How to know whether you really enjoy doing it or if you are just forcing yourself to do 3d
Hey,
So basically at the minute it's sort of hot and cold with what i would say I really enjoyed when starting up and learning how to start etc, but now I do sometimes feel some opposition some days when doing it however, I still power through it but I just can't decide whether I truly love it and I'm putting up with it or I'm subconsciously forcing my self to do it, like it's hard work and I should step back and take a break for a bit and see if i get called back.
I will admit at times of being at work which i don't really enjoy, my mind wanders off to that topic and I will think about it, but when I've been getting on recently I have been seriously Procrastinating.
I've been doing 3D modelling now since about September 2 years ago and I could potentially see my self making a Career out of it eventually. However that being said I'm no where near that level yet and there is still literally tons to learn to get any where near that level. But at the current i really don't know where it's going all that's in my mind is what if I don't really enjoy it and I'm forcing my self to do it. I don't know if it's just burnout or something else I'd say life wise probably not the best at the moment there is a few other things I'm not happy with but I won't go into huge details with that.
What would you say to do I'm sort of stuck on a cross roads and it's been bugging me for a few weeks now.
Replies
Or more generally, would you want to be someone who's working on video games and films, etc.
It would also help us if you showed us your portfolio/body of work. Most of your questions on PC have been technical/career questions.
what a dumb question. You commit to something, you commit to it. If you are burnt out, take a break. Time heals everything.
maybe you aren't improving as fast as you hoped? and it gets you down? feelings come and feelings go. If you get upset because you are upset... well that's just a never ending loop, isn't it?
So, why aren't you improving as quickly as you'd like? that is the important question. It's a question that, when answered, will deliver real results. And then you'll feel great. If you are wishy-washy about your art, but you are not showing people your art, it gives an impression that you are probably too self-conscious about your art. Nonsense. It's just art. Not like you are showing dick pics. If the art sucks today, who cares? You mean to improve don't you?
Forget about failure, and focus 100% on winning. There shouldn't be anything about your actions or thoughts in which you "have no idea." Everything has to be focused towards the goal. find those parts of you that aren't focused towards the goal and get them right.
Why commit to something 100% when there's not a moral imperative for it, especially with a career goal?
The only times I really struggle to have fun and be productive are the times when I start to doubt my worth as an artist, whether it be due to lack of feedback, lack of career progress/prospects, whatever. It happens, and it sucks. But if you love something enough and you truly believe you have the passion for that thing, then you have to believe the universe will eventually wink your way.
Don't let the learning curve scare you. None of us started out knowing everything, and all of us continue to learn something new and improve every day. For me personally, that's one of the more exciting aspects of this whole 3D art thingy. Learning and constantly improving is fun, routine and stagnancy are boring AF. Think of life as an rpg. Find the game you like and keep grinding it out and leveling up! GET THAT PHAT LOOT SON.
Try to stay active in communities like this. Review other people's art on Artstation and interact with them every day. Absorb yourself as much as you can into 3D art, and after a while if it still isn't clicking, well, maybe it's time to flip through the brochure some more and move on.
Good luck to ye!
It's one thing if you get into a job and realize you just totally don't jive with the crowd and 90% of the time you just flat out hate the work. It's another to get to the tough part of a long race and then quit. This is the impression I am getting. They have just lost focus, probably due to the fact that they feel they aren't getting somewhere. I am sure everybody faces this.
I think the best way to answer the original question is to look back on the last two years and ask yourself, "was I happy 70% of the time?" if so, stick with it. If not, think about alternatives. If you are young, like college age, just fucking stick with it. You can forge yourself into whatever you are willing to at this point, so get tough and make yourself into something you won't regret later in life. If you make a habit of quitting when things get hard, you can forget any decent career.
I've seen it thousands of times. Everybody wants big adventures, they want a challenge... but when things get beyond them, and they no longer have control, and they aren't sure where they are or what the outcomes gonna be, they quit. They go soft. They get scared. But if you just keep going, things work out. You'll earn the prize. This is what the advice is before you go to special forces selection. Everybody wants to know, "how do I make it to the end and get selected?" the answer is "just don't fucking quit."
- As you work, are you getting excited with what you are doing, like when some part of the process comes together?
- When you learn something new, do you go "of course!" or "fuck ya, awesome!" or "I gotta try that!"
- Do you think about how to solve 3d problems when you are away from modeling/texturing/whathaveyou?
- Does time "get away from you" as you work on something?
I think procrastinating about doing 3d stuff isn't necessarily a sign that you don't enjoy it. Its just a sign that you're a procrastinator
I have massive procrastination issues. To get around them, I set myself a scheduled block of time 5 days a week that I make a commitment to myself to follow. I work in an unrelated field, so I get up early, walk my dog, then work on 3d stuff for at least an hour or more every morning before work.
This has quickly become my most productive time. I've just had my first coffee of the day and I can focus like a laser beam on whatever I'm doing. The frustrating part is that the hour usually fly's by just as I'm getting into the swing of things. That alone is a sign that I enjoy it cause if I didn't I would be happy the hour was over.
Now, some may say this is barely any amount of time but I have a ton of commitments in my life after work and know I'm way lazier then than in the morning as well. So, it works for me now and I feel like I've done something constructive with my day, every day.
Anyways, ask yourself those questions. Maybe that will help you decide if you are enjoying it.
That's it right there ^^^
that is tough for anybody. why don't you take a week or two off -- long enough to completely forget about everything beyond going through the motions at work, and then when you come back post your art work and see if with other peoples help you can't figure out exactly what area's you lack skill/knowledge in so you can form a plan of action rather than just blindly working without really knowing where you are trying to go. Having a clear goal and a plan of action to get there -- with landmarks you can measure your progress against -- is going to be the fastest way to improve and also help you put things into perspective when you get low.
And if you aren't seeking treatment for your mental ailments, please make every attempt to do so. It can take time to solve the riddle, but the right treatment can make a world of a difference.
I was really bad at getting work done in the past when I wasn't motivated and I got burned out a couple of times to the point where I didn't manage to leave the bed for weeks. I kinda got through it by starting writing down my goals, long time goals and short time deadlines. Also taking a shower or go out for a walk when ever things got really bad helped as well.
But I would say, if you have long time goals that really makes you wet in your pants then you probably don't hate what you are doing, it's all about if you are able to push through the process in between that.
lockey1995 said:
I definitely think I'm burntout, thing is my current retail job is draining me and I do feel trapped there I'm more of an introverted type person and dealing with customers all day tires me out and I've battled depression and anxiety over the last few years mainly oversleeping and my eating times etc are all over the damn place I just haven't been me.
Take a break, talk to someone!
Your health and well being has priority over everything else in your life, full stop.
We all have holidays/vacations for a reason!
Would you prefer a career in 3d, stay stuck in unskilled labor, or perhaps go for some other type of skilled profession?
You are in a tough time right now. It's not a good time to make big decisions. You only want to make your big decisions when you are very calm and have little stress. So even though it seems like going backwards to take a few weeks off, it may be the best thing to figure out how to go forward.
I just posted an essay in this subforum with some advice about how to figure out where you are, make a plan, and keep moving forward. If it's TL:DR, the idea is that you post your current, best artwork side by side with a professional, working artist in your field, and then you can start identifying exactly what you lack. Then you can make a checklist, and even if its a ton of work you don't have to feel hopeless because you have a visible way to measure your progress.
Think about it this way, would you be doing this sort of creative work [3d/art work] regardless of the pay?
Are you psychologically broken in some basic foundational way that means you cannot fathom spending your time doing anything else [other than creative art stuff]? Is there any other work you could imagine actually doing?
For me, I was doing 3d stuff - learning for years - at great personal and financial cost to myself from the age of 13 [traditional art well before that, but I was 13 when I started doing VFX and video editing work and 3d animation - that was two decades ago roughly] simply because I was utterly obsessed with the work itself even when it was a massively fiscally unsound proposition and it seemed... like I was really good at the creative and technical side and produced solid work mostly, and fairly inept with the social and business side of it. I am autistic so I suck at the interpersonal aspect and I am well aware of that.
But I simply love the work and can't imagine being anything other than an artist, 3d or otherwise. If you don't have that borderline insane level of enthusiasm you'll maybe struggle to keep ahead of those who do. Incidentally, I'm currently working a lot of gigs from the time I wake to the time I can't stay awake anymore, at way below minimum wage and have no problems with that. It just means 14-16 hrs/ day 7 days/week, and if it's broken across tons of little efforts and freelance one-offs and personal ventures & product launches, and sort of fragmented - no employment that is long term, and most of it with effective income between $1.50-4.50/hr, well, it's my life and I am happy with it. If you make all the jobs short term and rotate from gig to gig, you can charge less, avoid dealing with minimum wage laws, and get involved in a wide range of different types of art projects for all sorts of people, and I'd rather get paid $3/hr than not work and earn nothing and be bored. People might sometimes say I'm unstable, delusional and that I need a better social life and maybe a romantic relationship at some point and maybe so, but I don't really see the need - I'm in love with my work. I see no convincing reason I couldn't keep doing this through into old age. It's awesome and I love it! My main goal with the gigs incidentally is to cover bills and then cover the cost of the creative work I do on my own when I can't land paid work. If I cannot land work for an employer during a certain stretch, that's a great opportunity to create my own game, or shoot a short VFX video, make an artwork [handmade] of my own and then auction it off on eBay. I also make 3d asset packs/texture collections and shoot stock video FX, post it all online, sell it. Most of that doesn't sell great so far, a lot of it has actually lost money, but it's a lot of fun. And it gives me something I can point to that I was doing during a gap between gigs. Basically, I've been a 'very hard-working and prolific' unemployed person for years now. I do not have a steady job [long term job] and don't need or want one. Granted, maybe 45% of my work is not accessible anywhere online no matter how hard you try to find it, for legal or contractual reasons of one sort or another depending on the employer.
But the 55% that is scattered around online, I can point to some of that if anyone cares. Sorry, just meandering at this point and a bit manic. It's late, I had a lot of coffee today and I need to go back to working on my new 3d asset pack. But the core point of my deranged rant is: You don't need to be mentally ill to do 3d art of course, but you do need to be passionate about the work. Otherwise, why the hell would you do it? It seems to me there are many other technical fields that pay way better [potentially] and the main reason anyone does 3d art nowadays is that they really are in love with the work itself. Because IMO, it's a field that has a lot of long hours and overtime and not great pay. The mid-late '90s were the heyday for 3d animators. Now the volume of competition in this industry has climbed markedly, lots of people now are skilled and want to do this, and the supply of talent has climbed well beyond the demand for it. So there are a lot of people on the edges like me who are doing the work and barely staying afloat financially. It will likely only get harder - at least from that perspective.
You'll only stick with this industry if it's not about the money to you. You'll stick with it if the work is intrinsically rewarding to you. And if you're not sure it is... well, I can't really identify with that. Because for me it very much is. I love animation, and texture art, modeling objects, creating 3d environments, I like shooting video and editing it, and compositing, motion graphics, and integrating/tracking 3d animated content into the video. I love digital image editing. I do a lot of coding and web design stuff too. Maybe I should specialize but I have found that being a full-fledged low-cost if imperfect VFX house, traditional handmade art gallery, architectural previz studio, 3d asset provider, web design firm, and a game studio all in one crazy person, has some great upsides in that I can find and take advantage of a lot more opportunities online. I have been known to pay to do the work. Literally, I work to fund the losses on the work when needed. It's a challenge. But I wouldn't have it any other way. And I suspect there are many of you here who know exactly what I mean.
Think about it this way, would you be doing this sort of creative work [3d/art work] regardless of the pay?
Are you psychologically broken in some basic foundational way that means you cannot fathom spending your time doing anything else [other than creative art stuff]? Is there any other work you could imagine actually doing?
For me, I was doing 3d stuff - learning for years - at great personal and financial cost to myself from the age of 13 [traditional art well before that, but I was 13 when I started doing VFX and video editing work and 3d animation - that was two decades ago roughly] simply because I was utterly obsessed with the work itself even when it was a massively fiscally unsound proposition and it seemed... like I was really good at the creative and technical side and produced solid work mostly, and fairly inept with the social and business side of it. I am autistic so I suck at the interpersonal aspect and I am well aware of that.
But I simply love the work and can't imagine being anything other than an artist, 3d or otherwise. If you don't have that borderline insane level of enthusiasm you'll maybe struggle to keep ahead of those who do. Incidentally, I'm currently working a lot of gigs from the time I wake to the time I can't stay awake anymore, at way below minimum wage and have no problems with that. It just means 14-16 hrs/ day 7 days/week, and if it's broken across tons of little efforts and freelance one-offs and personal ventures & product launches, and sort of fragmented - no employment that is long term, and most of it with effective income between $1.50-4.50/hr, well, it's my life and I am happy with it. If you make all the jobs short term and rotate from gig to gig, you can charge less, avoid dealing with minimum wage laws, and get involved in a wide range of different types of art projects for all sorts of people, and I'd rather get paid $3/hr than not work and earn nothing and be bored. People might sometimes say I'm unstable, delusional and that I need a better social life and maybe a romantic relationship at some point and maybe so, but I don't really see the need - I'm in love with my work. I see no convincing reason I couldn't keep doing this through into old age. It's awesome and I love it! My main goal with the gigs incidentally is to cover bills and then cover the cost of the creative work I do on my own when I can't land paid work. If I cannot land work for an employer during a certain stretch, that's a great opportunity to create my own game, or shoot a short VFX video, make an artwork [handmade] of my own and then auction it off on eBay. I also make 3d asset packs/texture collections and shoot stock video FX, post it all online, sell it. Most of that doesn't sell great so far, a lot of it has actually lost money, but it's a lot of fun. And it gives me something I can point to that I was doing during a gap between gigs. Basically, I've been a 'very hard-working and prolific' unemployed person for years now. I do not have a steady job [long term job] and don't need or want one. Granted, maybe 45% of my work is not accessible anywhere online no matter how hard you try to find it, for legal or contractual reasons of one sort or another depending on the employer.
But the 55% that is scattered around online, I can point to some of that if anyone cares. Sorry, just meandering at this point and a bit manic. It's late, I had a lot of coffee today and I need to go back to working on my new 3d asset pack. But the core point of my deranged rant is: You don't need to be mentally ill to do 3d art of course, but you do need to be passionate about the work. Otherwise, why the hell would you do it? It seems to me there are many other technical fields that pay way better [potentially] and the main reason anyone does 3d art nowadays is that they really are in love with the work itself. Because IMO, it's a field that has a lot of long hours and overtime and not great pay. The mid-late '90s were the heyday for 3d animators. Now the volume of competition in this industry has climbed markedly, lots of people now are skilled and want to do this, and the supply of talent has climbed well beyond the demand for it. So there are a lot of people on the edges like me who are doing the work and barely staying afloat financially. It will likely only get harder - at least from that perspective.
You'll only stick with this industry if it's not about the money to you. You'll stick with it if the work is intrinsically rewarding to you. And if you're not sure it is... well, I can't really identify with that. Because for me it very much is. I love animation, and texture art, modeling objects, creating 3d environments, I like shooting video and editing it, and compositing, motion graphics, and integrating/tracking 3d animated content into the video. I love digital image editing. I do a lot of coding and web design stuff too. Maybe I should specialize but I have found that being a full-fledged low-cost if imperfect VFX house, traditional handmade art gallery, architectural previz studio, 3d asset provider, web design firm, and a game studio all in one crazy person, has some great upsides in that I can find and take advantage of a lot more opportunities online. I have been known to pay to do the work. Literally, I work to fund the losses on the work when needed. It's a challenge. But I wouldn't have it any other way. And I suspect there are many of you here who know exactly what I mean.