Life is a learning experience. This is a sentence we all know and understand to at least some degree. Still – the games or rather the entertainment industry is a place of steep competition and constant pressure to put out content. Learning new skills or exploring new styles, expressing yourself or just relaxing after a stressful day are all things that we tend to neglect as a result of that. How can I just try out a new technique and just move on when plenty of others already perfected it? I can’t spend time on 2D art, I need 3D pieces in this specific style for my portfolio! I know I am exhausted from a long workday, but I have to sit down and create something worthy of an artstation post…
If you have ever felt this way, you are not alone. Recently I saw a post on twitter by a dear friend, that showcased his progress he had made in recent years, mentioning how he had so many unfinished WIPs and abandoned projects on his hard drive.
The tweet also mentioned, how he’d wish he could tell his former self, that he’d be okay if he just kept working on his skills. A really reassuring revelation, that is not as easily reached or as mundane as it might sound.
Making progress and improving as an artist is a tricky thing. Most of the work we put into our craft never sees the light of day. None of our clients see the initial drafts we made for them. None of our potential employers see the studies we started, but weren’t good enough that we felt comfortable using them as an advertisement for our professional skill set. No one will look at the sketchbook we carry around to draw random people and things on public transport or out in the wild. Not a soul will look at a camera roll full of random close ups of objects intermixed with cat pictures and beautifully composed shots. To summarise: All of these things are useless for advancing our career – or are they.
When I was starting to look for a professional position in the industry the first thing I learned was that I needed to specialise. Generalists are a rare breed among the AAA workforce and thus having one speciality we excel at is essential for landing that dream job that we all yearn for when we are fresh out of education. This immediately creates pressure to focus on that one thing only. No more 2D art to relax when you get home from whatever job you are performing to pay your bills. No more random character sculpts. There can only be portfolio pieces, only things you can put out there to advertise yourself because your portfolio is everything when applying to a job. We drill this into young artists – and it’s true. A portfolio is the first thing that any given company will look at when looking for a desired candidate. But it’s not everything.
What we neglect to teach artists is the necessity of allowing ourselves the freedom to express ourselves to stay sane. Being a professional artist is taxing. The constant roller coaster that is the relationship with our own work we produce and external judgement of that work takes a lot. Being creative all day takes a lot. Sitting down after an already exhausting day at work and putting that pressure on yourself again for another few hours to create your next masterpiece is not healthy.
It took me a long time to understand that as a struggling freelancer barely making ends meet, as a full-time student with a second or third job or as a founder in the early stages of building a company with their peers I did not have the emotional capacity at the end of the day to do that. I tried and tried and grew frustrated with myself for not being productive, for being distracted or just producing uninspired “garbage”. Eventually I started to believe I just lacked the discipline or the talent or both.
Yes I was setting too high a standard for myself and stretching myself too thin, but over the years I learned, that I am by far not the only one that feels that way. I ended up being the one to send people home so they didn’t overwork themselves, ended up being the one to tell them the exact standards I had set for myself were unrealistic and to be kind to themselves. Even then it took a while to understand the double-standard I had created for myself and others and to allow myself the same freedom I had preached others afford themselves. And what happened once I did? The quality of my work improved and my creativity skyrocketed. Yes ink-drawings aren’t 3D environments, but I liked creating them and I was happy. Slowly I even made my way back to enjoying 3D art.
While this is a personal story and not exactly what you might be going through, I want to draw attention to the fact that we as an industry should not be glorifying overworking ourselves. We should not motivate young people to burn themselves out to the point where they lose their passion. We should not leave them to figure out a healthy way to be a creative professional on their own. We need to stop putting so much pressure on Juniors and give them a chance to prove themselves, even if their portfolio isn’t perfect. Yes it costs us time but if we are kind and think back to how hard it was for us I am sure we can find that time to at least write some kind words in exchange for the effort they put into their work and application. And if we are being honest, talent has never been the most important qualification for a job. I have worked with incredibly talented people and hated every minute and I have had the absolute pleasure of working with perfectly good artists, that weren’t geniuses but made the team laugh, kept to their deadlines and helped out their peers wherever they could.
TLDR: Be kind to yourself and allow yourself to just try out new techniques or be creative just for the sake of it, because yes, it will make you a better artist. And if you are looking to hire look at more than just the body of work in front of you.
And just to set an example: These are some of the artworks that came out of allowing myself to just be weird and try new things. They are never making it into my portfolio but I have learned valuable things from all of them:
