Does anyone else feel constantly dissatisfied with their work?

[smurfmier1985]

@jakeblended Sounds like your well on your way to reaching your first end goal, that’s awesome! 

When it comes to goals, I’m curious about what kind of goals other people have set for themselves.  Or rather, what everyone’s metric for accomplishment is.  Is the goal you set as specific as “master technique X” or “master skill Y”, or do you pick a “hero project”, be it a scene or an object or a character, and progress until you feel ready to tackle that and have a good chance of executing it well?

One of my biggest challenges is being able to choose a specific thing to pursue, because I like too much different things. Games, animation, characters, creatures, robots, environments, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. The list goes on and on… So when I joined CG Cookie I set myself a simple goal to start with: get comfortable with Blender. Which works perfectly for me, because it touches many different subjects. I like the variation.

My approach:
– Finish the “Introduction to Blender” learning flow;
– Finish the first 5 courses on the “Modeling in Blender” learning flow;
– Participate in the beginner modeling class;
– Enjoy the ride! 

Slowly but surely I’m getting there.

My second goal will be further developing my modeling skills and finding out which part of modeling speaks to me the most:
– Finish the “Modeling in Blender” learning flow;
– Finish one small personal project every month (post it in the gallery and ask feedback);
– And join the next class of course!

After that I want to dive into game development, and make a bigger project where I do everything myself from scratch (much like your ’57 Chevy Bel-Air project, but then probably a robot or a creature or a character or… you get the picture 😉).

[Aaron Rudderham]

@smurfmier1985 Haha no worries, always nice to know I helped someone out, even unwittingly.

Good plan you got as well, this place is a great place to get feedback but you might wanna upload to r/Blender for critique as well. They can be a little… blunt at times though haha.

[Aaron Rudderham]

@jakeblended  Well my end game life goals are quite simple: To become a one man indie studio and retire on a yacht with the millions I made. Yes I said it was simple, not realistic.

In all seriousness I *really* wanna make games, been studying a little bit of programming and been writing out my GDD for my dream game (which I wouldn’t start first, of course). So I guess my “for now” goal is to learn character anatomy and get some of the protags modeled, though I can’t see that happening until 2019.

Another project goal I have in mind is to recreate every single weapon in the original Ratchet & Clank game in Blender and Substance, giving them the shiny coat of paint they deserve (and which the remake didn’t deliver). This seems kind of achievable now actually, just need to get used to Substance.

I wish you the best of luck on your goals as well, vehicles are tough, which we all learnt last month, but you did damn well. I don’t doubt you can do it!

[Thibaut Bourbon]

@jakeblended Glad you asked, that’s a good question 🙂 It needs to be measurable, and in the case of CG it becomes even more difficult, because we are tempted to have “great artwork” as a goal. That’s very subjective and extremely hard to quantify. 

In my case, I used to be really sloppy with my works, not really dedicated either and I would way too often simply abandon any project. So I had really hard time commiting to my work. I was using the fact that it was “just a hobby” as an excuse.

My goal was the to be able to do from start to end any model that I wanted, and I defined “DONE” according to what I believe is a finished model. That doens’t mean flawless obivously. My other goal was to be able to deliver at a higher pace many artwork, not to have few months breaks when nothing happens. If I am able to deliver often ended product and get feedback for each of them, the quality would naturally follow – I believe. 

So my tip would be not to focus too much on the quality, but rather on how consistent is your work and workflow.

But for reaching a goal you need a strategy, otherwise it’s only a dream. That’s when I realized getting help could be beneficial and hence I registered to CGC and be more active in social medias to look for advices and give feedback. So far so good, I’m happy with where I stand !

[smurfmier1985]

@thecabbagedetective Thanks for the tip Aaron, I love me some honesty with a spoonfull of bluntness so I will follow your advice and expand my feedback asking to r/Blender 😊

Your plan is solid too, you know your dream and have some clear steps / smaller goals for right now that will get you there. Love the plan for the Ratchet & Clank game weapons, love to see those! And of course who doesn’t want a yacht! Though a private jet or a futuristic hover car would be cool too 😎

[smurfmier1985]

@tbrbn Great tips Thibaut! Consistently delivering artwork and following through on the projects you start isn’t easy, but I think you’ve got a good point there. And seeing your gallery page I have to say I think you’re on to something with this ‘quality would naturally follow’ thing 😁

[Author]

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