We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Liou. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.
Alex, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
I don’t think I have or think I necessarily ever will. But it’s also part of what fuels me to keep getting better at my craft! I still have doubts at the start of a job if I will be able to deliver or not, but I’m able to talk myself into believing in my abilities quicker and quicker. A lot of it I think comes from experience and just continuing to push yourself. I choose to embrace my imposter syndrome so that it continues to push me forward. If I didn’t, I think I would personally become complacent. I like that it keeps the fire lit and burning within me.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a Freelance Motion Designer / 3D Artist based in Los Angeles, CA. I help clients bring their stories and projects to life using primarily 3D visuals. My main programs that I use are Houdini, Cinema 4D, Redshift, Unreal Engine, and After Effects. You can see examples of work on my website (alexliou.net) or Instagram (@alex_liou)!
I love that I just get to create art everyday. I think I’m very lucky to get to do this for a living. Not only that, but since I’m freelance, I continuously get to tackle different types of projects. That’s a huge part of why I choose to freelance and not take on a staff job. But it also gives me the ability to really craft my own schedule and spread my time evenly among the things that I love doing.
Since starting my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work on movies, stadium graphics, music videos, experiential events, and so much more. I’ve been really lucky with the opportunities that have come my way. It’s allowed me to collaborate with many studios and artists that I really look up to. I love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for the world.
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?
Being a self starter was huge for me. Since my background is actually in music, I had to teach myself everything that I know how to do now. I continuously hunted down YouTube tutorials or paid courses online to keep pushing myself forward. This also fueled the fact that I already felt behind, coming into this career “later” in my life.
My second quality is my willingness to take a risk. If I had never taken the risk of shifting careers and moving out to LA, who knows where I’d be today. Probably just coasting along in my previous job and not entirely happy with what I was doing. Now I’m really getting to enjoy life. Not just with what I’m doing, but where everything else is heading towards.
My third quality is my drive to never settle with where I’m at. This probably ties back to my imposter syndrome. But with that, it continuously pushes me to work on personal projects and to take classes so that I can be the best version of me. This helps to keep me from becoming too comfortable and complacent.
My advice for people starting out on their journey to help build these qualities is to learn how to prioritize and organize your tasks. This doesn’t mean you must hit every single task you have set in a day, but being able to prioritize your tasks will help you knock everything out in a much more efficient way. You’ll get the important tasks done that significantly impact your life without being distracted by smaller menial tasks. There’s another book recommendation coming below, but a book that taught me this is Eat That Frog. I highly recommend this read!
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
The Freelance Manifesto is the book that I’ve read the most when starting out my freelance career! I still constantly refer back to it. There’s so much information packed into that book that really helped my career forward. It helps me find my start, my initial clients, and just becoming comfortable with this whole world I was completely foreign to. I would be completely lost if it wasn’t for this book!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alexliou.net/
- Instagram: @alex_liou
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-liou-b7310061/
- Twitter: @alexliou
Headshot by Amy Jin. All artwork by Alex Liou.