Meet Bill Rude

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bill Rude a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bill, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
 In my experience what a lot of people see as something like a creative slump may actually be an inability to focus their creativity. For example a person suffering from writer’s block is most likely still going through their day imagining different colors their kitchen could be, figuring out what it would take to fix their broken car themselves, or what kind of landscaping would look good in their yard. What looks like procrastination is often unfocused creativity.

What helps keep my creativity focused, is by having a full time creative day-job apart from my personal creative endeavors. Every moment of the working day I’m pressed upon to be creative, but because it’s for other people it’s easy to separate it and keep my personal creativity fresh. It’s almost like my job and my personal projects are procrastinations of each other. It only really works when working for other people, so it doesn’t tap the emotional connection I have to my personal work at all.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I create retro style horror art under the banner of “7 Hells”. It encompasses many different facets of expression from drawings, paintings, sculptures, writing, and live story telling & presentations.

What I find most special about what I’ve created with the brand, is that I’m able to remain nimble in moving between all these different mediums simply because it’s just an outlet for my enthusiasm and personality. It is truly just an extension of what I love and what I like to share to inspire other people.

The latest news around 7 Hells is a lot about building out on the foundation of work I’ve created over the past 12 years or so, and sharing it.

When I had first laid out my journey to Voyage back at Halloween of 2020 (http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-bill-rude-7-hells-retro-horror-art-bill-rude-woodland-hills/), my artistic endeavors had grown out of years of experience in the film industry and using drawing and painting to express the visual side of the world building I’d always loved to create as a writer. These days my creative journey has been venturing back into the writing space, inspired by the visual side.

For example I’ll research dozens of different versions of the same legend for a piece of artwork. In one I’ll find a highly specific detail included that doesn’t lead to any real outcome. Then in some other version the same tale will be told with an assumption of an unexplained result, but with no inciting event. It becomes immediately obvious that many details get lost depending on the path the tale was handed down person to person, over the course of generations.

So that is what I’m exploring in documenting the 7 Hells versions of these tales. All of the prior sources are just as important and authoritative as they always were, and from that, my intention is to create abridged tales that incorporate the details from a number of retellings, and not from only one particular tradition.

This past holiday season I was given the opportunity to take the main stage at Season’s Screamings, the Horror Holiday Convention and Gift Market, and preview segments of one of my books for the first time to a large public audience. It was a wonderful learning experience. Be sure to keep an eye out for more info on the book, “7 Hells’ Tales of Winters Past”!

In a similar vein, the 7 Hells Krampus got to celebrate its 10 year anniversary making live appearances around the Los Angeles area. This may make him the longest serving Krampus representing the punishment of the naughty currently lurking the shadows of Southern California.

Stepping away from the Winter Holiday work, I’m also trying to find time to work on more original pieces as well as original writing. This includes a comic book series, screenplays, and the concept for a live action television series that I’m very excited about.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three most important qualities that had the most impact on my success are all things that I’m optimistic that everyone can access:

1) Sincerity: Be you. Don’t worry about which creative ideas may be perceived as right or wrong in the eyes of others. Get in touch with yourself on a core level and project what truly moves you into the world. People recognize sincerity and it sets you apart from the people who do not have it. Even among a group of all successful people, it is always the sincere individuals who garner the most respect.

2) Enthusiasm: Be positive and build on your ideas. Do not focus on tearing others’ ideas down. In fact, help build and support other people’s ideas as well! Going after another person’s creative expression is a symptom of cynicism, which is also a tell-tale sign of immaturity and projects insecurity.

3) Curiosity: Everyone is curious about something, but not everyone focuses it into creativity. Curiosity is the seed of creative inspiration. It’s why artists create and scientists perform research. I firmly believe, and have spoken about, that science and art both exist to answer questions. It’s just different approaches and different styles of questioning. Curiosity is what moves humanity forward, and the lack of curiosity is what erodes culture.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
 Start financing all of my artistic endeavors myself and use my creativity to invest in the future that I won’t be around to be a part of.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Kevin Nicklaus

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