybe these expectations on yourself, but you shouldn't be worried because in the end you have to get it done somehow and people will help you along the way to get it done too. You're not by yourself in this. Being open from the get-go is really easy to get into that mindset quicker as well, I think.

[01:05:12] Luiza: Yes. Sometimes I think people feel like they're in a competition like they have to be better than others but it's not like that. You will grow so much more when you're collaborating because eventually everyone just wants the same thing. Like in a project, like in a game, everybody working there just wants the game to get done and be cool. You don't need to show up one day with everything ready [chuckles]. That's not how it works.

[01:05:56] Ash: Sorry. I'm processing things. I know, I said, we were wrapping up, that's really funny. I guess we're not.

[laughter]

[01:06:12] Ash: Trying not to--

[01:06:13] Luiza: I'm not in a hurry.

[01:06:14] Ash: I know.

[01:06:14] Luiza: You can talk about it for ages [chuckles].

[01:06:16] Ash: [crosstalk] man, just thinking about I think you said something about competition and things like that, not feeling like you have to beat everyone else. It totally makes sense in a collaborative sense for sure because you are a team. Even in a not collaborative sense, I think I absolutely have fallen into the trap of being jealous of other artists in a bad way, and it's a more toxic sort of way, toxic to myself, not other people.

We keep that inside all the time. It was thinking to myself about why I felt so, not necessarily competitive, but just so jealous of other people, which I guess I don't know, depending on the person, it can take the competitive route. I just found that I wasn't necessarily happy with what I was making. I was wishing that I was making something like this person that I was jealous of their skill or whatever.

I found that if I made sure that whatever I was working on was something that I was excited about, then it was easier for me to not really worry about what other people are doing. It let me appreciate what they're doing a lot more because, I don't know, that's their thing. They like to do X, Y, and Z and that's really cool. However, the thing that I'm working on, is also really cool.

It changes it from a toxic feeling, and more into an appreciative feeling where you can appreciate someone else's work but still also appreciate your own. I don't know. It can be hard to do that because whether this rhetoric is coming from college, or whatever, or someone on the internet giving that advice, but you're always told about how hard it is to sometimes find work and how competitive it actually is that it feels like you have to be neck and neck with everyone else and fighting other people for any recognition.

When actually, it's more healthy to just make sure that you're doing something that you're excited about and focusing on your own growth and just making sure that if this asset that I'm making is at this level then trying to push it a little bit more the next time without thinking about what someone else is doing on Twitter. Thinking about it that way has helped me a little bit.

[01:09:16] Jasmin: I think in the end we all just can coexist. It's not that just one person can get something and that means that the other person won't.

[01:09:25] Ash: Yes. There's not like a limited [inaudible 01:09:26] of success.

[01:09:27] Jasmin: Exactly, yes.

[laughter]

[01:09:29] Ash: [unintelligible 01:09:29] I can't have it.

[01:09:32] Jasmin: I think that's what we [unintelligible 01:09:33].

[01:09:34] Luiza: [unintelligible 01:09:34] onsuccess. I can't get in anymore [chuckles].

[01:09:39] Jasmin: I think that's what gets maybe supported through maybe social media because you see, oh, X, Y, and Z gets that many likes and follows so that means they're better than me or that I'm worse or vice versa. It's just very unhealthy over time to think about that. I've done that for a long time too and it's just gotten to a point where you're not happy about what you're making and you're trying to think about, "Oh, what am I supposed to make that people will enjoy?"

Like people telling you, "Oh, you need to make X, Y, and Z to get a job. Don't do art in this style or don't do environment art or character art because there's not enough jobs in it." You hear this so many times that it gets to a point where you get confused like, "What am I supposed to do then?" [chuckles] There's so many limitations and things, but at the end of the day, like Ashley said, if you just do what you're actually excited about, and you want to work on that, I'm sure people will see that in your work too.

That it doesn't look like you're forcing yourself to meet somebody else's expectations. It should be something that makes you content with the work you're doing and yourself and that it doesn't feel like you're doing it for somebody else necessarily.

[01:10:47] Luiza: Yes. Yes. Speaking from experience, like this one, and here, I'm pointing at Jasmin [chuckles]. That unreal thing you made, it triggered everybody I know. It's so good. It's so insane, that people were like, "She did it. She did it. It's so good, nothing I ever make will be that good," and they'll take it the wrong way, but it's what they're talking about. It's amazing work and it's online and everybody sees it.

Everybody wants to be that good, but everybody has their journey like you have your journey. It's natural for us to compare ourselves with others. We live in a system that it's always telling us we have to get better, but not everybody at the same time and doing the same things. Everybody has their own pace. As you guys said, as long as you're doing what you think is good for you and what you think will help you grow, you don't need to look at other people with jealousy.

You need to look at other people as people who can help you grow, but I think it's something we have to actively work through. It's a struggle, for sure.

[01:12:36] Jasmin: Yes. It's something you have to learn. I think it's a skill you have to learn and it's a continuous learning process. It's not something you can just be like, "Okay, from now on, I'm never going to compare myself to anyone ever again. That's it." [chuckles] That's not going to work.

[01:12:51] Luiza: Yes, we have low points. For some reason, you're feeling a little insecure and you see something and it makes you even more insecure. You're starting to compare. It goes up and down. You can't be 100% secure with yourself all the time.

[01:13:12] Ash: Yes, for sure not.

[01:13:14] Jasmin: [unintelligible 01:13:14]--

[01:13:15] Luiza: You can't let it stop you.

[01:13:17] Jasmin: Exactly, because just putting that out there what you just described about my work, it sounds like you're talking about somebody else almost to me. I'm not associating myself with these things, [chuckles] so it's always very alien, and almost like, "I didn't do this. I didn't make this. I'm not this." It's very hard to grasp, but I think we touched upon that in other episodes as well. It comes back to imposter syndrome, your own expectations versus other people's expectations.

It gets into this whole mess where [chuckles] everything comes together and it's getting hard to pull these things apart and actually naming them by what the issue is you're having with your own work or how you think about it. It's still good to hear that other people enjoy your work anyway, and that's one positive side of social media, having these support groups of friends that tell you, "Okay, no, you're on the right track, you're doing well. Don't worry about it." It helps to fight against that mentality as well.

[01:14:17] Luiza: Don't feel [chuckles] like that. Everybody here is great. You and Ash have great, great work and I'm really happy to be able to be talking to you guys because I admire you.

[laughter]

[01:14:30] Jasmin: It's very mutual.

[laughter]

[01:14:32] Ash: Yes, for sure.

[01:14:32] Luiza: No, it's true.

[01:14:34] Ash: It's [unintelligible 01:14:34] doing this podcast is like a two-way street, I feel like we definitely have a mission with it, but then also for me, personally, it's also about getting to know people that I wouldn't have gotten to know otherwise and just hearing their perspectives and taking whatever lessons that they bring me because even though we're hosting this, this podcast is not about us.

It's not like, "Man, it's time to get on a podium and talk about our lives or anything like that." It's very much still listening to people like you share their experience and finding the positive takeaways in it. Obviously, we are very happy and honored to have you be a participant on the podcast. Yes, thank you so much for joining us, super awesome to have you on.

[01:15:40] Luiza: Thank you, guys. It was really fun. I never done a podcast before.

[01:15:45] Jasmin: You're a natural [chuckles].

[01:15:47] Luiza: [chuckles] I'm no longer a virgin.

[01:15:51] Ash: Yes, so to wrap up for real this time, you can find Luiza on Twitter and ArtStation. We'll be including the links to her social medias in the description box below on whatever you're listening to us on. Also, we'll include some links to your game as well so that people can follow the Twitter account and keep an eye on it for when it finally comes out and drops and we can all have fun together.

[01:16:22] Luiza: We have a lot to show yet.

[laughter]

[01:16:25] Ash: We're looking forward to it, for sure.

[01:16:28] Jasmin: Yes, thank you so much for coming on. Again, it was an absolute honor. To anyone listening, if you would like to suggest someone to join us on an episode of this podcast, someone who's a great positive force within their community along with being great at what they do, please send us an email at allinclusivepdsct@gmail.com. That's allinclusive, no spaces, pdcst@gmail.com.

They can be a 2D artist, 3D artists, community managers, someone who's in QA, we just want to have anyone on here. Please send us suggestions. We can't wait.

[01:17:01] Ash: For sure. Like Jasmin said, anyone is really okay. As long as you think they're cool and they have a cool story to tell and have a positive aspect to bring and share with everyone, please send us those suggestions. I would like to thank you for joining us again for another episode of All Inclusive. Thank you for listening. Up until this point, it's been a really fun side project for Jasmin and I. I think it's going pretty well so far.

We hope that you have as much fun listening to us talk as we do talking and you can find us on a couple different social media channels, and you can find these links in the description box below or the main page of whatever you're listening to us on. We are on Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify right now. Thanks again and we hope you'll join us for another episode of All Inclusive.

[music]

[01:18:04] [END OF AUDIO]