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

Alright, Theodore thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Yes, I moved out to Los Angeles aduring the model boom. I was able to get started as a model maker working on a ton of movies. CGI was on the rise and made a lot of model making obsolete. I saw it coming and I changed gears to costume and props. Years later I had a full time job at a prop house for 15 years working on film and TV. Like any full time job, it became exhausting. I took a break from it to catch my breath. Then I Started teaching people on youtube and eventually left the prop shop to devote all my time to creating content.

Like staring out on any new job I had to learn how to edit and shoot my own videos, and I had to learn how to market myself. I was confident in my fabricator skills, but the rest is hard. A lot of trial and error.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am most proud of my bredth of work. I have pieces in literally hundreds of movies and TV shows. Some of them include Fifth Element, Guyver, Titanic, Hunger Games, Xena Warrior Princess, and Criminal Minds.

I am also a proud owner of a Silver Play button from Youtube which goes to creators that have 100,000 subscribers.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I love educating people, and challenging myself. When people come to me asking how to create something and I know I can give the tools and techniques to make it happen- i find it very inspiring.

I have always said it is the passion not the talent, so giving passionate people what they need to succeed keeps me going.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Crushing it by Gary Vanerchuck totally helped me figure out how to have a relevant presence. I also was a big fan of the Channel “Make Something” and their video on how to price goods is so useful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://eviltedsmith.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evilted_channel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EvilTedSmith/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/evilted40

Image Credits

Brett Downen