How does a beginner stay encouraged?
vertex
I've been wanting to be a 3d artist since I was 15 (21 now), I haven't gone to school, I'm subscribed to Pluralsight and 3D motive, but I just can't stay encouraged.
I tried 5 different times with 5 different ideas of an asset or scene and I just couldn't do it properly...
I don't know how to stay encouraged, I know I need to just bite the bullet and make something, but I'm making things that I'm not satisfied with.
I wish I had someone looking over my shoulder telling me what I'm doing wrong and what I'm doing right, should I just go to a school?
I'm not that great either when it comes to making a concept drawing of what I want.
Should I study concept art first?
I'm feeling pretty lost right now.
I tried 5 different times with 5 different ideas of an asset or scene and I just couldn't do it properly...
I don't know how to stay encouraged, I know I need to just bite the bullet and make something, but I'm making things that I'm not satisfied with.
I wish I had someone looking over my shoulder telling me what I'm doing wrong and what I'm doing right, should I just go to a school?
I'm not that great either when it comes to making a concept drawing of what I want.
Should I study concept art first?
I'm feeling pretty lost right now.
Replies
It's that feeling you could be apart of something extremely popular if you work really hard at it.
Although my main encouragement comes from seeing people's reactions when I show them a project I've worked on. I remember making a school prototype and some people liked how I could navigate through it in real time. It encouraged me to keep making more 3D art to better understand how people react to new and unusual things.
This vid sums it up:
Its also crucial to get your work posted online, Make a thread here on Polycount of a current project your working on, no matter how much you feel the art may not be good enough or your too worried to show, getting feedback and opinions from other artists will really help to motivate you to continue with your work and push you to show improvements.
Remember everyone starts with minimal knowledge of 3D and bad art at some point, the only way to improve is to keep grinding and working at your flaws, look at others for inspiration, dissect and study their work, and get feedback on your own work to see where you stand and how to grow.
And dont worry about creating your own concept art, if you want to be a 3D artist you should look at concept artists and reference their work to create your own artwork, As you will need to closely replicate 2D concepts when working in the Industry.
From the students that we have at the university I work at, here at polycount, or just any young artist out there. Even non artists, in other field. To all of them, old and new, I want to share my thoughts on this topic:
You will have to find the drive to do this within yourself. No one else will be pushing you to pursue our dreams like you will...
It takes a lot of things that you are not satisfied with, but the main thing is to learn from each of them and to carry that over to the next model.
I understand how easy it is to be discouraged when you feel you're just stamping around on the same place, not going anywhere, but you're just building the momentum to start the journey.
For your post:
1) It doesn't matter what age you are. What matters is your willingness to learn, and how much effort you can put in. You have time to learn and get better, you will have plenty of people around to learn from. It may feel like you would have to learn everything instantly, but art and craft takes time and continuous effort to learn, and it is a skill. Just keep on working and you'll be fine. I started when I was 26, as I didn't know it was an option before then. I know great artists that started when they were in their 50s! Today's society is a lot about instant gratification, and we're always seeing the latest and the best in the art. But it is not always so visible with how long it took to get there.
If you can put in 8 hours a day to (consciously) learn something you will advance faster than someone who's only able to put in 4. But age does not come into play here, only how much effort, willingness and time you put in.
2) Great thing about this industry is that you don't have to have to go to a school to get good at it. But you will have to practice everyday. Motivation is something you just have to find. This is a good post from Swizzle here: http://polycount.com/discussion/175256/motivation-is-bull . Definitely recommend reading it. Pluralsight and 3dMotive, or any of the other sites and courses you can find are great. Start by following along, doing it exactly how they are doing it, even though it may not seem as the most exciting thing to make. Try to make it as good or better than what they are doing.
3) If you feel like you can't do something properly, then maybe you need to take a step back and go back to the start and follow along in someone else's courses. It is at this point there needs to be something said about sticking with an idea even if you don't like it from the start. As most of the artists on here can attest to, most models have to go through a 'valley of the sucks'. I can't remember who first coined that phrase, but it is true. Most of the time when I make models they are not looking great in the start, but it is a phase you'll have to go through to get to the part where they start to look nice again. Find a concept you are really excited by, and then try to stick with it for a longer period. Don't give up. A lot of new people give up way too quickly. I think Adam Skutt said in his hair tutorial that the first time he did hair it took him 3 weeks to get it decent. And that was the first time he FINISHED a hair. He had given up a few times before that.
What most people don't see when looking at art that is out there, is all the failed attempts, or 'not good enough' attempts that has gone into it before. I can recommend having a look at this great comic: http://doodlealley.com/2012/10/10/be-friends-with-failure/ It is definitely something to think about.
4) It is not just about 'biting the bullet'. It is about finding something in it that will push you forward when you are working with it. Most students I come across have heard 'find your passion in life - find what you want to do for the rest of your life' and I usually find that, sure it would be nice. And it definitely helps being excited about something....
But I kinda think it is bullshit. What you need to find is what you are willing to suffer for. Somewhere I found that having passion means to suffer for something. It is about finding that thing that even though you have to sit through 53 hours of redrawing a line to make it fit the rest of the painting, it is something you do, and want to do, because it will make you better as an artist. It means something to you to actually make it that good. Or to sit through countless revisions of retopology, or painstakingly learn the anatomy just so you can make that realistic model you always wanted to make. And half of the time, you will not be satisfied with the result (as mentioned in posts above) but that would push you to continue, to try to improve it for the next time. Don't beat yourself down because you're not there yet. No one learns things to perfection immediately. No one was god-tier at the first try... But the attempts to make it a masterpiece should spur you on, not beat yourself down. Re-focus your energy to learn from the mistakes.
When you see something that you're not satisfied with; take the time to research how to make it better next time. Make it a challenge, not an obstacle. Learn to practice consciously. Read this: http://doodlealley.com/2012/11/21/practice-does-not-make-perfect/ Have a look at this thread. Some of the artists from polycount have posted their first models versus the latest ones. It is a great motivation to just keep working. http://polycount.com/discussion/171907/first-vs-recent
5) You don't have to go to a school to have someone standing over your shoulder. Most of the time, that is not what happens. Teachers have 30-50 (or more) students to teach, and cannot spend all the time looking at what you are doing. Most of the time you would sit through a lecture, like with the online courses, and you would be assigned something to do for homework. You wouldn't have a way to change that homework, it would just be something you would have to do. If that is what you want, you can do that with the online courses as well.
You have plenty of resources available to you though. Polycount is a place where you can put up your work and get feedback and encouragements, help and neat tricks, from people in the industry or in the same place as you. Join the community. Be a part of it. And you will find people that can help you on your way. Make a thread. Put your work up there. Engage with questions and ask for specific feedback.
But you have to be the person standing over your shoulder to actually do it. No one else will have time to do that, they are working to improve their own art. Find a mentor. Join hangouts or discords or slacks. Go to meet ups. Talk to people. Jump at any and every opportunity to get tips and help, and find like-minded people. Get a study group going! Learn to learn! http://doodlealley.com/2012/09/17/learn-to-learn/ and don't just look at the art, look at the artists. What have they done before, how did they learn? What was their road to getting where they are now? http://doodlealley.com/2011/08/27/principle-vs-process/ But you will have to be that person standing over your shoulder, keeping you on your best behaviour.
6) If you're not a concept artist, you have plenty of concepts available from artstation, pinterest, or any other online art site you can find. If there is nothing that tickles your fancy, you can always select a few and try to kit bash your own concept from there. But I would say to find a concept of something that excites you, or tickles your fancy, and stick with it until it is finished.
Learning how to draw if you're a 3d artist is a hot debate in the industry. It won't make or break your career in 3d, but it doesn't harm it either. But you should spend your time learning what will help you get to where you want to be. If you are making characters, learning how to draw anatomy will help with form and shape, learning perspective and and light helps a lot for environment. They are two sides of the same coin; art. Learn to make the best art you can make.
7) It is ok to feel lost. I believe most artists do, at some point or another, if not a lot of the time. It is just to keep sight of that goal you really want, and to keep walking towards it. No matter the detours, no matter how long it takes, you'll get there if you just keep walking. Don't give up. Just imagine all the nice things you might find on the detours. You're never really lost, you just haven't taken the next step. http://doodlealley.com/2011/10/19/brick-by-brick/ and http://doodlealley.com/2011/11/16/plan-backwards-live-forwards/
Ever thought about volunteering your time with an indie team?
Panda I was thinking about it, but I don't have a portfolio yet that I'm content with.
I also feel like I need to be apart of an already established team that has all their Ideas and priorities ready and are prepared to move into the modeling stage.
In a way, i'm still not entirely out of this phase myself, i guess, but, i think couple of things can help.
I entered Artstation challange recently, and it helped a lot with motivation, especially since you can compare yourself directly to others. What's more, after it was finished, many of those awesome artist competing with me, made short summary of how they approached their scene. Some even made long, proper tutorial.
so, you can always check these, look for info on how they approached their scene. study them, to see what they did right, what apps they used, is there something interesting composition wise, or color wise, etc. Then compare it to your work and see where you seems to be lacking.
So, i think it's important to just get down to work, but before you actually do something, at least i feel like this, i think it's best to take some time, learn some stuff, just doodle around and practise, and then take what you have learned, and create an asset on your own, and see how it goes, with the new things you learned.
So, i think it's important to study others to get some feeling where you want to end up, quality wise, and also to take a look at your work, and define areas you think you need to improve.
For example, am i bad in modelling itself? Am i bad at creating realistic looking textures? Maybe i'm kinda ok-ish with those, but i kinda am bad with creating materials? Maybe i'm just poor at sculpting?
etc...
Just as short example, i used to be so damn pathetic at hand painted textures, wasn't really sure how to improve. So, i started doing some tutorials, but also starting doing some digital paintings of environments, since i always liked that, just don't have skill for it. I don't plan to be pro at painting, so it's ok if i'm not the "best" at it, but i do learn a lot. I did some practises, like taking interesting picture, say, some rock formation in grass, and i'd give myself say, 45 mins, and try to recreate it in photoshop by painting it, but not picking up colors or anything, i had to guess them. That way, i actually got to get much better at observing colors and got slightly better feeling for colors in general.
So, when i finally decide that ok, i learned something, lets go make some scene now...i was actually surprised how well (for my standards, mind you), ended up.
Sorry about long post, but hopefully, it helps....
Ended up on this:
@Mark Dygert I'm not really looking for someone to pat me on the back, more so someone to teach me the good habits and encourage me to finish what I start, right now one of my bad habits is too many ideas at one time, unable to fulfill those ideas due to lack of skill I have.
I really like the artist who designed the picture bellow, I'm really into this type of stylized modeling and texturing and would like to center my portfolio around this kind of style, but it's a little difficult find tutorials for this kind of style at least mainly for the textures from what I experienced.
I can tell the artist used a regular modeling program instead of zbrush to design everything, I would like to do it with sculpting, sculpting textures and modeling the objects themselves.
She also used Photoshop for the textures.
I also really like the world of warcraft style, and I know for a fact that the artists use zbrush to design textures and models.
For Characters, I really like the style for Disney infinity characters, I know Shane Olson has got some videos on Twitch and he does a class,
Shane Olson: https://www.artstation.com/artist/shaneolson
As another for character sculpts, I really enjoy Karen McCarthy's Barbarian: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/z9oYd
Shem Dawson is just a pure badass: https://www.artstation.com/artist/pixelatedkiwi
Brice Laville's "Viking" is really nice, similar to Karen: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vmXEa
DOTA 2 is also has a good style, very similar to WOW followed by Heroes of the Storm, not just character-wise but asset-wise.
Zbrush feels like a different playing field when it comes to modeling, I find it difficult to learn without really any visual guidance, I learn better by seeing someone do something and and knowing why they did it that way, there's quite a few tutorials I found that are based on this form of style, but a lot of them don't go into too much detail and the results will be fairly simple looking, for instance, I haven't been able to find a stylized wood tutorial with something as much detail or similar to the image above.
I try to look for something with good workflow that doesn't just show me steps A, B and C but also explains why I'm doing A, B and C and speed sculpts are difficult to follow.
I would also really like to get into environment design as well using world machine, though it's not too hard to learn world machine with the countless tutorials out there on a variety of things you can do in it.
pretty much what I want to learn:
Texturing
Character Design/Modeling
Asset Design/Modeling
Animation
Environment/Level design
I can take a break when I've gotten to the point that I feel comfortable with my art and I can get something finished.
If you want a handholding, deep explanatory video intro to Zbrush, this helped me a ton several years back
http://eat3d.com/zbrush4_character2
Have a look at this guy: https://gumroad.com/redbeard
Matt Thorup used to work with Disney Interactive and his tutorials are good
Honestly the only other thing that plagues me is the Ideas I have, I feel like they're movies or images (I would like to make short story animations) constantly on repeat in my head with slight variations that make them slightly better and convey the message I want.
Some people have suggested writing down my ideas, but how do you write down an entire scenario or movie, and I don't see how that will quite my thoughts.
Similarly, I've found maintaining a semblance of self-motivation to be littered with peaks and troughs. Much like one minute you're OCD cranking out a fully rigged-animated-realistic-material-looking-whatever in less time it takes to fart a tune to ACDCs "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You wanna Rock 'N' Roll)" or as we say it here in AUS "It's a Long Way To The Shop (If You wanna Sausage Roll)"
...the next it's all a bit pointless, with thoughts of binning it there and then.
So the thing to keep in mind here I think is recapturing your initial sense of exploratory wonder, perhaps when first opening up a DDC app playing around with it. Because the way I see the entire creative process itself embodies well essentially in my case at least, a sense of fun basically upon which the whole idea of transitioning across from a traditional art background to working in this medium to begin with. Otherwise minus the simple pleasure through hard graft generating digital output YOU HAVE MADE, it'll be an extremely tedious fucking exercise at the same time.
Looking up awesome art online is another way to get motivated.
Actually, I just remembered another good one. Get a phone app that lets you track how much time you're actually spending working. It REALLY helps to be able to see just how much time you're wasting on nonsense instead of actually working.
If you set an alarm as well for when you should start working each day, you can make an effort to actively psych yourself up beforehand and put aside distractions.