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

[Pavel Mazanik]

@thepainter I’m in some similar regime. Spending time with wife and going to the kitchen with my notebook and doing CG stuff while she sleeps. I’m working for like 3 hours at night and it sucks in terms of my health and mood, to be honest. I feel a bit depressed for the latest month. 

[Simon Buz]

I guess most of us with those daily jobs sit in similar boat. Sum up time for job (+preparation, travel) , sleep and you are left with 5 hours daily left for everything.  And thats for EVERYTHING. Last autumn I was feeling good with my progress in animation but had to put blender a bit aside and time moves so fast that its autumn again and I feel like I have to start almost from the beginning to refresh it.  As @thepainter says I try to steal some time too if I have chance but it leads to a thing that you have to rewatch/reread the same resource later at least few times.

[CG GroundBirdie]

Edit: Deinstall games!

Get addons & training vids instead!

[Kent Trammell]

@nekronavt @thepainter @svetimas I relate a lot to what you’ve expressed. I’ve always been a project-oriented person (CG, renovation, carpentry, raspberry pi, etc) but in recent years I’ve learned that’s it’s crucial for my fulfillment in life. If I don’t have projects and hobbies I lose a significant part of who I am.

I love my family and time with them so I too find myself burning the midnight oil, after everyone’s asleep, in order to do my projects. Somewhere between 2-3 potential hours each night. I’ve averaged about 5-6 hours of sleep the past 4 years. Every few days it adds up and I go to bed early.

If you ask me, a good pace is all about balance. I need it all to be satisfied: Time with my wife, time with my kids, time to do projects, time to do other lame adult stuff life budgeting, taxes, and honey-do lists. I’m generally a happy person when I balance time between them all. When any of those things tips the balance, I need to course correct or I’ll get negative.

I guess the point of all this is to say: Mind the balance. Sometimes taking a break from CG can often be the best thing for your CG ambitions. If it’s starting to make you negative or depressed, take a break, re-balance and come back. CG is one of those things that a person can sink hundreds and thousands of hours into quickly, only to burn out. That’s always sad to see.

Anyway, that ended up being a bit rambly. Hope there’s something useful there.

[William Miller]

@theluthier I agree with that.  I’ve found that if I take time to do other things such as write a novel, read one of Shakespeare’s plays, or play the piano, making 3D art is much more enjoyable.  The same applies to the other activities that I mentioned.

[Pavel Mazanik]

@theluthier all that is cool, but my situation isn’t about personal projects. It’s about CG at all. My current work is nothing related to CG and it consumes 9 hours at the office and 2 hours at the road to and from it. Add 6-8 hours of sleep to it, and all that is left is like 5-7 hours for everything else, and almost no energy after a workday. It’s no longer a hobby for me, I’m on my path to becoming an AAA character artist, and having an unloved daytime work slows me down a lot. That is what is depresses me, not CG. But still doing my best, to change the situation.

[smurfmier1985]

@nekronavt can totally relate to your situation Pavel.. when you figure out how to manage it all let me know, would love to know the secret!

In addition to this my SO has many troubles following from the past, a lot of mental crap to deal with, can’t work and such. So I have to pay the bills and when I come home that can be tough too, no rest from the madness… no complaints tough, I love my SO to bits! But it is an extra layer of challenge to even focus on CG..

[Ingrid Frank]

@nekronavt I´m facing a similiar problem right now. My goal is to be able to make a living from my art (drawing and modelling). I got to a point where my art was good enough that people started to ask to commission me.  My job got hard soon after, as well with university stuff coming up, which lead me to not having enough time and energy for practicing drawing and modelling. I´m finished with university now, but I´m still burned out from the last months so that I still have problems to get back on track and my skills also got worse after not practicing for such a long time.  Additonally, I have the feeling that my work is slowing me down more and more and keeps me from creating. I´m going to apply for a graphics and design academy in two weeks and will hopefully be accepted. I hope, that learning and working in a creative field and leaving my old job, will help me with my creative flow D:

[Thibault Caradec]

Well, I recently decided to just use my transportation time from my workplace to home using Blender. I got an old but still working laptop out of the closet, put a fresh windows install on it, and now, I dowload the exercises videos on them and complete them in the train. I’ve got 90 minutes of Blender per day which for a hobbyist like me is fine. 

[Shawn Blanch]

I love my family and time with them so I too find myself burning the midnight oil, after everyone’s asleep, in order to do my projects. Somewhere between 2-3 potential hours each night. I’ve averaged about 5-6 hours of sleep the past 4 years. Every few days it adds up and I go to bed early.

If you ask me, a good pace is all about balance. I need it all to be satisfied: Time with my wife, time with my kids, time to do projects, time to do other lame adult stuff life budgeting, taxes, and honey-do lists. I’m generally a happy person when I balance time between them all. When any of those things tips the balance, I need to course correct or I’ll get negative.

I guess the point of all this is to say: Mind the balance.

@theluthier I am finding myself coming to this level of ambition and motivation really relies on the balance. I spend time with my wife and 3 kids during the afternoon after a full day’s work as an engineer. (But I secretly want to be doing my passion project). However I am in control and decide some days that family must win because when I am doing my passion project sometimes I secretly want to be with my family (vicious cycle).

So for me the balance is 3 things: 

1. When kids are in bed, I get 2-4 hours a night to be able to work on CG as a newbie.  Some nights I need a break and also go to bed early but I have tried to just eat the elephant one bite at a time each day. 

2. I started a polybook on my training last week mainly just to motivate myself to make a daily log of “today I successfully/unsuccessfully did this…….) It is turning into a Star Trek captains log kind of feel and I feel like it is become very routine.

I agree with the commentary that the hardest part is the motivation to start each day……. and then stop haha. Once I get into the ‘flow state’ I don’t want to stop and sleep becomes a burden. 

3. So I put an annoying lockout in place on the computer and our internet to ‘motivate’ me to work at a good pace because I know the end is coming. That helps me prioritize my modeling activities and to ‘jump start’ better without the fear of mindless browsing of content to learn which I was sooooo susceptible to in the past; and to help me stop so I can get needed sleep!

This is helping me go from “what should I do today because I am getting a little bored with what I am doing……………..only to waste hours and do nothing or end up with 50 unfinished projects; 

to “today I get to work on this part of the  project I am on. Let’s see if I can make it within my time limit”

I’m not perfect with this new work flow but I have to say it is much more regimented and helps me complete things quicker. 

Weird thought: Boundaries/Rules/Timers actually make me more productive!?! 

[originalcharacter]

My attitude for making myself keep up with practice is basically just:

• Open Blender
• Do something, no matter how small,add an edge loop, merge a double, just something, starting is the hardest part.

[Kent Trammell]

Weird thought: Boundaries/Rules/Timers actually make me more productive!?!

@blanchsb I think you’re hitting on an important Truth. Creatives often reference a similar notion that limitation / constraints inspires creativity. It’s a well-established idea so there’s a lot to read but here’s an article with a great intro.

[Morten Fjellheim]

Just about 6 weeks ago i got an idea, well it´s not my idea really. Many before me have done it actually. 

The point is, it´s a brilliant idea because when you decide to do it, you get motivated and give that little bit extra.

What i am on about is starting a 10k hours project. You might get a little bit overwhelmed and think that you will never be able to complete it! Maybe you wont, but you will at least find motivation to keep it going for a while. In that time you might have learned much, and the road ahaed might not be filled with too many rocks. 

During the 6 weeks i have been at it i have used blender, watched tutorials or done something else that applies for 145 hours. That´s way more than before i started the project.

Here is some math.

If you work one hour a day, it will take you 27 years to complete. That might seem overwhelimg but if you increase to two hours, the time to completion will be half of that. So it´s basicly about what you put into it.

Once a week i subtract the hours i worked and do a new count of the time to completion. If i can manage to keep up the paste, i will be able to complete this in 5 years. Thinking of everything i will learn in that time keeps me motivated to continue.

So this is how i make time for learning.

[jjblender]

I realize this thread is over two years old, but I just wanted to offer some feedback: 

I see that you have now implemented  learning flows, and they are WELL DONE. The progression is good, and it absolutely makes sense.

That’s actually how I primarily navigate the site. I’m currently on the Learn Blender 2.8 flow (modeling, texturing treasure chest). But I love looking ahead and thinking about what flow I should learn next.

Backstory: I’ve been coming to cgcookie as far back as I can remember (10-12 years ago-ish?). And I love the direction it’s been going (the new community building, learning flows, etc..). I have fond memories of CGC, beer, and me drunkenly attempting to model a gun.

[Michael Mirn]

Several factors help me.

Firstly: I have already written about thirty scripts and my goal is to start producing animations based on written texts.
So, the first one is: set a goal.

Secondly: do classes every day. No excuses, just develop a habit to do these classes and devote maximum time to it. That has to be your daily routine.

Thirdly: make short notes during each course.
The more information I learn, the more I forget. In order to assimilate the maximum of the material, I make short notes of interesting techniques, decisions, actions (it’s absolutely not necessary to record everything).
Just basic things so I’d easily freshen up the material and all the tricks.

And the last one: watching the best of industry. Always compare yourself with the best and strive to surpass them.

[Author]

Posts