overcoming laziness

Ruz

is that even a thing.? having got to the age that i can't be arsed anymore( 52) started at age aroiund 27, but still actively producing work, i am finding ti hard to actually do the final work that make a piece pop ie texturing, various maps etc. believe me it will come to you call

I used to stay up till 5 am to make things work, but  now I am more concerned about the back garden.

driving me crazy really, time to either just give up on 3d totally or change careers, 'But' I still love making 3d stuff after doing it since 1995 ish

maybe keep it as a hobby , but then I would feel my last 30 years has been wasted. really wish that companies were not so age predjudice

work is much more technical now and its tough for one person to shine. I have recently started doing env work, which is great,but get to a certain point then can't be arsed :0

PolyHertz

The impression I get from your work is that you've kind of type-cast yourself into making only highpoly 'portfolio worthy' pieces. Because of this you're feeling creatively stifled and bored each time you try and make another such piece.

Try this; For each new piece you make, do it in a completely new/different style. Try making lowpoly art that only uses vertex colors, create pixel textures and then build models around them, make transforming robots, etc. Just make random things with the sole purpose of getting your creative juices flowing without falling into old habits.

Ruz

that's my point, make stuff that looks nice, but not maybe useful for a game , so lose interest.

so many game engines, so many techiques, styles, but I lose interest or stay focused on 1 piece fro a year or 2 until i get bored

tough to move forward but i do think that doing env pieces is the new me characters really do bore me rigid these days

poopipe

Is this about your day job or your free time? 

if it's about your day job then you presumably have the experience and knowledge to move into a less practical/more leadership oriented role? There's a lot of satisfaction in mentoring more junior team members and then taking credit for their hard work  and more altruistically there's also a lot of value in spreading years of hard earned knowledge around.
If you cant do it where you're at now then perhaps the grass is greener somewhere else. 

if it's about your free time then don't beat yourself up over it - you're not obliged to create constantly, the romantic suffering artist myth is just something we use to exploit the young and naive into crunching so management can go home to our golden castles at 4pm and bathe in unicorn milk  


Based on your response to PolyHertz's excellent suggestion I'd sway more to building a bunch of related assets in a way that doesn't take very long

eg.
set yourself a 3000 triangle limit and make a little herd of characters - pick a fun group concept or maybe the cast of a tv show, don't bake from highres models just push some polys around and paint some textures. They'll take 2-3 days each and after a week or two you'll have enough to make a little diorama, then maybe build them a little environment to stand around in , muck around with lighting, do a bit of animation and so on - keep it lo-fi and it shouldn't get stale. 
its not a game but it's a coherent world and that's basically all a game is to an artist. (obviously you could make a game out of it after)

alternatively - force yourself into a corner and start buggering about with magicavoxel - that always makes me happy.

jStins

poopipe said:

if it's about your free time then don't beat yourself up over it - you're not obliged to create constantly, the romantic suffering artist myth is just something we use to exploit the young and naive into crunching so management can go home to our golden castles at 4pm and bathe in unicorn milk  

Put this on a plaque, sell it in the Polycount store and I'll buy it immediately. 

Ruz

I am honestly thinking it's my age that's going against me, applied for loads of stuff recently, not much success at all , even for freelance work.

I had an interview a few weeks back , job seemed ideal, seemed to have the experience, but no go.

Obviously that could be any number of reasons, but it's either i get no reply at all these days or get shot down in interviews. I had an interview at a well known company a few years back, they did not even have the courtesy to tell me I had n't got the job after I had driven 200 miles to get to the interview.

It's got to the point where I am thinking as a career it's not really worth it any more

I have tried various kinds of assets over the last few years, characters both low and high,high/ low poly vehicles, cutesy animated characters, telephones, lamposts , sheep etc, but literally not much interest from employers. I noticed 'lots' of views from top end

companies on linked in, but literally not 1 approach for work. I can even do walk cycles to a reasonable standard, so yeah much frustration

very disheartening and frustrating.  maybe I am just not applying for enough work overall, but i have also noticed there is a ridiculous amount od requirements for jobs these days, not enough that you can model/texture and animate a bit it seems,.  you have to have UI experience, concept art/ adobe suite etc compositing, programming, nuclear science etc

I am thinking of getting back in to illustration next, since games/film are generating no hits these days, being forced in to a corner

I think maybe I overestimated the kind of rewards available working in games/film, both personal and financial. All you seem to get is abuse

I have no interest in being a manager, I am just in it for the art really, always have been, though I enjoy mentoring to  a certain degree,it's not my main motivation.:) prefer working in the trenches as it were.

re your point about work in my spare time,poopipe, well I really do still enjoy creating stuff, even as a hobby, so that's not really frustrating me , it's the work side of it mainly.

The stuff i am making these days is really fun for me like my model of 'columbo' for example, had a blast doing that but maybe not really suitable for sci fi games etc and they take so long to make.

I am enjoying making environments more now, but it's a very technical area it seems (sigh)

DavidCruz

TLDR; Hang in there it happens.

Long, 
I just do things i want to do in the moment ("small projects")(i.e. a nail, can probably get similar than that but) and eventually it will work out, like i don't do fx or props much but i feel the need or see a cool concept or have an idea and i say to myself "sure why not, lets see what i can do" and boom i surprised myself.  (It took a f-ck long bit of time but when i achieved the "goal", the feeling can not be bought.)

Then again i fall into some of those requirements because some positions I've had required them and the CEO couldn't give two shits if that is what i was applying for and i managed to pull it off with zero experience in the situation.  I just asked what was needed then after i learned "their" processes i expanded on it and made a "system/technique", that advanced it to a much quicker/simpler method.  Was u.i. based thing in photoshop, basically replacing images in some reference/smart layer or whatever it is, i forget atm.(too much rattling around up there.)

Maybe you like being directed? if you do not like directing yourself, so i say learn this next week how to make environment materials in substance designer for your projects?
That should keep the noodle rattling and keep anyone busy, do the "style" you like though so if you like realism more aim for that.

I enjoy going out during decent days, i do not need to but i also take a decent amount of time off that really gets me going in the art category, the more i do not do it the more i want to do it.  So other hobbies projects do help with this issue of no motivation or inspiration.  Like the other day by complete accident (and was more of a test than anything) i ran 7.3 miles, thinking it was only about 4, so glad i wasn't hurting the next few days but there you go, i again surprised myself. 

^Basically saying surprise yourself, learn something not Art related and maybe find interests else were whiling figuring out what you do want to do.

(..Tried to make this short..)

Alex_J

younger people believe things that make  easier to exploit - i.e. get them to work for less than they are worth, whether that is by lower wages or coerced into working too many hours. 

When I was younger I thought that the higher you go up the ladder the smarter, wiser, better people would be. Not the case in my experience. People start dumb, they stay dumb, they die dumb. I've been around some of the highest levels in the US military and they put on a show but when it comes down to it they are doing the same stupid shit private dickhead gets hammered for on a daily basis. It's the same everywhere I've been in civilian world too. Nobody knows anything but once they get an ounce of respect they think they know everything. Then shit gets real stupid.

The people doing the hiring are likely not any different from those they are hiring. I.e. they know little, believe a lot of nonsense, and mostly operate from assumptions - dramatically overvaluing what little experience they have. 

So yeah, there probably is a lot of ageism and assumptions like, "if the guy has been doing this so long how come he isn't a manager?" "My grandpa is slow as fuck, this guy will be slow as fuck too."

 I don't think there is any way to overcome that other than getting lucky and find someone who actually knows what it takes to get work done and doesn't live in a fantasy world built from assumptions. It seems like games/entertainment attracts people who do live in fantasy worlds though - tv is much worse from what I can tell. At least the grunts doing technical work in games know a thing or two about doing work and some real character comes from that.

Overall the entertainment industry largely seems like a cesspool. Of course you pick out individuals and its hard not to love them but there is a general culture that persist and to me it's an ugly thing. 

I think doing a trade for as long as you have and still enjoying it is indication of the perfect mindset and something worth aspiring too but culture tellls people other things. Everybody wants a lot for a little and will do a lot for a little trying to attain that impossible goal. The height of foolishness.

i think you should enjoy more time in the garden. Gardens are lovely and some people will spend there whole life without enjoying a garden.

Ruz

David Cruz  - I don't think tis a case of i 'like' being directed, but maybe I just am not that fond of taking responsibility at that kind of level.

Lot of pressure on lead artists, but it's mainly because I ony got in to it because I started off doing illustration and just enjoy producing artwork.

Managing people is a whole different area for me at least.

I am also not that technical, not saying I am dumb, but i am not the geeky kind, come from an art school background and  just try and get stuff done with the minimum of technical hurdles( which is getting harder these days)

I do a lot of other stuff as well as art, not as though i am at my desk 24/7. I have a family and we go out and and do stuff too.

I drive about 80 miles a day for schools runs, which gets me out of the house a bit

alex_J - i see where you coming from on the old man thing, must be slow or dumb. i have had a lot of that, even when i was 32

Maybe i should stop telling people to get off my lawn

Good post overall and squares with my experience of both games and  film. can be quite toxic and have almost come to blows with a few people over the years, but generally has been ok.

I think learning substance designer would be a good move for me, not that keen on node based art, but it might help me in the long run

I was thinking about this more of late that I really have not applied for 'that' much over the last year or 2 , become a bit too confortable hanging around the house and garden, sort of pre retirement mindset. ho hum, will just have to work it out for myself I guess