What should I do?
polycounter lvl 18
I'm in the middle of my daily panic attack, I'm sweating and my heart rate is a little too high for someone who's been sitting at a desk all day. I spent the last 7 years of my life working towards the goal of getting into the game industry and I feel like I'm nowhere and the agony I'm suffering makes me freeze up whenever I try to open photoshop or a 3D app... which causes me to hate myself for being so unproductive. This is just a stupid rant and I'll probably feel like an idiot later but right now I am truly at the edge of the freaking abyss.
Replies
Also, have a bottle of water next to you and drinking it can sometimes make you feel a little better.
I have the same problem you do so with unproductiveness :S
Come back when you feel better, in a few weeks, or months.
You may find that though you have an underlying anxiety or affective problem that has been made apparent by pressures on you, you're emphasising your ambition over the joy the field brings you too much. Perhaps it's possible for you to stop yourself feeling those pressures and regain your passion for game development.
Consider that A. you may not be in a state to pursue this career right now, B. you may be placing too much strain on yourself, and C. you will not help matters by sitting at your PC trying to force your creativity.
Get the joy back and pursue the career, or leave it as a constructive hobby, but either way deal with the cause rather than the symptom. You will probably need help doing this. We can't address problems we don't understand alone. It's too easy to stew in your own juices if you don't have a solid perspective on yourself, which generally comes from someone else.
I have a managed anxiety disorder, and I share your ambition. My anxiety has never effected my game art, but I do understand how terrified and impotent you feel right now. Don't underestimate the battles you can have with yourself. The inside if your head isn't always a sanctuary.
Best of luck.
I can relate to what your saying pretty well,maybe your just on an off day?
I know I quite regularly have days and times your going through when I just think to myself,Im crap...or my works crap...or Im never gonna make it into the industry etc.Espically at the moment as im going through a rough patch with famly and friends which isn't helping much.
This espeically happens on days that I work,its like wake up-go to work- stack shelfs for 6-9 hours-come home and do some 3d. But I can't im too tired to,my brain isn't functioning properly and I just sleep,normally till 8pm at night,by which time I can't focus becuase the parents,sister and family are around and making a hell of alot of noise and distracion,so i end up doign nothing,next day same routine and towrads the end of the week,i pretty much do nothign and feel really bad becuase i think to my self..the more work i do and the more I push myself the more ill improve...but soemtimes life isn't that simple and your body/brain just doesn't allow you to do that.
A solution for me that works is to meet up with other artists and relax with them,go for a drink,food etc. Like I soemtimes go out with a friend from CA.org and Frankie and peppi,knowing they are both great guys and artists its real a moral booster and after I met them last time I worked about 5 days running really focused and had the most productive time ive had in a very very long time,is there any polycounters or either CA.org guys,Buzz or CGtalk/chat guys in the area you live? if so,try and see if you could meet with them soemtime.
Also In my honest opinion here,I think Polycount is to Blame,at least for me. Its the only 3d site I visit (apart from lurking at CA.org from time to time) and I love the small community we have here...which you don't get at all those other sites.
But the downside of it all is,that evryone here is simply so damn tallented,I mean for example (and I hope these guys don't mind me making examples of them) _shimmer,MoP and Mr Rockstar are all approximatily my age,give or take a year. Yet they are amazing artists,much better than what I see myself as or will be in the next year. Yet I look at work of people on the bigger sites and are reassured to see taht these 3 guys are an exception and taht theres people older and younger than me thats much worse than I am.
I also have days where I see a piece of work and think wow!! and feel disheartened as I know i couldn't do that,yet the next day I maybe feeling better about myself and can see through the lines of peoples exceptional art work and think to myself "acturally I belive I could do that in afew years" and soemtimes (though not as often) may even be able to give a good crit to a peice of art thats seen as exceptional overall.
all in all,if I have a day i feel really disheartened or tired i sleep and try not to worry to much,after all i got years yet to do what I wnat. After that long sleep I wake up,go through my mind what project I have tahts needs to be done go downstairs and just get on with it.
Good luck
john
-Getting help and even just talking to trusted people about it really helps out.
Here's what I do:
- 1 Excedrin PM before bed...enough to get a full 6-7 hours of sleep.
- a shot of B12 in the morning (not the hypodermic but the sweetish stuff with the eyedropper that you hold in your mouth for 30 seconds to let it get to the bloodstream quick)
The B12 will take the anxiety to about 50% of where it was. It's weird it's like taking pain killers for pain and you can feel it just go away.
-brisk exercise in the morning. I was waiting until about midday for my workout and I would be a wreck by the time I got there. Some pushups are enough to do the trick - just pump some good feeling endorphins into your skull and optimism seems to magically return.
-and just remembering that it's never as bad as it may seem.
but the lack of any emails or feedback is telling me that im not good enough yet.
just gotta keep fighting and trying.
I'm pretty much in the same boat. I've been trying for a while to get into the game industry for some reason or another, sometimes, I don't feel that great about it. I always end up with mixed feelings and sometimes anxiety kicks in but what I would do is sit back and relax for a bit ... maybe for a long bit ...
I haven't skinned anything within a two-year period and took up writing as a hobby. However, I still kept my dream of getting into the industry someday ... if I'm not a graphic artist, then I'll probably do something else.
Sometimes, you might want to try different things.
Personally, I've always had some interest in voice recording. I can come up with different kinds of voices and impersonations so I'll probably hook up my iMic, a microphone, and start playing around with GarageBand and see if I could get some voice action going on. Maybe not singing but some self conversations with myself or some reciting of other literature. It could be an interesting addition to my portfolio. Who knows!
Other times, you could try working on something with a group. Get a friend or two together and start a project. It doesn't have to be a big one but something that you and your friend will probably feel happy about.
Working from someone else's concept or specs is a way around one of your issues (i.e.; what do I work on next?). Working from others' concept art is one way the industry works.
But you also need to address the question ... why after all this preparation, am I not working in the game industry yet?
I would recommend you find a game industry artist willing to spend some time with your portfolio and identify weaknesses in style or implementation that may be keeping you from your goal and suggest ways you can address them.
Bronco & Paul: I'm kicking myself for not going to the GDC, I would of liked to met some of my fellow polycounters.
to everyone else: thanks for the support it helps to know I'm not alone.
but, what I tell myself still stands, working hard towards a goal will pay dividends, imho
Alex
NECROED!!!:poly124:
yes but for a good reason
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89929&page=3
I know. I wasn't complaining. I was celebrating.
Enlist in a bullet swinging fraternity and count wings of flies.
<.<
>.>
Seriously now; You should step back a little and just keep on working, creating models, posting them here in pnp and there are people who will help you fine tune your stuff for better chance at getting a job at a game studio.
So, I've decided to post some backstory to this and it turned into a really big post. I've decided not to include the 1997-2000 mod years, maybe there will be a prequel for that with added CG effects.
(I apologize if things get a bit heavy):
From 2000-2003 I went to AiFL. I was a decent student but I didn't give 110%, maybe 95%. I spent a lot of time outside of class playing WWF Smackdown 2 and Mario Party with my roommates so I didn't really have the greatest portfolio when I graduated.
Speaking of graduation, when I got back home and it was time to focus on trying to find a job my dad started turning yellow. The doctors found a tumor on his pancreas that was blocking his bile duct which was causing the jaundice, instead of draining into his intestinal tract the bile was being absorbed into his blood stream. They eventually realized it was Pancreatic Cancer. They attempted what's called the Whipple Procedure but it was too late.
This time of my life is pretty fuzzy, I can't really recall the series of events, my dad seemed to be continually bouncing between a delirious bedridden state and being able to walk around and do the "last months of your life" stuff with his family. I can tell you this, it was a really different experience watching Big Fish in the theater with a father who was dying of cancer.
Sometime in September of 2004 I sat by my father's bed trying say goodbye. He was bouncing between unconsciousness and delirium. For anyone who hasn't experienced this, the scenes with Earl Partridge in the movie Magnolia are pretty much the closest I've seen it portrayed. It was only a little while later that he passed away with my mother, brother, a family friend, the hospice nurse and I around his bed. In hindsight I realized he almost passed while I was struggling to tell him I would be OK, he held on long enough for the rest of the family to be there with him - the closest I could describe it is as if he forgot to breath with his chest and instead tried with his stomach.
After that I sort of withdrew, it was great for weight loss, I dropped 60lbs. I turned into a reckless party animal, trying to find groups that I could feel like I belonged in. Then I saw a psychiatrist that diagnosed me as manic depressive on our first meeting and started prescribing medications that made me behave even loopier - I believe I even threatened to punch Vito on IRC.
So this puts me somewhere in 2006, I started trying to find a game industry job again and I got my first art test for Cryptic's Marvel Universe Online (what eventually turned into Champions Online). I struggled through it and turned in a pretty sad test. I was turned down and I was pretty crushed.
It was somewhere around that time that either I contacted Chris Holden or he got a hold of me and told me to quit being such a baby. Eventually he told me that there was an opening for a jr. position at Mythic, a polish artist. I sent my resume and portfolio into Mythic and waited about 2 weeks.... with no reply.
I decided to take a chance, I found Mythic's address on their website and used it to search for the office phone number. I called in and talked to Amy the secretary/executive assistant/office manager/do everything person at Mythic. Somehow I got her to transfer me to Mike, the Sr. Recruiter at Mythic. He apologized for not checking out my submission yet and said he could look at it now while we were on the phone. I had a few Warhammer themed pieces that weren't on my portfolio that I showed him and he was impressed that I was making the effort to create assets specifically aimed at them. A few days later I was sent an art test.
The art test asked for max files.. I was a Maya user, I hadn't touched Max since my intro to 3D Modeling class (yeah, they used Max as an introduction and then moved to Maya for some reason). I asked the lead environment artist, Pete, if it was OK if I used Maya; he said they would prefer that I used max. I downloaded a trial version of max, spent two nights watching 3dBuzz tutorials before diving into my art test. I was a bit freaked out but I managed to stay calmer than I was during my Cryptic test. Chris Holden gave me a lot of motivation and advice over IM, usually in the form of kicking my ass for being a wimp.
I won't go into details but there were a series of micro disasters associated with trying to finish an art test in a program I hadn't touched in almost 6 years. The test was submitted and I got a phone interview. The test was better than they expected, they wanted me as an environment artist rather than a polish artist. I flew in for an interview, things went great and March 27, 2007 I had a job. The rest is history!
Often times things don't happen right away, but perseverance and good work ethic pay off in the end.
super late but still necessary. congrats Justin!
Haha I can definitely relate to that line!!!
Quoting this for truth. I started off with military sim, worked my way up to being a DS artist, was laid off in a year and went back to military sim, all the while working on my portfolio and trying to get back into games. I had just about given up on being a character artist (was even trying to learn how to make modular assets) when Vigil contacted me about the character art internship. Now here I am, living the dream.
You really just need to keep yourself together and keep pursuing your dream.
This should be part of the banner or something.
oh why do I do this stuff..
-also congrats Justin_Meisse and that was an interesting read.
Awesome! It's so ambiguous now with it on top of a bunch of crotch and ass.