What is your study routine?

Ruflse

I really need some help with this, because I have a huge problem coming up with a well planned way of studying (modelling, in this case). Every day I end up looking for something I have to improve knowing that there are a lot of things I'm not doing really well and I should get better at. In the end I lose a huge amount of time searching for what to do just to study that subject-matter (animal anatomy, texturing... whatever) and search again when I feel it's time to improve at something else.

The problem is that I lose too much time in those in-betweens and stress myself because I know I should be studying something, but I don't know what and how. If I think it's time for studying age, for example, I just start making models of old people until I grow tired and another subject crosses my mind.

So, do you guys have some kind of structure that you follow? Like "it's human anatomy week" and you start doing ecorches and going into every part of the body again and again or three days of studying master sculptors, or you just jump from one project into the other, being that whatever you want to do at the moment?

sharsein

Still trying to figure this out myself. But things I found that helped:

- Do your research when you're not at your desk. Like when you're on the train, lunch break at your day job, waiting in line at the grocery store, times when you can't really work on stuff anyway so it's not wasted.

- Alternate between doing studies and portfolio pieces. The large portfolio projects will show you what you need to study and the context you'll use specific topics in. No point in studying human anatomy if all your portfolio projects are cars and the like. Studies will give you a break between projects and give you time to gather ideas for the next piece.

hmm_rock

This sounds like a pretty standard way of studying, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. If you're learning to draw not every sketch has to be a master piece, sometimes just drawing eyes over and over is how you learn to perfect them and you can move forward with that knowledge. If it's a matter of wanting to finish work, that's a different matter. I don't think there's any magical answer to sticking to a project other than discipline. Seconding JoshuaG, tutorials are a great way to train yourself to see an asset through the pipleline to completion. 

aryarie

For me I like to follow a tutorial (making notes as I go)... this gives me something that I can complete fairly easily and gives me more confidence with whatever it is that I'm trying to learn as you get a finished product at the end.

Once I've done that (and this is the most important bit!) I like to then give myself a small project to complete which gets me to apply what I've learned from the tutorial to a project where I can't rely on a nice step-by-step of what to do. I've found that this has been very effective so far... but I'm very much a beginner so whether or not this will be a good strategy later on... who knows. :P

As for what to specifically study... for me I'm relying on the learning paths on Pluralsight to guide me in the direction I want to go. I know I'll have to move away from that at some point but by then I should have a better idea of what I need to do to get better.