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

[Heather Peterson]

I’m starting to wonder if our “buffet” approach to offering training is more negative than positive. A huge collection of courses can be distracting and overwhelming, as you imply. It makes me think that reformatting course offerings into guided learning flows is best. I.e. Learning Flows on steroids.

Do you think that could help keep you on pace and motivated?

I definitely fall into the “hobbyist” category. I have no plans to be a professional 3D artist; I’ve done the pro designer thing as a theatre set designer (why I wanted to learn 3D in the first place — soooo much easier to visualize that way) and a freelance graphic & web designer. It was a ton of fun, and I still play in that sandbox, but it’s cured me of any need to insert myself into a full design pipeline. I like working quietly out of my own studio around my family’s schedule. Most film or game dev jobs don’t allow for the flexibility my life requires. 

That said, I still like learning new things and have found digital art to be a great way to visualize my “real world” projects — not to mention more easily explain them to others. (It’s also a whole lot easier to clean up after than a full paint easel or maquette build.) I’m also a “grazer”, so I don’t actually find the “buffet” style to be a problem. But, then, I tend to digest one thing at a time and come back for something else later, once I’ve satisfied my current needs. Consequently, I work on stuff here on CGC in fits and starts, “as the spirit moves”, so to speak, but always with a goal of learning something specific pertaining to an off-site, unrelated project I’m working on. Once I’ve found what I was looking for, I go back to that original project. So, you could say I use CGC as a sort of library, rather than a college.

Thus, I find the Learning Flows as they stand really helpful. Most of them are concise enough I can scan down, find what I need, and implement it in fairly short order. When I have the time, I go through the lessons in sequence. I don’t always complete the exercises, because I’m extrapolating and applying what I learned or refreshed to an off-site project, but when I know I have a good block of time, I go through the videos and resources. (Christmas vacation for the next 2 week! Woohoo!) 

I, for one, though, would like some of the Learning Flows to be fuller — or at least to point to “where to go next” in a more sequential or even a branching fashion. I’m methodical (and somewhat completionist) in my approach, which means I ultimately go through even the most basic courses in sequence, even if I’m already very well familiar with and practised in the techniques they cover (e.g. a lot of the concept art traditional art techniques and colour theory stuff), before I go on to the intermediate or advanced courses that are closer to what I’m actually looking for or the level I’m actually working at. And sometimes, I pick up a technique on CGC that I research elsewhere for a fuller or deeper dive into the subject, if I haven’t grasped it well here. 

(E.g. I’ve recently been poking around the Unity flow, but find that jgonzalez can sometimes speak too fast for me to easily follow… and I get impatient when I have to rewind and listen too many times just to sort out what’s being said. So, I go back to the Unity site and poke at their tutorials for a while, before I come back to CGC and pick up where I left off.)

TL;DR:

Basically, I like the “buffet”, but I’d love to see some fuller, deeper Learning Flows, too, to improvethe somewhat hit-and-miss coverage of topics.