Reply To: two disciplines: character modelling & character animation

[ottawablenderguy]

Prevailing wisdom says it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at anything. You’ve heard it before, but I’d like to lay it out for you…

10,000 hours is, of course, an average, but if you do the math, it amounts to 1250 8-hour days which is 250 five-day weeks and that amounts to just under five years.

So, yes, it’s possible to master more than one discipline (modeling, animation, etc.) during a single lifetime, but…

While you’re working on the second discipline eight hours per day, you’ll need to keep up the first and that means putting in at least an hour every work day to keep your chops up. Now we’re up to nine hour days.

Then you have to consider that this prevailing wisdom has only been applied to analog disciplines until the last 20 years or so, and that’s not long enough to know if 10,000 hours is an accurate yardstick in the digital realm. And with software, it isn’t just the theory of how models are constructed or how rigs are animated, it’s also the changes in the tools themselves. Software changes (sometimes drastically) over time and you’ve got to keep up. That takes time, too.

And then you need to consider your non-work life—family, friends, other goals and the pursuit of happiness, perhaps even a love life. You’ll need time for those things, too.

When you put all that into the basket and weight it, perhaps you can see why most people settle for mastering one discipline and sticking with it.

But there’s nothing wrong with being a master at one thing and being pretty darned good at one or more other things. It won’t take nearly as much time and I suspect you’ll stay saner that way, too. 🙂