What do YOU do?
polycounter lvl 2
So a lot of people submit art here, but what job do you do during the day? Are you an art director? Are you just a student? I am curious what some people out there are and ALSO
How do you balance your time with Games, Work, and Projects? Just curious about all this stuff as I am finishing up school this June and I really wanna understand how people balance time between work and portfolio beefing.
How do you balance your time with Games, Work, and Projects? Just curious about all this stuff as I am finishing up school this June and I really wanna understand how people balance time between work and portfolio beefing.
Replies
Balancing time... that is way more difficult than it seems, especially if you do not have a 9-5 style job. We rely heavily on work boards like Strikebase or Trello. This allows us to schedule out a day (or many days) to some degree and prioritize things. Part of that may be time put in for personal growth. It is vital, vital, vital to schedule a stop time. Sure sometimes you may be forced to go over your stop time, but your goal is to hit your stop time and just... stop working. Whatever else has to get done can wait till tomorrow.
By doing that I find you'll get very good at estimating your time, how much you can commit, and in the end, be a lot happier! Even if using that board eats up an entire hour of your day in planning/filling out things, in the end it will save you a ton of money, time, and health (really though once you get it down it takes up a couple minutes).
After work is when I get to do art. I try to make sure I put in a few hours during the work week, and at least a good day on the weekend. Basically I don't binge on netflix if I feel I haven't really made any progress this week.
It's hard through, near the end of a title we average a good 4-6 months of crunch in my department and during that time I have zero time for personal projects.
I find time for games by staying in at lunch most days (saves me money too!) and getting an hour in over lunch. Since I've started to do that, I've been getting through a lot more games.
As for finding time, I try to keep my living expenses as low as possible, and work my day job only the bare minimum necessary to pay them.
No car, no cell phone plan, no cable, never go out places, tiny cold bug-filled apartment, lots of Ramen and bread.
Ah, the life of an independent game developer.
As for the balancing of my time, I'm not the best at balancing it since I started working recently and need to catch up with this way of living (which is awesome for me btw)
When I come home from work I just play games, rarely do art, which is not the best of choices although I am planning on doing something soon, but after the work I just wanna come home, relax and play some fun games.
Haven't yet experienced crunch so that will be interesting xD
Cheers!
The balancing is always a battle. I try to reduce most of my "must do's" to the most basics things, like keeping my flat clean, cook my own food and exercise daily (or at least 5 times a week). To me, the most difficult part is balancing the mental energy, which I'm grateful is my only concern at the moment. Being in a generally good mood helps on keeping up the energy levels, stress is the biggest enemy here.
I work on my art daily, not as effective as I would like, but I don't always do 3D. Art is a big part of my life, and even if I never end up working as a full time artist, I'll never stop doing it, so I try not to push myself to the breaking limit cause I don't want to kill the love for it.
You just have to find your own way and not care to much about how other people do it, unless you are aiming for that high-end job.