We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Knight recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jordan, so excited to have you with us today, particularly to get your insight on a topic that comes up constantly in the community – overcoming creativity blocks. Any thoughts you can share with us?
The short answer is I haven’t. To be completely truthful, burnout and creative blocks have been a personal struggle for me, especially since the pandemic, and various life events far out of my control that came after. Even still I struggle with accepting an ever changing creative industry that is simply hard to keep up with. I go through phases of being completely stagnant that I often find are getting longer and more difficult to overcome, The only thing that has helped me and saved me from abandoning all my creative efforts is continuously learning and practicing, and not limiting that practice to only what I do to earn income. I’ve been teaching myself how to oil paint lately and that’s been extremely rewarding to explore a traditional path outside of my default digital space. I often have to give myself time limits to put my phone down and not let external factors in work and life keep me bogged in a routine of unproductivity. I rely on writing down my goals, my fears, things that make me happy, all different manifestation practices to keep me grounded and present. When those aren’t working I try to be kind to myself and focus on my health. Drink water, check in with friends. Eventually it will all lead me back to missing the creative parts of myself that I ultimately love and need in my life. It often just takes trusting the process.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
My name is Jordan and I’m a freelance Motion Designer living in Brooklyn. I was raised in suburban upstate New York near the Albany area, went to art school in Savannah, GA, then came to NYC eight years ago. I am also queer, I enjoy painting, and I have a pet snake.
I’ve worked primarily in advertising for my entire career. I started out in the beer industry, and then a little bit into experiential branding work, and then I’ve dabbled in many different facets of animation since. Including film, projection and performance, education, nonprofit, big agency, small studio, you name it. Most recently I worked on the intro bumpers at SXSW as well as the on stage projection graphics for Sarah Mclachlans Fumbling Toward Ecstasy tour. Both projects were so exciting to take part in and very rewarding to see in action.
Outside of my animation work I like to explore traditional mediums when I can, I attend figure drawing classes once a month at least, and I’ve recently taken a continuing education oil painting portrait course at SVA to push myself into more hands-on practices. I’ve found that finding creative community inside and outside of work has been vital to my own process and routine. My animation and digital work would feel so limited without being able to explore multiple branches of art and making.
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?
CommunityCommunityCommunity. My career would have been nothing if I didn’t find friends in my industry who supported my work, helped me find jobs, and generally kept me sane.
I really lucked out at the start of my career finding this local brunch meetup group for women and non-binary people in the motion graphics industry, called Panimation. Through those brunches I ended up meeting so many good people who over the years branched out into developing multiple forms of meetups and opportunities for film making, peer-reviewing, mentorship, overall becoming amazing allies in the industry. It was so beneficial to have a place that discussed the difficulties of navigating a male dominated industry and we really uplifted each other in that. We had space to talk about the unaddressed failings of many well known figures leading the charge and we taught ourselves to do better. I’d be nothing without finding people who I could align with and could learn from. Ask amongst your peers where they go to find community, try out different meetups on social media, or make your own and bring the people to you.
The skills will come with time, and practice. Community will keep a creative career sustainable.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
I really will always keep coming back to community. Outside of my work I’m very fortunate to have a large, queer friend group. One of the things that we routinely do is have a family dinner every Sunday that often comes along with a prompted question, usually it’s something silly. This past weekend being pride weekend the question was something along the lines of what do you think is the most important part to you about being queer. Some of the group answered with how significant the rejection of cultural norms is in our daily lives. Queerness comes with no rules, there is no structured definition, and for many of us we had to break out of a world that told us we would only be one thing and that was the way it had to be. By extension, queer community is one of the most creative spaces one can exist in. Without rules, our entire being relies on being creative. Whether we do it as our day job or not. We make and alter our own clothes, we decorate our rooms with portraits of our friends, art they’ve made, we share and make music together, we make movies or little skits with each other, we perform together, we dance together, we lean on each other when each of us is in need. There is an abundance of creativity in queer spaces. I’m never just building or developing skills to be a successful artists, I’m building them because I would not be me without them. Ultimately my queer community has helped me overcome the challenges that come with trying to keep my head above water mentally, financially, and all of the other struggles of daily monotony.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://JordanKnight.co
- Instagram: JJKnightart
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanknightmotion/
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
