Can a regular guy really break into the industry "by himself"?
Hello cg lover fellows!
I've been trying to learn general CG for some months now, in my spare time (have a sad full time job) following words of other artists who have claimed they made it by themselves, with no schools, online with online resources. I did believe that could be possible, I want to believe. However, I've been struggling quite a lot.
Watching youtube videos and all the digital tutors I could, I still have a hard time figuring out a path that would actually show that I'm improving. I mean, it's basically watch and repeat, but I have no idea if that is actually helping me at all. I don't feel it.
In my head, learning is like a building construction, you start easily and as you get to the top, things get more difficult, BUT you know exactly what do to to make the building. What I mean is the pathway is clear in that example. With online resources, even with DT, it all seems scattered and it's extremely difficult for me to put the knowledge together in a logical order.
Do you guys have any piece of advice on that? I'm pretty sure that the problem is with me and many people found their way to make it work, but when I fail there's always the thought: "Is this really possible? Shouldnt I save as much money as I can an go a full year at gnomon?"
Cheers!
I've been trying to learn general CG for some months now, in my spare time (have a sad full time job) following words of other artists who have claimed they made it by themselves, with no schools, online with online resources. I did believe that could be possible, I want to believe. However, I've been struggling quite a lot.
Watching youtube videos and all the digital tutors I could, I still have a hard time figuring out a path that would actually show that I'm improving. I mean, it's basically watch and repeat, but I have no idea if that is actually helping me at all. I don't feel it.
In my head, learning is like a building construction, you start easily and as you get to the top, things get more difficult, BUT you know exactly what do to to make the building. What I mean is the pathway is clear in that example. With online resources, even with DT, it all seems scattered and it's extremely difficult for me to put the knowledge together in a logical order.
Do you guys have any piece of advice on that? I'm pretty sure that the problem is with me and many people found their way to make it work, but when I fail there's always the thought: "Is this really possible? Shouldnt I save as much money as I can an go a full year at gnomon?"
Cheers!
Replies
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I'm not sure what all you've been doing, so it's a little hard to give advice; however, maybe what you're missing is a clear goal. Doing tutorials is fine but you're just replicating. Take the knowledge you learn from the tutorial to make something similar but different. You may make some mistakes along the way but you'll probably learn more from it.
Anyways the whole college debate etc. is such a covered topic but here's a thought: Gnomon Online courses? eh? pick and choose and affordable.. (I don't think there's very many people here that can actually afford attending gnomon)
I'm not a full time Blender user but I'm sure there's lots of guys who started hobbying/self-teaching in 3D with Blender and transitioned into the pros like
http://www.kjartantysdal.com/
If funding is not a serious issue for you though (and you don't have the patience for self-teaching), going to a school with good reputation is not a bad route to take.
If you lack that foundation and a trained eye, you will have a much tougher time.
Also there are different ways to learn, but today there is so much material online, there should be something for everyone. Learning on your own used to mean to sit down with the manual or without it and try what works and what not. (And some people still prefer to learn that way.) While that may work for the technical, software aspect of your work, which is "relatively" easy to learn, there is still the artistic one and here it is really important to watch and repeat, but even more important to understand. And that´s simply a huge task. (If you break it down enough, most of it becomes technical, too, but until it all comes together again and feels intuitive, it can take a while, especially when you didn't practice as a kid and teenager, so maybe that´s what you are experiencing right now. )
What you should try to find out is where exactly your problem lies.
Are you simply impatient? If you have done this for a couple of years without any improvement then I'd worry, too. But maybe you just see more and more mistakes because that you wouldn't have even recognized a couple of years ago.
Have you actually gone back to your drawings from a couple of years ago and compared them to your newest ones?
Have you been drawing at all?
(Not that it's strictly necessary for everyone, but it's certainly a good way to quickly train your eye without having to worry about much else. Software skills are important, too, but they are a different set of skills and the more you break it down, the quicker you might learn.)
Do you have enough time and energy to learn and can at least concentrate on the task at hand when you are trying to learn?
Are you actually learning and actively doing something or rather listen to inspirational speeches on youtube?
Do you need fiends and fellow students to stay inspired and motivated?
Do you need to meet these fellow students in person?
Do you sometimes simply not "get it" and need a tutor to explain it to you?
Wow nice insights! Lots of question I have to answer there! For starters, I have a full time job, so I sort of lack in time, I don't know. Let´s say I could dedicate at least 3 hours per day to studying CG. I'm not sure though if that's enough.
I don't have any real life friends to talk about CG and I really think that could help, but for now I'll have to settle with forums.
Now to the most important: I'm not sure how I can tell whether I'm learning actively or not watching video tuts! And I think some of my biggest issues are discipline, focus and motivation, I'm a little impatient too! I have a hard time handling modern world distractions!
If so I've been up and down with that stuff, and yea you can do it I did it and I don't know anyone here at Pc on a personal level but that could be my own fault.
In all honesty I wish I did get to know a lot of these gents as they are full of talent or very hard working! and would have been on a totally new level but I never did.
People have said it countless times that it is who you know, and right now in my current position I believe that more than anything, you have to know someone who is one of those talented guys because they get the connections (my opinion) and a few might be so busy they can throw you a bone here and there.
Then again it does land on your skills at the end of the day, do you have the skills to pay the bills (Turbo Quote).
As an artist we are all judgmental on our works and some even horribly negative on themselves about it, it could be a good thing and a bad thing the "pendulum swing".
I know I feel that a lot for sure and I can say most of us do too so your not alone in your feelings.
I can tell you right now though that you have to be on top of your game 100% of the time now a days, if you aren't it is only going to be that much harder for you to, "break in".
Best of luck we all (unemployed) need it.
Don't forget to check out Polycount Google hangouts as well
EDIT: link:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101777
Someone who works his/her ass off however can
Haha I should've clarified "regular" as opposed to exceptionally gifted people.
The only difference between a regular person and someone you might call "exceptionally gifted" is the amount of work they have put in.
I went to college, and it helped point me in the direction of what I wanted to do, and taught me how to learn - that's about it really. Learning that is entirely possible without college, and the most important info you need to find on your own either way. Just keep at it, you need to put in the time, but you need to have a lot of dedication. Try to resist the temptation to jump straight to trying to learn what you want to do as a career, you will need to learn some fundamentals before you get to that.
Join Polycount Monthly noob environment challenges,
Join Polycount monthly noob skype group,
Chat about CG, discuss problems and have a project to work on whilst watching how others are doing it.
Watching tutorial videos is a good way to get exposed to new techniques and ideas, but it pales in comparison to actually doing the things in the videos for yourself. I could be wrong, but I would expect nearly any person out there who has "made it" has also spent many long hours practicing to get to the level they're at. I've heard it said that it takes 10,000 hours of hands on experience to master a skill.
I went to school to learn this stuff, but sitting in the classroom wasn't what improved my art. Hundreds of evenings in front of the computer and hours stolen from sleep made the difference. Or, as one of my instructors put it, "You have a lot of bad art to get out of the way before you make something good"
--haha in the time it took me to type this out 2 other people posted more or less the same idea--
I saw a TED talk where they said that number was actually from a study from people who were in about the top 10 in their field in the world. They said it related to being one of the top chess players in the world and that high proficiency comes much easier.
Keep on with the good advice, the more the better!
There's a lot of jargon that gets tossed around like, "who you know", "foot in the door" etc. and while those may help, they will NOT get you employed. Your ability to produce good work in a timely fashion will.
On producing work, as others have said, watch less tutorials and do more projects. Tutorials and speed sculpts seem like fountains of knowledge, but you learn more by doing than watching. Speed sculpts are especially bullshit because they don't convey how long they actually take, the twenty or so similar sculpts done beforehand, or the countless hours of training to acquire those skills.
Make up a project, something small, and do it. Search for a solution online when you run into problems. Finish the project, start another. That's how you improve on your own.
When you feel your work is competent (not incredible, just industry par) start looking for freelance and indie gigs. You can apply to AAA of course, but odds are you'll find something smaller before getting into a AAA studio. A good way to get your name out is to apply for EVERYTHING. (Bruce Willis even auditioned for women's roles when he was starting out.) Eventually something will stick. Some of the most comfortable, steadily employed guys here work for smaller studios.
edit: Also, ignore the "best of" stuff you see all over sites like this. We celebrate it, sure, but you shouldn't expect to be at that level when you're just starting out. They've just been at this longer than you have.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89972&highlight=inspiration+kind
hey can you name the talk - seems interesting to watch!:)
10,000 hours?
If you practice 40 hrs. a week for 1 year (52 weeks) it'll take you almost 5 years to get that total.
There are university degree programs that only takes 3 years. And I've seen people locally who only have 6 months of actual for-profit school experience who got hired by gamedev startups who have lower entry standards than established studios.
Hmmmm.....
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From http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=8665
This idea was popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9780316017930/omniglot-20"]Outliers: The Story of Success[/ame], and the original point of the research, which focused on experts in different fields – i.e. virtuoso musicians, Olympic athletes and others who were at the top of their field, became a bit muddied. People came to believe that to learn a new skill well, not just to expert level, you need 10,000 hours of practice.
There’s some discussion of the 10,000 hour ‘rule’ here which quotes Dr Ericsson as saying, “Our research shows that even the most gifted performers need a minimum of ten years (or 10,000 hours) of intense training before they win international competitions.” Another study by Gobet and Campitelli found that some chess grand masters had had at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, but some took a lot longer – up to 26 years, and others reached that level in 2 years. Then there were some people who had the 10,000 hours of practice, but only played at an intermediate level. This seems to suggest that practice alone may not be sufficient to become an expert.
In practice, you best come correct, because the competition around video games is fiercer and more aggressive than ever. If you are trying to duke it out in this field on a competitive level, being at the top of your game isn't enough. You have to be at the top of everyone else's game as well.
The best way to break in, and also one of the riskiest, is disruptive game design. Attempting a more experimental approach to the medium is much more likely to garner attention and success. It's also much more likely to crash and burn. I would advise not quitting your day job if you go with this approach. The personal risk of attempting disruptive design is fairly extreme. It's better to have a fall-back than to go all-in on a gamble that large.
Dont know if that kind of knowledge would help me in the future or if I should just focus on art.
Should I create a new topic for that?
1. DON'T COPY! At best you will end up with the same piece that everyone else who completed the tutorial has.
2. DO USE THE KNOWLEDGE GIVEN in Tutorials and books to build your own pieces. Most good tutorials or books are filled with knowledge that you can go back to constantly. Even five minutes of a 2 hour tutorial may have the one thing you need to help you in your piece. You would be surprised how many people don't even put an hour every other day to working on their skills.
3. Like someone said earlier work on ORIGINAL projects from beginning to end. Pick whatever character or environment you want to model and start from there. Your first few hours should be gathering as many reference materials as you can. Your piece is only as good as the reference you have. This doesn't mean you need killer concept art. With Google Image search and Flickr there is more than enough photos to gain reference on any kind of project you want to make.
4. JUDGE YOUR WORK AGAINST THE BEST. The best way to know where you stand is to look at the showcase thread on polycount, polycount recap thread, zbrushcentral and cghub top row images. Ask yourself two questions when you look at these images.
- How does my image compare to the images on these sites?
- If given the same tools and concepts they worked with would I be able to produce something of that caliber?
5. ASK AROUND. You might be close to making a great piece you are just missing something. It might be the way your displaying the model or the underlining anatomy but a few small tweaks can change a piece completely. The earlier you do this the better. Start a W.I.P thread and see where it takes you.6. FAIL! FAIL A LOT. You won't get better until you make work. So make work often. Take your time with it but don't be afraid to say your done and move on. You will learn and only get better. The difference between a good and great artist is they know when to put down the pen. You might never feel "finished" but the only way to progress is keep moving.
You will start to see a big difference in your work and confidence when you've started to make original pieces. Help from outside sources isn't anything to be ashamed of. It should be used as an advantage to gain perspective and know what to do to make yourself a better artist. Best of luck on you trying to get into the industry. I hope you continue to work on your art.
If you were to spend 3 hours a day going to school for game design or programming, and spend an hour a night on homework (just a ballpark), that's 4 hours per day, 20 hours a week, 1000 hours a year that could have been invested in your art skills instead. Spend it making game art.
To your OP, videos are cool and can be great to get little tips, but the most important thing is to be making stuff, actively critiquing your own work + workflow, getting outside criticism, and implementing that criticism into future work.
I would say that learning is not like a building construction. A construction has an end point. Learning is more analogous to fitness I guess, requiring constant upkeep and having no end, but having unlimited potential for betterment.
damn, I that was one of my concerns...
Anyways, take a look at the program and tell me if you guys think:
1st term
math logic
programming algorithms
computer architecture
computer programming
creativity and expression
multimedia production
localization
2nd term
interface and gameplay
digital gaming physics
computer graphics
narrative
game design
AI
gaming development
corporate communication
corporate human behavior
3td term
Modeling
Texturing
Advanced modeling
Animation
Is this a degree program? It seems like it lacks any sort of focus. By the time you're through with it, you'll have a vague understanding of a ton of different topics, but won't be competent in any of them. Especialy if you want to be an artist, you barely do anything art related for the first two terms. Two classes in modeling, and one class in texturing over the third term is not going to make you into a good artist. Sure you'll learn how the apps work and where all the buttons are, but they wont turn you into an artist. You might want to look into the foundational courses of a fine arts program: design, drawing, painting, and sculpture.
Was afraid so
I just thought since I wanted to work with game art, having an understanding of the game mechanics could help me not only get a job as an artist in the game industry but also help me create art more suited for gamest, since I know the whole pipeline.
ps: I'm not sure if it's a degree program like in NA. Over here we call them "technologist program". It will grant you a 3rd level degree but it should be much more focused on the practical side of things rather than studying and analyzing ideas, like a regular degree program would.
Pay attention to the dates:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114449
See how good he gets in 1 year of very very focused practice.
See how good he gets in 2 year of very very focused practice.
Then see how good he is now.
Pay attention to how much confidence he develops in his line quality. Pay attention to how much confidence he develops in his anatomy, in his lighting/shading, in his rendering/hatching, in his colour, posing, and design.
EDIT: Had a question of my own actually. Does anybody here happen to know what job security is like for programmers in game development? I'm working towards a degree in computer science with a specialization track in 3D graphics at the moment. Unfortunately most of my time goes towards getting school work done however in my limited free time I try to do some game art (I'm pretty shit at it but I've been slowly improving lol) and when I'm not doing game art I'm trying to make tiny games using Unity or UDK.
Anyway, I know job security isn't all that great when it comes to being an artist in the games industry, but is it any better for game programmers?
I really want to enter the games industry as I personally love doing any part of game development, but at the same time, I'm getting worried that I won't even be able to land a job at all because my time is going towards getting university work done whereas self-taught people are getting a lot more realistic practice.
Proof that it can be done...truly inspiring how far he came in just a few years. All you really need is determination and to believe in yourself.
It's a little better, but it's still not great. The biggest issue as I see it is the gross disparity between hours worked and hours paid between the game industry and other industries. If you are a programmer in just about any other industry, you're pretty much guaranteed a respectable salary and a comfortable 40 hour work week. As long as you like programming, it's a pleasant, stable profession. I'm working as a contractor, primarily in javascript, and I get paid a quite comfortable hourly rate. I hardly ever have to work an hour over 40 per week, and get paid for every extra hour I work.
If you are employed as a full-time programmer at a game company, your job is going to be somewhat more stable than the average artist, but you're still going to be putting in crazy hours, and not get paid what you probably deserve. I earn in web development about what most entry-level game programmers do, and they often have to work twice as many hours.
So the job security is a bit better than art. (everyone always needs programmers) But the compensation still isn't very good, and the unpaid overtime is brutal.
I guess I'll have to think about it more then, worst case scenario I suppose I could try coding in another field but I honestly find programming other types of software to be a lot less exciting than game programming.
I should also mention that most game programming gigs would also probably require you to relocate to wherever the company is. Game companies prefer to keep their core coding teams in-house, even more so than their art or qa teams. Programming is the backbone of a technical industry, after all.
Because so many game companies are located in high cost-of-living areas, this places an even greater financial burden on the employee. I currently live in Arizona, but I earn an annual income comparable to most entry-level game programmers living in California. While I earn about the same amount, my money stretches a lot further because things like food, mortgage, and transportation are so much cheaper where I live.
The web development industry is much more widely spread, and there are any number of places where you can find employment. The video game industry is much more limited in terms of its geographic focus, largely due to the current publishing system in place.
While programming web applications using server-side scripts and javascript isn't nearly as exciting as game development, it's far more stable and comfortable. I do game programming on my own time as a hobby, and I know how engaging it can be. It's great, it's some of the most thrilling programming you can work on. But the current nature of the industry takes advantage of that fact to exploit its employees. A comparable job in almost any other field is going to treat you better.