#LiveFearless: Our final look at creative risk-taking comes from the brilliant Becky & Joe

Our final look at fearless creativity comes from dazzling directorial duo Becky & Joe, whose baffling, bizarre and brilliant Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared videos have amassed some 20 million YouTube views to date. The pair are perfectly placed to talk about creative leaps into the unknown in the last of our four #LiveFearless profiles with Jaguar.

It’s part of a campaign around the launch of the new Jaguar F-TYPE Coupé, a car which embodies design fearlessness, and we have commissioned each subject to produce a new piece of work that reflects the triumph of fearless design. Becky & Joe have created a weird and wonderful image that explores the idea of being in the spotlight and daring to do things differently in full public gaze.

But we want you to get involved too. Share the best examples of fearless art or design on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #LiveFearless and you’ll be in with a chance to win a week-long loan of the F-TYPE Coupé and a money-can’t-buy fearless experience. Visit the dedicated LiveFearless site for more information.

Over to Becky & Joe…

What role does fear play in your creative process?  

The idea of lots of people looking at your work can be quite intimidating and if people are familiar with your work, doing something new can make you feel uncomfortable. 

However we think it’s important to push yourself creatively and not think too much about what other people will think. You can’t please everyone and if you try to do that, then you may end up making work you don’t want to make and jeopardising the outcome. We like to have a recognisable style but feel the need to experiment with different processes and techniques so as not to get bored. We primarily make work for self enjoyment and if people like it then that’s a bonus! 

Tell us about a particular project where you had to overcome doubts or uncertainty. How did you do this? 

When we did the music video for Tame Impala we were uncertain what the final outcome would look like because the technique we used had such spontaneous results. 

Making 1,000 plasticine collages by hand was a very labour intensive process and it was hard to gage how long it would take to complete. The animated test we did looked great but we knew that we had to really push the technique to make a good video, and we had a short time to do it. We were lucky that we were given creative freedom to really experiment along the way and it was really exciting to see the 2D digital animation transform into psychedelic plasticine.

What’s the most tense you’ve been around a project nearing completion?  

When we finished Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared 2 it was tense towards the end because we had been waiting over two years to make it. The show began as a bit of fun that we made with our friends and after the first episode received such a great response we felt a lot pressure to not disappoint people.

It involves such a vast range of craft, puppetry and animation techniques that it took about three months to make. By the end of the filming we had no idea if we had made something good or not, and had lost our minds to puppets and dead fish! When you have been working on a project for a long time it is hard to know if it is good or not and we were just pleased to have finished…

In design is fear something you should try and ignore or try and meet head on? 

Head on! I think that when you face your fears you can create your best work, but sometimes it’s really bad and you just burn it and try something else – but that’s ok too.

When I feel safe making work it is often because I am doing something I have done before; it is more exciting to make something fresh and new and it is important to push yourself CcrReEaaTtiiVvEeLLy.

Which designers do you admire for being fearless? 

David Shrigley, The Chapman Brothers and Peter Millard.

What’s the biggest creative leap of faith you’ve ever taken? 

Once I had to film lots of maggots wriggling around in some fur for the credits of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. I was alone in the studio and they all escaped from the safety tray and I had to catch them all. I’m scared of maggots but I had to overcome that. Now when I look at maggots I don’t feel fear, just proud and brave.

Complete this sentence…

Creatively speaking, fear is…being trapped in a room painting a pig when you have already painted lots of pigs and your surrounded by all your pig paintings staring back at you with their pig eyes.

Do you agree with the idea that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…

No, fear is scary but spiders and eggs are also scary.