How to become a good digital artist?
Just a little about me, i'm 16 and have absolutely zero artistic ability or talent - When i start drawing, I look at stick figures and start having second thoughts. I do a little 3D modeling, but aside from that my 2D skills are pretty poor. But I desperately want to be a good artist.
To all you amazing polycount artists, do you have any advice for someone with no talent who wants to become a good artist? Keeping in mind i'm starting from square 1 with no previous experience in traditional art?
To all you amazing polycount artists, do you have any advice for someone with no talent who wants to become a good artist? Keeping in mind i'm starting from square 1 with no previous experience in traditional art?
Replies
As from someone who has no talent either, be prepared to work hard, have no social life, see your peers outgrow you in disturbing paces and get the jobs you always wanted. Soak in any knowledge you can and try to improve your visual mindset.
At least I tend to think too much in words, which is not very good. Try to learn to understand the things you are drawing instead of learning shortcuts. When drawing from reference, do not keep your eyes on it for too long. The analytical mind tells you where each line goes how they align etc. but this does not teach you how to see things. Instead take a look and try to visualize the object in your mind. This will train your imagination and you will eventually "learn" talent.
Draw a lot from reference, read a lot about theory (Andrew Loomis, Scott Robertson, Charles Bargue) Good sites for digital painting are ctrlpaint.com or cubecrush.com. Digitaltutors.com is excellent for game development pipelines.
Post your progress and get feedback.
And since you're starting from square one start with the basics and the fundamentals. Digital art can make some things easier but you won't get far if you don't understand what you're doing.
but then again, executing that plan is tougher. there are no tricks, no shortcuts.
To do that, you need to draw everyday. The first and easiest step in this is to master the ancient art of doodling.
Get yourself a notebook and a pen, and leave it near your computer. When you are running a render, waiting for a sim, waiting for loading times to finish, or just watching a movie, doodle.
Doodling doesn't have to be anything interesting. It can just be squares and circles, or abstract patterns. But the point is that you practice the bare basics of drawing. Doodling will train your hands to get used to drawing, and it will train your control over your lines. These are all pretty useful things to have in the long run.
You can also doodle digitally, but that requires a tablet. As well, this'll restrict doodle time to watching stuff, and you would need to learn to split screen your drawing and watching programs on one screen(The secret to this is that the vast majority of drawing programs allow you to hide all dockers by pressing 'tab'). Another thing with doodling digitally is that the 'Del' and 'backspace' keys are forbidden territory. So is the eraser.
Once you find yourself comfortably doodling for at the least a week or so. Start following the ctrl+paint videos and more or less start devouring technical information and attempting to apply it. This is definitely the fun part.
After that start doing the difficult bits like taking life-drawing classes, or drawing-from-life. The thing about these two things is that you do need some basic tools and skills to attempt them because they are really difficult tasks, and you might feel really frustrated if you start attempting them straight away. (Though, if you are a social type, having to do your learning in a social situation can relax that kind of frustration big time)