Reply To: Your CG routine – how do you keep up the pace ?

[Omar Domenech]

Most of the time it feels as if you’re fighting your biology, like you’re predisposed by your genes to procrastinate, some weird glitch in the brain that is running the wrong lines of code and some subroutine that is supposed to kick in, isn’t kicking in. Then at the end of the day your brain runs the “lets make you feel guilty for wasting so much time” code. And you’re like “oh thanks brain, why throughout the day didn’t you ran the “lets make good use of our time” code””

So you have to make a very conscious and hard effort to get into that headspace of “Alright, lets do some work!”, only to have it last for an instant before you’re browsing through some news website and looking at countless headlines and youtube at the channels you’re subscribed to. 

So for me, personally, is a balancing act, you have to make some sacrifices, because it feels as if modern life routines are highjacking your motivation.

I believe a big one is doing a mayor cut off the things that create those small dopamine dependencies that make you doze off into nothingness. Those are all inside the computer and cellphones, “social networks” youtube rabbit wholes, web surfing, reddit, etc. It is so much easier to sit in front of the computer to watch a tutorial when your day has been spent off of the chair elsewhere.

It is not being physically tired that gets you, is being mentally overwhelmed that is the problem. Tired muscles are nothing, keeping the mind sharp is the key I think. Out mental wit is what we work with in Art and most of the things these days suck your mind dry, they require mental awareness and before you know it, you deplete your days ration.  

Hacking you brain also works I think. There’s the simple act of just starting, just start, as simple as that, start. Turn on your computer and have CG Cookie as your default starting tab, make it a habit of the first thing you do is to open Blender, just have it open there, quickly start a tutorial in the background, open Artstation, etc. Another thing I like is holding in my head the feeling of a finished project, of how awesome it’ll turn out. It is a hard path from stat to finish but the thought of getting there is motivating.