Overcome being overwhelmed

CreativeHD

Hey everyone,

As a beginner I am really struggling with becoming overwhelmed when starting a project. I know I'm not the only one that struggles with this problem so if anyone could share any advice on how to overcome this that would be great. I have been a long time lerker but now I want to really get involved by posting my own work and helping others.

Thanks.

SuperFranky

Do it one step at a time. Do long preparing work where you break down your project to small steps. Analyze the project at hand based on your abilities. Can you achieve what you want with skills you have or can these skills be learned in progress of this project? Use a scheduling/to-do list to write down exactly what you need to do to achieve the end result you want. And also maybe it'll make you feel better if you think about new project as a great opportunity to learn something that can make you a better artist . But for that you gotta love to learn.

Don't forget to cry about it to your friends to receive emotional/mental support.

Good luck

beefaroni

A few suggestions.

Find a simple concept that you want to re-create. Or a simple real life object. I find that a lot of people try to design their own works at the start and they end up with work that is not as good as a result (speaking from experience...).

Seriously, your first project could be a hammer. The hammers head would give some experience with hard surface modeling but not overwhelm you. In addition, it has both a wooden texture and a metal texture to learn PBR with (or plastic and rubber depending on the model). Also, there is TONS of reference for hammers online.

Something that small may not seem like a lot, but you might find yourself working on it for a few months to get everything NAILED down and looking good. After that project is done, you'll know what mistakes you made in the process and how to fix them for a slightly bigger project. Repeat, repeat, etc.

In addition, do not try to do any sort of large project to begin. You will burn yourself out and not finish the project. It sounds really cool like, "I'm going to do this super cool environment and its gonna be BADASS." But you won't finish it and you'll be sad.

Edit: Adding to what SuperFranky is saying. For a Hammer, it would be.
1. Find refs of hammers that you want to model.
2. Model out the hammer (but REALLY make sure that all the proportions are spot on).
3. Build the low-poly model of the hammer
4. Do a lot of baking tests until you have a kickass normal map.
5. Start texturing in the software of your choice. You're going to need to learn about diffuse, spec, gloss, etc.
6. Maybe you need to create materials if you want to present in engine. Are you going to use Toolbag2, CE, UDK?

Leinad

It's a feeling that I am used to getting, but it is often a necessary component. If you were doing something easy then you would rarely hit a wall of confusion and perhaps even frustration. It's during that time of struggle where pushing forward is the necessary component where you can really advance. However I don't label it as being overwhelmed, but rather a necessary obstacle when experiencing a challenging task.

Learning this stuff isn't always as smooth and organic as many expected it to be.

katana

Take any large project. Break it down into sections. Take any section and break it down into manageable chunks.

As you complete each chunk, reward yourself with something.

Add hours,days,weeks,months and/or years of persistence and perspiration

...and your project will be completed.

beefaroni

Leinad wrote: »

It's a feeling that I am used to getting, but it is often a necessary component. If you were doing something easy then you would rarely hit a wall of confusion and perhaps even frustration. It's during that time of struggle where pushing forward is the necessary component where you can really advance. However I don't label it as being overwhelmed, but rather a necessary obstacle when experiencing a challenging task.

Learning this stuff isn't always as smooth and organic as many expected it to be.

While I agree with this, for a beginner, there a lot of frustrations that I think most of us overlook. E.g Why isn't my normal map making properly? That alone could take a week to fix. How do I do PBR properly? How do I fix problems in my hard surface model?

Overcoming frustration is good; however, having too much frustration in one project is setting yourself up for failure/burning out.

Once the beginner mistakes are out of the way, THEN move to something more ambitious as you will no longer run into as many beginner problems.

Something to think about..

Lets say you have 2 candidates. 1 with a HUGE scene that isn't very good and another with a small scene that looks amazing. The huge scene doesn't have good maps or textures and the assets as a whole aren't' very good. The smaller scene has more attention to detail and each individual asset looks good.

Which one is the company going to hire? What are the chances that a single person will do an entire environment themselves? It seems more likely that they will help make individual parts that make up a large scene.

Edit: Maybe I'm wrong but I really think starting with a large project is a huge mistake.

Edit 2: Just to clarify, this is targeted towards absolute beginners. Obviously larger scale projects make sense as you get quicker/better with the tools.

iconoplast

katana wrote: »

Take any large project. Break it down into sections. Take any section and break it down into manageable chunks.

This is actually how you deal with anything that seems overwhelming. Just keep breaking it down until you have a piece you know you can manage. If everything else fails, just work on it for 5 minutes. The hardest part in general is getting started, and even if you stop again after those 5 minutes you're still 5 minutes farther along than you were before. That's pretty good for a worst-case result.

Leinad

I agree with you beefaroni. What is most important is how the artist responds to the state of being overwhelmed. What you have said so far is an excellent example of things that I would do myself when I get in that state in order to overcome being overwhelmed.

CreativeHD

Thank you guys for all the awesome advice!

Teessider

start small then work your way up

chamade

The more preparation you do the less you're going to feel lost later on. Probably the main mistake beginners make is that they don't use enough reference. Unless you're an amazing 2D concept artist to begin with, your imagination is not a substitute for correct reference. For each personal project I do I keep a reference folder on google drive. This way even if I am away from my computer I can always save cool references that I come across.

skankerzero

I would sketch out pieces that I was confused about. Sketching the characters from a couple different angles until I was confident I understood it. I would rework parts of the concept that didn't make sense too.

The better I understood the concept going in the easier it was to build.