Meet Jude Zangel

We recently connected with Jude Zangel and have shared our conversation below.

Jude, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from my inner security and surety knowing that I have the ability to come back stronger than before from any setback.
For me it’s a quality I’ve had all my life, I’ve just never thought that life will keep me down even when it’s felt tough to get back up. I’ve grown up with the mindset that life will go on, that whatever happens today, tomorrow will still come and it will bring new opportunities for me to do better.
Of course I’ve had my fair share of personal struggles and shortcomings, places where I’ve failed or wished I did better or differently, and so ‘resilience’ is just a skill of life that we all get to practice and slowly get better at.

What helps me trust in myself and my own resilience is the imagery of the pendulum of life, this constant sway that makes everything balanced. Whenever something good is happening I know that things will calm down (not necessarily get bad). And when something horrible and bad is happening I’m able to calm myself by trusting that it won’t last forever and that better things are coming.

If you’re able to take a breather and sit with yourself every time you end up in a bad place where things aren’t going your way, you can practice building your resilience by resting your body and mind and remembering your inner purpose, the reason you’re doing what you’re doing. Because anything worth doing, even if it’s just getting through the day, will test your strength. And the great thing is that that is how you get stronger. Every time that happens and you actively practice this, you become stronger and stronger, so that when it happens next you’re able to bounce back quicker and better than before.

Knowing that nothing bad ever lasts forever, and you have the power to use your time, your mind and your abilities however you want, all this brings a kind of inner peace. This peace of mind becomes your strength and lets you push yourself to do what you want and need to do, because you’re able to trust yourself.

I’m still trying to get better at all this everyday because each new day brings it’s own ups and downs, but I’m able to get up and take on each obstacle I come across.

So all in all, from my life, resilience comes from inner peace and trust in myself, good rest and self-care and some good support. If you’re able to talk to someone close about your struggles you’ll feel a lot lighter and you might be surprised with the amount of support someone can give, even if it’s just some time and care to listen.

If you feel you have weak resilience, the good news is that it’s a lifelong skill and you have plenty of time to get stronger at it. Give yourself some trust and know that all dark times never last forever, you’ll get through whatever rough patches you go through and come out better because of it.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am currently a 3rd year student at The Animation School (Cape Town).
I am in my final year and have just finished my electives of Character Asset Development (3D modelling and texturing a character) and Rigging (making the digital bones for the character so that animators can move it around).

I am busy developing my skills in multiple artistic areas that I find interesting and fascinating, such as 3D modelling and sculpting, Animation, Rigging and 2D art such as concept art and illustration and design. I’m lucky to be in a position now with more free time to work on personal projects and studies.

I’m trying to upgrade my skills to make the cool things I’ve always wanted to make and I’m on a personal quest to make and refine my style of worldbuilding that combines different elements of cyberpunk, sci-fi and fantasy worlds cohesively so they all fit together. I aim to use this unique blend of genres to create cool and wholesome stories in games and animations.

For the rest of this year I’ll be working on these personal projects to find what really stands out to me and what I want to go into first after this year. For now though I’m happily experimenting and trying new things while starting to build my social media presence.

If you’d like to follow along my journey or collaborate on a project you can follow me on instagram @mech.shroom.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The Power of Consistency:
Probably the most noticeable quality that I’ve noticed brings the most personal fulfillment is being consistent with whatever skills you’re trying to practice or get better at. Whether it’s artistic, physical or anything else, the phrase that keeps coming back to me so often is “little by little, a little becomes a lot”. It can be difficult but doing a little bit of something you enjoy everyday, whether it will improve your work or not, is so much better than doing a lot of work now and again can feel so frustrating and overwhelming. Rather do at least a little bit everyday and see your skills improve drastically by the end of the month or year. It also helps to build a sense of discipline and trust in yourself because you’re able to see how much you accomplished over the span of time.

Curiosity
It can sometimes be hard to learn something new, especially when you don’t know what all it can do. So I encourage having a curious mind with everything you do and allowing yourself to become immersed and interested in what it is you’re doing. I think it’s so easy to go down a rabbit hole and get invested in what you’re doing when you show genuine curiosity and a willingness to not only learn but to also make mistakes and take things slowly at first.

Personal Work
I’d say it’s very important to have at least one personal project or idea you want to work on that is not related to any work or other project. It’s good to have something in your life that you can build up, that you are genuinely interested in and want to work on. It can be a life saver of a rough day when at least you know you got to make progress on something you’re excited about. It’s something that can keep your soul and creative spark fueled even in challenging times. This can be anything from writing a story, doing art that’s all in your own imaginative world, or even something completely different that you feel makes you refreshed.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I would love to collaborate with creative people.

I’m looking to collaborate with people working on cool stories that are either in games or animation. I’d love to help out on any projects or be part of a team to bring something cool to life using my skillsets.

My skills include 3D modelling and sculpting, rigging and 2D art such as concept art and illustration. If you have a project you need these skills in, especially and preferably if it’s anything to do with sci-fi, cyberpunk or fantasy genres or needing to make characters or environments or robots, I would love to help out to get some experience.

If you’d like to connect you can email me at [email protected].

Contact Info:

• Instagram: mech.shroom
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jude-zangel-1747992a8/