do you ever feel like you wont catch up?
Hey all,
do any of you 3d artists ever feel like you wont "catch up" to the skill level other artists have?
I have been modeling for almost 4 years and I feel as if my skills have only grown so/so.
Do you ever feel like how I have felt these last few months, that I am just not growing or capable of growing as a 3d modeler?
I have been modeling mostly hard surface stuff but after all this practice it seems as if my stuff will never sit in the same ballpark as alot of the guys here on polycount.
I want to be a 3d artist at a game studio but I feel as if Im just not getting something right..
I guess Im looking for some inspiration.
I have completed the famous millenia's weapon creation tutorial and mine didnt come out remotely close to his.
do any of you 3d artists ever feel like you wont "catch up" to the skill level other artists have?
I have been modeling for almost 4 years and I feel as if my skills have only grown so/so.
Do you ever feel like how I have felt these last few months, that I am just not growing or capable of growing as a 3d modeler?
I have been modeling mostly hard surface stuff but after all this practice it seems as if my stuff will never sit in the same ballpark as alot of the guys here on polycount.
I want to be a 3d artist at a game studio but I feel as if Im just not getting something right..
I guess Im looking for some inspiration.
I have completed the famous millenia's weapon creation tutorial and mine didnt come out remotely close to his.
Replies
There's no "pro" level that you suddenly reach, and after that you're done. As artist you have to continuously work on your skills, and at some point while working on your skills you'll be good enough to get your first studio job. And even there you have to consider that one studio's most awesome artists may be considered just junior by another studio's standards.
I remember my art sucked, but I got better, kept applying, and eventually someone gave me a job based on my folio. Even though I didn't quite feel ready then.
With that in mind, I'd say keep practicing, know your strengths. And based on your strengths aim for an entry job that lies within your reach. Just because your first job ain't at Blizzard <insert other big studios here> doesn't mean you may not have a chance to get there in time. Especially given that you will learn soooooooooo much on your first real job
Just keep hammering away at it and be honest with yourself, make sure you are fully dedicating yourself to it, remove distractions that will slow you down, etc.
Hearing talks from the fellas thats been in the bizz for a while say they've been at it for 15+ years pisses me off
Nothing I can do about it except get back to work though.
I'd like to add to this that in case "or just counting days by" holds true for you Tony (which I would define as putting in work but not passionately and with vigor), then ask yourself if this might be the case because you aren't having fun with it. If so, it might be helpful to experiment and keep it light and fresh. Try sculpting if you're fed up with texturing for example. Or get that positive feedback loop going by doing small projects that you can finish quickly, capitalise on that "honeymoon feeling" that you get with a new project. Finish it before it fades. Furthermore, doing a really big project with lots of elements that you don't understand yet might be too discouraging and erode your sense of progression because you keep running around trying to learn new things and putting in extra effort to get it right (which might fail in itself), preventing you from achieving a state of flow. It can thus result in you not hitting the milestones you need to hit and having fun while doing it because all the work and time you put into it just seems to disappear and sink away because you're not able to finish anything the way you want it to (thus you feel stuck). Instead, as I mentioned, maybe do some small ones to conquer the individual elements and get those under your belt. Lastly, stress in your personal life can throw you off.
I'm making a lot of assumptions here to be able to make any relevant suggestions as I don't know your background and circumstances, I hope that's alright. I'm in the same spot as you are, and am only recently starting to crawl out of the slack by making an effort to understand myself better. What am I struggling with? Why? How does this relate to me as a person? How can I fix it? What works for me? What do I like? Can I capitalise on that? Find a way to get "flow" going, and things will take care of themselves. Get into a state of play, don't look at it as a chore.
Figuring out who you are, what makes you tick, and what the underlying reasons are for your issues help you grow both as person and an artist. I hope that doesn't sound too condescending, I'm merely talking out of personal experience and what helped myself.
Anyway, I'll stop now. Just my 0.02$ worth of personal ramblings, hope it helps!
This is so true, I'm laughing here! But all that you guys are saying is also true, we have to keeping working hard because that is the only way that it will worth what we want in future.
You don't compare your body after 3 months at the gym to a body builder, why do it with any other passion?
It's a grind.
It really is.
3D modeling combines the left and right brain; technical and art, and sometimes you only have passion for 1 of those, making the other side a bitch to get through.
Now personally, I love to spend more time on the areas of the pipeline that fulfill my passion the most. It becomes a lot easier to get better at something when you truly enjoy doing it.
As for stagnation, I'd say that's tied to your passion. Do you truly enjoy this? No, seriously, is it like Christmas morning where right when you wake up, you run down stairs to your desktop to find a fresh viewport ready to encapsulate your imagination?
I'd argue passion is what gets me over the hump 9 times out of 10. The other 1 is pretty much coffee and energy drinks.
In general, this is a good feeling to have, it means you're not full of yourself/an egotistic twatburger, and it shows that you're capable of being self-critical, which is the most important skill to have when it comes to improving at basically any task.
Now, you may simply be in a rut, in which case I think you should challenge yourself to do something new, something outside your comfort zone. Its easy to get stuck doing the same sort of stuff that you're used to doing over and over, but I often see the most improvement in my work when I tackle new challenges.
Another thing, you haven't posted a thread to show your artwork on Polycount in over a year. Hiding your work from people who could give you advice on how to improve will never do you any favors. Post threads, implement critiques and post updates, rinse and repeat countless times and you will see improvement.
I don't think that's exactly true. I think it's a good idea to compare yourself to industry level artists. But you don't just compare, you acquire a certain goal, like "this is what I want to do in a year!". Comparing yourself to other should not discourage, but inspire instead. It's not "I will never do something as good", but "How can I achieve something as good?". If they could do it, why can't you?
It also helps to have friends in the industry, put a face to your goal and you quickly realize that they were noobs once too. And suddenly your burden is not that difficult and your goal is not that far away.
Yes I agree, its very important to compare you work to others, especially professionals, if your goal is to be a professional. Being able to give your own work an honest assessment is hugely important, and you can't do that if you hide in your bubble and never compare your work to others.
No one starts as a pro - if you really want to be a good artist/programmer or even a runner - you can achieve it, no matter what! Just don't loose focus and practice hard.
If you're on a right way - "doors" open very easely! Just follow that path!
Cheers,
Alpha
I recommend hiring a pro mentor or get involved on indie projects that already have stronger (in terms of skill) artists than your current level. Have a thick skin and let them push you to level up. Also find out how you can distinguish your art apart from others. If you keep modeling the same stuff everybody's done already i don't think your folios going to be competitive when you use it for job hunting.
I mean you could use a handful as filler material if they're good techniquewise but you'll also need unique pieces to get the attention of lead artists, directors, "gatekeeper" artists involved in hiring.
OR, focus more on networking if you plateaued and need more time to redo your folio material but also need an in.
The best things I find is switch off your mental intellect, and just do the work. Happy accidents do happen more often than disappointing ones when you start making stuff. Even if you don't necessarily feel like doing so. The catch is, don't try too hard. Anyone who tries too hard at what they want to accomplish, never does. True story.
As Magic also said, you have to really train your eyes. Without an artistic eye, you're just a book filled with knowledge who can't execute on doing the things you aspire mentally for. So more practice, and again more practice! Also learn to be lightly biased of your own works to those who are getting paid top dollar (to the respected genre your work relates to...)
About 5 years ago I found myself in need of a job. I hadn't worked on my portfolio outside of work and it was harder to find work. That experience made me really really humble (probably too much though it's not really humble to say you're humble I guess...ugghh back on track). So I constantly work on at least one portfolio project. It may take me months to finish and I might not put in my portfolio at the end. Or I might do paintings for a month or two. But it's all growth.
It's also called grit I just learned. I always thought grit was something football announcers say during halftime shows about players. But non athletes can have grit too. There's a good article in Men's Health of all places about it.
http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/got-grit (pop ups just a warning)
Basic summary of it is to:
Set goals for yourself
Practice all the time
Learn to be optimistic
Expect issues to come up
That pretty much sums up my attitude change years ago. Its also really helped motivate me. Now when I see awesome art instead of feeling like I can't compete or won't catch up it makes me set goals to get there someday.
Try reading
http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017930/ref=la_B000APOE98_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413560743&sr=1-1
and
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dip-Little-Teaches-Stick/dp/1591841666
Those two also helped me a ton.
of trying. I think there are so many artists out there batter then me but if I am
determined I will have my 'golden hour' as it were
yeah the worst thing you can do is rest on you laurels or rest on your behind in other words
Nothing like using an inspirational image of a man that killed his wife with a gun thinking she was a burglar.
good luck finding a number. We do outsourcing for AAA, and some hero characters got weeks/months, and other characters got just days to finish. It really depends a lot what sort of asset, what platform, and what the client wants to spend and what their "it's good enough" threshold is for accepting work as done. Some studios want it "pixel perfect" while others care less (or want to spend less)
Yea this is where finding the right studio for how you work is important. Its hard to do when you're first starting out, but you'll soon realize which work environments you strive in, and which work environments you die in.
Eventually I realized it doesn't matter and you just create art because you love to.
I've been struggling with bipolar disorder and anxiety throughout my 25 short
years of life and it affects me alot but your encouragement has really helped me.
I joined the game pretty late, I started taking this more seriously when I turned 21. I graduated late in 2008 from
highschool and had no intention of going to college until I realized I wasn't going anywhere in life.
I started going to school to school in 2010, left in 2012, and resumed this semester and I graduate May 2015.
This kinda set the pace for me because now I "feel" like I havto do good in this.
I didnt realize I wanted to do game art until about 2 years ago.
Im gonna try something different, maybe play around in zBrush for a while and post some WIP
Thank you guys. I cant explain how much this means to me.
There's always going to be someone better, someone who spent their life years on a topic or following a method different than the one you chose, resulting in skills that you lack or can't match. Everyone has a better - but the best people are the ones that realize that fact and keep on going regardless.
For me, it used to be really depressing. I'd be 20 years old and see someone who was 18 who was already applying at art studios, or would have won some award, or what have you and I'd feel like I'd wasted time, like I was behind and that I was some sort of huge fuck up for not being where they were or beyond. Even now at 25, I see people younger than me - here on polycount, who have far more relevant work experience, and a far greater skillset than I do. But the more I learn, the more I feel like the gap between me and artists I admire is getting smaller - and the more I feel like the real goal is beyond us all, because none of us can do everything.
I do think it's important to compare your work to the work of those you admire - people who are at or beyond a level you want to be with your craft; that's one major way to improve. That being said, I wouldn't consider "catching up" to be an important primary goal. Learn from others and their work what you can, but the main goal should be for you to reach your potential as an artist and a person. I think if you're able to see progress in that, doing it for you and because it's what you love, things will turn out much better.
You should be more afraid of being stagnant.
its maybe weird thing to say, but that's how i motivate myself. at the end of the day, i love doing this and i wanna be best i could be at it. when i see a good artist, i view him/her as competition.
i'm not an optimistic person, i just have goals that WILL be realized one way or another.
i personally think you have to really love what you are doing otherwise you'll eventually slow down and never reach your goal.
Just keep pushing yourself and have fun doing so
Only then will we be able to discuss constructively
I'm not even in the industry so my advice may not be the best, but just keep doing something! Anything art related that you find fun. I for example like having 2, max 3, projects on-going at the same time so that I can bounce between them. Works for me and I always have something to work on. It's when I'm between projects that I'm the laziest.
As for having bipolar disorder there's really nothing I can say except that I have a brother and a cousin who are both diagnosed with it. So I've only seen what it's like.
Great topic, I think alot of people can relate to it and I feel better hearing that I'm not alone with these thoughts! It's also good to see that you've started a thread in the Showcase & Critique forum!
Quick hypothetical - If you were to just drop working in games right now and take up another job that you loathed, say stacking shelves in a supermarket, crunching numbers in data entry, etc. Would you be upset that you couldn't work on art? If the answer is 'yes', then you know where your passion lies. When you gain clarity you realise failure isn't an option, you'll get to that level because you want to make it happen
Again as others here mentioned, its important to be honest with yourself and the amount of time you're dedicating to your work, seeing what distractions you can cut out. If you're like me and your mind wanders every so often, e.g. "Oh yeah, I could add this to my amazon wishlist" etc. you might want to disable the Wifi during work completely. Helps a lot with cutting down on wasted time.
Even once you're in the industry, imposter syndrome is pretty common; that is, the feeling that you are where you are by some mistake or oversight, and not because of your skill, and that at some point someone will realize it.
We're artists, lots of us. And that can mean a lot, a lot, of self doubt. The important thing is to keep going, if you really want it.
I always found people younger than me who surpass me a million times, when I'm not in a good mood it's depressing
But I also look down on my old work and can say ''Yes, that was bad. It's better now. I can't wait to see what I'll be able to do in X times!"
Giving up don't make sense. And I'll quote Torch here :
"Quick hypothetical - If you were to just drop working in games right now and take up another job that you loathed, say stacking shelves in a supermarket, crunching numbers in data entry, etc. Would you be upset that you couldn't work on art? If the answer is 'yes', then you know where your passion lies. When you gain clarity you realise failure isn't an option, you'll get to that level because you want to make it happen"
This is so damn true!
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/analytical_thinking.htm
Working smarter could be way more important then working harder.
Cheers
some people want you to catch up in one way and become a meat dude, others a low poly paper fellow, and others a vfx dude and their advices are completely different.
But if you follow one advice and not the other people will become upset and you try follow all the advices, things won't go as well.
So this is a loaded topic.
I think someone else mentioned, you have to enjoy the work, and I couldn't agree more. Enjoy the process, enjoy being creative making art and enjoy the journey!
A what?
Enough with the meat-centric language.
________
In regards to the question; all the time, but you just gotta persist, because I feel alot of the poeople that enter art pack it in eventually and give up with the chase. So really it's an endurance run in a personal way and in a broader way.
But I always think of a good quote Dan Luvisi posted on his Facebook a while back:
Totally paraphrasing there, but you get what I mean. Keep on the straight and narrow.
I mean, we're discussing staying in the industry. The final goal, though (and reachable, multiple times in life) is to deliver memorable experiences to the players.
Every time an fun/inspiring game is released, this goal is reached. Then, we start again, searching for new goals. (Oculus games, unique styles beyond pixelart, it all waits to be discovered and executed well.)
The moments I feel I "don't catch up" are when I hear from my boss that our 3D game did badly and the next project is a 2D runner. That means building portfolio after hours, as fast as I can. Bad months, because I'd rather do games. I worry about losing the possibilities to do personal projects or join cool studios that actually make cool stuff that's creative and fun for players.
BTW. today I came across a portfolio of Jolyon Myers. (I was looking for screenshots of CoD in Radiant, after being surprised that its level are still made in Radiant). This artist is in the industry since BBC Micro pixel art, 1985!
I also admire the work and style of Henk Nieborg. In 2012 I played the Shantae Risky's Revenge on DSi. I went to the internet to check who created the graphics. I discovered that I already knew this artist - I was like 9 yrs when I played Lomax and the art was from the same person. He didn't have to convert to 3D to 'catch up'. He's worked on some of the best looking DS games instead
http://www.henknieborg.nl/gallery_pixels.html
Low poly paper- hand painted fellows, the models look as though they are made of paper, good textures, but they don't look solid
vfx dude- Making household objects for commercials and mostly using v-ray and things of that nature, with little texture.
I tried doing characters in the third way for awhile (09-12) got me a few jobs, but that was no good.
Spicy Sausage - Like Meat dude is into tough guy stuff, but mostly works on 3D porn
*Rolls eyes*
WTF did I just read?
So much disdain in your post. Working with you sounds like a joy.
Thing is I still can't but you know what? That's what drives me
I'm happy where I got so far and I'm not trying to catch a unicorn. Just doing what I love the best I can.