16 | If You’re Not Making Mistakes, You’re Not Growing with Carl Knox

Through The Creative Door

Join Alexis as she delves into the lush, plant-filled world of Carl Knox, a 3D artist, mural artist, photographer and videographer whose journey spans from anime-inspired artistry to astrophysical content creation. Carl shares his inspiring story of transforming a childhood passion into a diverse career, tackling challenges, and finding joy in his customised creative spaces. From his poignant mural tribute to his dog Zen to designing innovative solutions for his father, Carl's reflections on the value of a supportive environment, balance and the importance of time and space in creativity. Tune in for an honest, heartfelt conversation that celebrates the artistic spirit and the pursuit of one's creative dreams.

If you’d like to see more of, you can follow Carl on instagram; @knoxcarl

This episode was recorded on 8 February 2024 on the lands of the Woiworung Peoples. We hope that this episode inspires you as a creative person and as a human being.

Thanks for listening, catch you on the next episode.

Psst! We are always on the lookout for creative people to share their story and inspire others. Have you got someone in mind who would love to have a chat? Get in contact with us via Instagram @throughthecreativedoor.

If you love what you hear and would like to support us, donate to: https://buymeacoffee.com/throughthecreativedoor

Creative references from Carl:

MasterClass: https://www.masterclass.com

The Creative Act: A Way Of Being - Rick Rubin

Let’s get social:

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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ttcdpodcast

CREDITS

Created and Hosted by Alexis Naylor

Music by Alexis Naylor & Ruby Miguel

Edited and Produced by Ruby Miguel

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00:08 - Alexis (Host)

Hello, my name is Alexis Naylor and I am your host here at Through the Creative Door. On behalf of myself and my guests, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on which this podcast is recorded and produced. May we pay our respects to all First Nations people and acknowledge Elders, past and present. On this podcast, I will be chatting to an array of creative guests, getting a glimpse into their worlds and having some honest and inspiring conversations along the way. I’m delighted to welcome you to Through the Creative Door.

Well, hello, Carl. How are you? Thank you.

00:53 - Carl (Guest)

Thank you

00:54 - Alexis (Host)

I am so chuffed. Thank you so much for letting us come through your creative door that's filled with so many plants. I'm so excited about this.

01:02 - Carl (Guest)

Plants make me happy. They make, make, yeah, they clean the air, they look visually beautiful and, uh, yeah, they definitely make my creative space much more pleasant to be in.

01:17 - Alexis (Host)

And it’s such gorgeous light coming in here absolutely stunning. Um, I want to start with a bit about you before I launch into all these questions. I don't even know where to start. You are such a talented bear, oh my goodness. I mean, truth be told, I'd already done a little stalky stalk of you before we had a chat today, but even off mic we just had a bit more of a chat of like sort of current work and things that you're doing.

01:42 - Carl (Guest)

Wonderful. I love tech. I love computers. I used to love Astro Boy watching cartoons. Astro Boy for me is a Japanese cartoon. I used to love drawing and painting in the Japanese style of manga and anime. That's where I started. I had a job in the tax office at tech support doing help desk, helping people install tax software over the phone and while I was taking calls I'd be drawing out of an anime book and learning. You know those?

02:11

How to draw manga books yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so I loved that sort of stuff, so I started drawing, and then my dad saw that I had an interest in art and he found a 3D animation course in Melbourne and I lived in Canberra at the time.

02:24

So he said do you want to do this? And I said absolutely so. Dad was always very supportive of me studying the arts and becoming some form of artist and then, once I'd got that scholarship to go into computer animation, everything else just fell away for me. I didn't really focus on my school, like my high school grades. I didn't get the greatest grades in high school because I already knew what I wanted to be. Yeah, like I don't need to go to university, I've got my future set ahead of me, like yeah. And so I went down that path hard, all in being an artist amazing.

02:58 - Alexis (Host)

I know that I'm in your lovely home. Thank you for having me in here. We're down one side that's like full of plants and like delicious sunlight, but you've also, down the other room, got your other creative space, which is obviously you sit at a computer quite a lot for a lot of your work. But what does a creative space mean to you and why do you think?

03:25 - Carl (Guest)

This room is incredibly conducive to creativity. I like to have a lot of open space, not too much visual clutter. Everything in this room has to either have a use or be aesthetically pleasing. In this space I don't have a lot of plastic. Plastic tends to have a certain association for me. I much prefer earthy, natural. There's a lot of wood, there's a lot of plants, ceramics, that sort of thing. So this space generally and it's just an aesthetic thing as well I just over time I've I know what I like and I know what gives me inspiration. So if I'm in a room that doesn't have these things, I can definitely still be creative. I know enough about my creative process. I can sit in a cardboard box and be creative if I need to be.

04:11

But it's not. I'm here every day. I work from home, so I want to make this room as conducive to creativity as possible, and that means having everything ready to go. So there's a lot of instruments lying around. I'm not a professional musician, but it does help change my way of thinking. If I'm stuck on a project, I will move to another project temporarily just to loosen me up a little bit. So, yeah, I often have three projects on at any one time at least.

04:38

And I would probably just say like, yeah, if you're starting out new to being creative or anyone that's creative, I would promise you they've got thousands of ideas running around in their heads. It's like oh, I want to start a podcast, I want to do a range of t-shirts, I want to learn how to do this and do that, and it's so important to acknowledge those wants and those dreams. Most people don't acknowledge them at all and therefore they're not passionate about anything. So they don't acknowledge them at all and therefore they're not passionate about anything. So they don't know what they want to do with their spare time, and then they just go on instagram or they go out drinking with their friends. But if you've got a slight creative bone in you when you say I want to start a podcast, write it down, put it on a list, and then, when you're bored, you look at that list and you go, oh that's right, I'm interested in learning how to do that, let's find a course on it, let's buy a microphone, let's meet some interesting people, let's start a podcast, and so validating that desire to be creative is so important and such a valuable thing to do in your creative space. You should have a big list of things that you want to do and have it on the wall, and for me, I choose the top three things on my list. If you look at my list, I've got hundreds of things in that list, but you look at that list and you prioritize, you say which one is the most important to me right now for the next year, and I put I pick my top three and I put them on the top of that list and then I just break them down and then I go down that path. If one year it's going to be murals and I do a deep dive into finding mentors, finding online courses, buying the materials and trying to be a mural artist and just sucking at being a mural artist for a long time and you will suck, and that's part of it as well.

06:16

Um, and so finding, yeah, having your creative space with your to-do list and then also linked to that space, is time. So I work in astronomy. A lot of the work that I do is I work at Swinburne University in the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. Four days a week I do content for that department with their astronomers, creating content for them, and Einstein's special theory of relativity links space and time together, and so it's the same in the creative world that if you have a creative space but you don't have time, that creative space is null and void, it's wasted.

06:56

So you have to set time aside as well, not just a space, but a day a week. If you, you know, really want to honor you bit yourself being a creative person, set aside time. Set aside time to play, to explore, to make a mess, to watch some tutorials and learning from other people without distraction. Sit down in your beautiful creative space and say I am going to get better at something for a little while. So that's yeah. This room here it's so beautiful to sit and spend time in as well, yeah and that's yeah.

07:32 - Alexis (Host)

I love it. I mean, you've just mentioned, yeah, being able to reflect and be proud on so much that you've done. I guess this next question is probably I'm trying to stitch you up because I'm asking what are you proud of creating and how did it come about? But you probably could say all of the things, but is there one or maybe a handful that you're like, yeah, that's like top notch for me.

07:58 - Carl (Guest)

Absolutely two. Two recent pieces come to mind, and on your way into visiting me today you would have walked past it. There's a beautiful mural on the street downstairs and it's a beautiful mural of my dog, Zen, and Zen passed away two years ago, and it was around the time that we were all going through a lot of change with COVID, and for me, mural painting was one of the things that I picked up as a lockdown skill, and I was terrible at it for a long time, and that's the point of learning a new skill you have to be comfortable sucking at something.

08:37

Sitting in the uncomfortable yeah, absolutely, and that took me a long time to realize that being bad at something is the first step to being good at something. And so it took me a long time, and so that mural is a culmination of a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication, and it's so personal to me as well.

08:58

Zen was obviously a big part of my life, and so the mural if you see it on my Instagram it's of a Japanese dog with a Japanese starburst coming out behind it and there's cherry blossoms on the side and there's a time lapse on there of me painting it on the garage door. But it's designed in 3D like a 3D package software. So Pixar movies are all done in 3D, and that was the first skill that I got as an artist. I learnt to become a 3D animator, and so I designed it and rendered it in a 3D software package called Maya and Keyshot. So Keyshot's a rendering package, and then usually 3D renders just appear on screens. They're just digital and so they never make it into the real world in any way.

09:43

So for me, taking a 3D image and then painting it on my garage door was a wonderful way of combining my 3D skillset with my painting skillset. And it was a huge moment for me because that's my first public piece and it was so personal to me that it was so unique to me as an artist being able to use my 3D skillset, my 2D skill set, and connect really personally in terms of the subject matter and then also how Zen's depicted in the piece, because she's a Japanese breed of dog. A lot of Japanese influence came through in the design. So it's yeah, it's for me, that's one of the proudest pieces I've been able to do in terms of personal connection, as well as so unique to my skill set. Yeah, I absolutely love it. So artistically, that was a really proud moment for me. And then, more recently, there's another proud moment it was a proud son moment.

10:35 - Alexis (Host)

Oh?

10:41 - Carl (Guest)

So as, yeah, as a creative, I love the idea of designing and creating things to make the world slightly better, more beautiful. Reduce the amount of work that somebody has to do. Like everything in this house, it's either hung vertically, it's easy access, so I don't have to open doors and, you know, put pans and things away. So I love the idea of minimizing the amount of effort you have to achieve a goal.

11:07

And so my dad had a stroke about a year ago and so he has trouble walking around now. So he needs a walking stick and every morning he does physiotherapy and so he's on like this bicycle machine, this pedaling machine, like you sit on the couch and you pedal and you get blood flow to your feet, and so every morning he needs somebody to help him get into the bicycle, because he his right arm doesn't work as well as it used to, so he needs assistance a lot of the time. So he'd sit in the, he'd sit in his chair and wait for somebody to come and help him every morning, and it's either my mum or it's myself, and I’m in Tasmania, and so I sat on that problem for a long time. I looked, looked at it and went how can I get dad exercising without anybody's assistance? And the bicycle pedals are weighted and so they kind of flip upside down so he can't get his feet in.

11:51

And so I went for a run one day and I came up with a design and it started off. The first iteration was just a pile of books, and the pile of books locked the pedal vertically so he could slide in, and it didn't really work very well until like five iterations later I designed a little foam locking block with a low friction surface on the top so he puts his foot on top of the low surface friction like slidey thing and then slides it in and then just when he starts to pedal the block falls away by itself. So creating that for him made his life so much easier and it's one less thing for me to do and he can start exercising straight away. So designing a small thing like that just for one person I got like, even if it's just for one person, I was so incredibly proud.

12:39 - Alexis (Host)

So well said. On the flip side of things that you're proud of. What do you reckon has challenged your creativity over the years, and is there like a major lesson or lessons that you'd be willing to share?

12:55 - Carl (Guest)

Making a living as an artist was a huge challenge for me. So, yeah, I trained. I went to art school. I trained to be an amazing artist, but in art school, nobody ever teaches you to be a successful business person, and so making money from my art was a massive lesson that I had to learn on my own, and it was incredibly painful and heartbreaking, and I quit art a couple of times because I wasn't being validated financially from it, and so at some point, if you yeah, if you stalk me on in on Google, you'll probably find my website, and there's a lot of commercial work on there there's m&ms, there's pepsi, there's you know, all these illustrations and all these high-end things that you look at that and you go, oh, that's great, this guy's successful.

13:44

But I was doing those things and I wasn't charging properly for them, and so, for me, I was actually running at a loss because I didn't know how to charge properly, and so learning how to run a business was is something that every artist, if they want to be commercial, they need to learn how to do, and nobody yeah, there's, there's no easy way to do it except by sucking and by failing and running at a loss for so long. And then you go oh, wait a minute, I'm charging $90 an hour, but that's not enough, because I'm not like. Yeah, when I realized I went and got a business mentor, I found somebody and I said how do I make this work? And she said, okay, great, let's put all the things that you are good at on the table. Let's have a look at them. And there's wedding photography, there's 3D animations, there's logo design, there's music videos, there's all this stuff.

14:34

And then she goes okay, great, you're a very talented person. That's wonderful. How many of these things do you actually like doing? And you actually like doing and do you want to make money from? And then I said, oh, wonderful, well, let's take half of these things off the list, because I hate logos, I hate doing weddings and I hate all these other things, even though I'm good at them. I'm just like these don't give me joy and this isn't what I want to do professionally. I've got, I can make money from them, but I don't want to choose.

14:59 - Alexis (Host)

Especially when you can choose the ones that, yeah, resonate with you.

15:03 - Carl (Guest)

Yeah, so she only chose the ones that resonated, or I only chose the ones that resonated with me, and I said I only want to do these five things. And she said, great, Now let's just focus on those things. And then she helped me identify what I wanted to be. And then she said now we just need to target clients that need you to solve their problems using these skills, those five things yeah.

15:23

Yeah. And then I said, oh well, that's wonderful, now I don't have to worry about being a wedding photographer anymore. I'm good at it, but I don't want to be that person. She said awesome, let's take it off the list. Let's not make that as one of your offerings. If someone comes to you and says can you shoot my wedding? You say no, whereas previously I'd be a yes man, I'd be like I can do everything. Yes, let's do it.

15:44 - Alexis (Host)

And I don't know if you agree, but do you feel, like when you're a creative, that we're sort of told that narrative that we just have to say yes to everything? I mean, obviously it's different for you because you had lots of different revenue streams, but even as a singer or a musician, I always feel like it's always like you just say yes to every gig. It's like it might not cut the mustard, perhaps in and serving me, but it's just like that. You just want to be seen as the one that always says yes to the opportunities. You don't want to say no to the opportunities.

16:21 - Carl (Guest)

Absolutely. If, especially if you're not having, if you don't have that much money coming in, you kind of go I could do that. And you go, yeah, I could do that. And because you need the money. So back then I was like, can you shoot a wedding? I'm like, yeah, I can do that, I could do that. Yeah, let's do it. And you try it out. And I'm so glad I did try everything because now it allowed me to then, when I had the luxury of choosing which ones I wanted to do, I could say no to some things. But back in the day I had to say yes to everything, and so it's a luxury saying no to some things. And so, yeah, when I went and saw that business coach, I was at the point where I could start choosing my jobs and, yeah, just started saying no to some of them. And then she also taught me how to cost effectively. So I was charging, I don't know, let's say, $90 an hour at the time that I went to see her, but prior to that I was, I don't know, charging $50 an hour or something. She's like okay, well, let's look at that. How much time does it take you to do a project? And I'd tell her maybe eight hours, and she and I'd tell her maybe eight hours, and she's like, okay, that's in an ideal world that you get everything done right the first time.

17:29

Now let's assume that the client wants to make three rounds of changes. That's another two days of work, including meetings that you have to do with them, including emails that you correspond with. Let's assume need to sometimes buy new hardware and your keyboard, a new mouse, a chair, maybe. Let's assume you also need to pay for electricity and all these things. And so I was charging a $50 an hour for eight hours and that was it. And then she say no, you have to add 15% on top of that for Incidentals and to make your business run at a profit, because if you have to hire somebody else at $50 an hour, your business makes no profit. So you are paying a 3D modeller of $50 now. But then there's also the overheads of running a studio, electricity and whatnot. So adding 15% into that will cover it. If, if you need to buy new hardware, those profits cover that. Also, you need to start charging now for meeting times and emails and all those sorts of things. So she taught me how to cost beyond just my hourly rate which is so valuable as a business operator.

18:22

I didn't know how to save for superannuation, I didn't know how to do my taxes, any of that sort of stuff. So I'm an amazing artist, but I was a terrible business operator. So my first business I had to yeah, I had to call it quits, and I had an amazing showreel and an amazing website. And then I went I can't afford to be this person anymore because I need to pay my bills. So I snapped my paintbrushes and I hated being an artist. And then I went and got a nice suit and I got a job as a personal assistant in a corporate world somewhere and I wasn't an artist for a long time because I couldn't financially make it work, and so that was a huge yeah. I was a really good artist.

19:01

And then I had to tuck my tail in between my legs and go look, I can't, I can't make a live, I can't make it as a living, I don't like, I can't make it like this. I don't know what to do. And I just went off and got a normal job and then in my spare time eventually I came back to like I couldn't kill the artist inside me. I'm like it's still there, even if it's hurt, and it it feels like it's a failure because it can't make money. He's still in there.

19:25

And so eventually I came back to painting and drawing, but not because I needed the money, but because the artist inside me still needed to say something and still needed to be an artist. So I started drawing and painting and doing things, and then eventually the corporate job treated me so badly that I'm like no, I think I need to come back as an artist. And then I, by then I knew I'd learned some things about business and I learned how to, yeah, properly charge. And then I came back as an artist and then I got a full-time job at the university.

19:54 - Alexis (Host)

Which is where you are now right?

19:56 - Carl (Guest)

Which is where I am now. Yeah, so that took the problem of being an artist for money out. Like it made it easier, because if you're running your own business it's so much extra work, whereas if you just work for somebody else, they handle all the clients, they handle the pay, the tax, the super, the computer, the hardware, the office all that sort of stuff gets handled for you, and then you just show up and be an artist.

20:18

And so being a designer for another studio, or you know somewhere else that they've got a problem that they need solving with your skillset. Then you just show up every day nine to five, be a designer for the man man being management. It's like you just, yeah, just show up and do it and then you come home and you can do whatever you want to do in that spare time. And in my spare time I would always be leveling up, always learning new things. I'm addicted to learning. I can't stop. I love it so much now yeah.

20:45 - Alexis (Host)

Now, yeah, this is probably going to be a hard question to ask again, because you have so many realms. But is there an object, and maybe it's like a sentimental thing that you can't live without while you're creating?

21:01 - Carl (Guests)

Yeah, absolutely, that's um, that's multiple computer screens.

21:07 - Alexis (Host)

I thought it might be something like really like obvious, like that.

21:13 - Carl (Guest)

Yeah, I can work on one screen, but if you have a look at my desk, I have four screens on there. I've got two in front of me, I've got one under my desk.

21:19 - Alexis (Host)

You have this really cool like glass desk and like a screen underneath, which is such a vibe. I've never seen that before. I want one.

21:28 - Carl (Guest)

I had all these old screens lying around, so I just decided to plug them all in, and I love having I just have loving having access to things. So if it's emails and I'm someone's written in me an email, say, for instance, it's a logo design or something, they'll have eight different points in there that I need to make reference to. So when I'm designing the logo, I make sure to have the email open. I make sure to have all my reference images open, and so that's why I needed another screen, like either down beneath me or to the side, and then I also have a projector plugged in which covers that big wall on the right-hand side there which is currently turned off. But that means I have as much real estate as I can.

22:07

And you'll notice, actually now in the Apple Vision Pros, everyone's wearing these new VR headsets over in America, and that's a sense. It's essentially a VR headset that you can walk around. It's a mobile headset, but what that allows you to do is to pin videos in virtual space around the place, so you can have as many screens as you want around the place, which is wildly productive I think. You'll be able to have recipes open in the kitchen, and then Gordon Ramsay teaching you how to cook dinner versus. And then you walk over the piano and then you'll have all the notes coming towards you, overlaid over over the videos of yeah, of you seeing the piano in real time.

22:35 - Alexis (Host)

It’s like the reality version of, like guitar hero.

22:50 - Carl (Guest)

That's exactly right, yeah yeah. So the next couple of years, you'll be seeing these virtual screens becoming more and more accessible, and I think that's going to be wildly useful, because I love having as many screens as possible, um, open to me just for reference, making, yeah, making, inspiring me, as many things I can have. When I'm in that zone of creativity, I want to see as many shapes that I'm trying to reference, as many fonts as possible, as many colors, yeah. So multiple screens for me is lovely, and if I can't, if I only have one little laptop, I'll try to have a notebook beside me.

23:13 - Alexis (Host)

If you could give one piece of advice, one nugget of advice to I don't know someone who wants to do what you do, or just another creative, what would it be?

23:34 - Carl (Guest)

It's going to come back to something I said before that you have to being bad is the first step to being good at something. So before you can be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad for a long time. And I love being bad at something now because it means I'm on the journey to growing and it means that it's worth.

23:58

It's worth chasing after something that you're not good at, because if you were good at something, if everybody was good at the skill that you're trying to achieve, it wouldn't be special, it wouldn't be worth being, it wouldn't be worth achieving, because something that's easy is accessible to everybody, whereas something that's hard to do means a limited amount of people can do it, and it makes you more who you are, makes you more unique. You've so many people give up when they suck, and it's such a shame, because that's half the fun. The half the fun is making a mess and trying something new and pushing through that frustration, and it teaches you so many things in life that are worth learning. Learning how to deal with hardship, learning how to deal with struggling at something that you're not good at, getting out of a situation that's uncomfortable through hard work and dedication, because if you're not making mistakes, you're not growing, and so sucking and making mistakes means you're growing, which means you're becoming a more talented person.

24:56 - Alexis (Host)

So true, so true. Got an extra question, what resource would you recommend or resources would you recommend if someone wanted to develop their creative process?

25:12 - Carl (Guest)

I would say put aside a small budget every month to buying things like subscription services or new artistic tools that if you might buy, like look at a paint. If you're a painter, it's like oh, there's a course online for you to. I'm always curious about doing photorealistic portraits, but you know it's a $50 course and it's $50. You know I'm not going to spend that money, but that budget is an investment in yourself. And so, putting money aside every month to pay for something like ChatGPT or any subscription service, even if it's something. I love, there's a series online called Masterclass.

25:55 - Alexis (Host)

I've seen the ads for those. They sound fascinating.

25:58 - Carl (Guest)

It's wonderful it's like Netflix you, most people pay for Netflix and they're happy to pay for Netflix and Masterclass is like a streaming service for creatives, for entrepreneurs, for sports people, any. If you want to learn a new skill and if you want to have a mentor or access to videos of successful people. That's what Masterclass is.

26:19 - Alexis (Host)

One last extra question. If you could hear anyone come on the podcast and answer these questions, who would you want to hear?

26:29 - Carl (Guest)

There's a gentleman named Woody Sampson and he's a local musician in Melbourne, so you might be able to track him down. He's a wonderfully talented musician. He plays almost everything and he used to have a corporate job. He used to work for I won't say who, just in case it comes back, I'll let Woody tell his story. But he used to work corporate and it just didn't resonate with him and so he quit, quit, and now he's a full-time musician and he's such a wonderful person, so much energy. He plays, like I said, he plays trumpet like a weapon. He's a plays piano, he plays guitar, he sings, he DJs. He's just wonderfully creative and he's, yeah, just one of the the happiest people you'll ever meet.

27:07

People like that just light me up. So, regardless of people, if they don't like their art or their music, they're just wonderful people that just have followed their dreams and not listened to what anybody else has ever said and they're happy just being themselves, and so those are the types of people that, yeah, I want to hear more of their stories and more of who they are.

27:26 - Alexis (Host)

Oh my goodness, Carl, thank you so much for this chat. This has just been such a so filled my cup. I love it.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of Through the Creative Door. If you enjoy our episodes and find value in them, consider supporting us by making a donation. Just visit buymeacoffee.com/throughthecreativedoor or via the link in our Instagram bio, where you can choose an amount and even write us a little message. Every little bit helps and we truly appreciate all of your support. But if you can't donate, no worries, you can still help us out by sharing our podcast with your friends and family and leaving a review on your favorite platform. Thanks so much for being part of our community. We'll catch you on the next episode. Bye.