Hey guys,
Well, thats something that I wanted to talk about for quite some time now. I actually started doing what Im doing right now, because I always wanted to tell stories. I threw my heart and soul into this new medium, because I naively thought that technology would already be so sophisticated that doing CGI films wouldnt be as hard as doing live-action stuff and that CGI could be the best medium ever to deliver stories.
Since I was young, I was always really interested in Video Games, so I read a lot of magazines and always read about how great these new consoles are and what you can already do in real-time with all this new technology and stuff. So I was like: Gee, if all of this stuff is possible to render in real-time, imagine what should be possible to do if youre working with Maya, 3ds Max or something like that!
I think the first time that I really thought about how cool 3d is, was when I bought a videogames magazine called Video Games (heh) back then (guess it was around December 95, must have been Shoshinkai 95) and there was this Mario head, rendered in 3d. In real-time. Inside the magazine, there were some shots of Mario climbing a mountain or swimming underneath a submarine. I was amazed. I had a PlayStation back then (which I sold after seeing those shots!) and thought that this would be the single greatest thing ever. This would be something completely revolutionary. It was like magic.
About 4 years later, I got a high-end pc (a Pentium 3, 500mhz with a big, huge Matrox card!), so I fired up a level editor for the first time. I already had some knowledge about software like Photoshop - I used to draw comics for a magazine at that time - but this was the first time I did something in 3d. I remember that I felt like an idiot, cause I wasnt able to build some super-cool maps in like 5 minutes. But there already was this feeling that you can build things in 3d. You can build rooms, you can build worlds. I used the Quake Radiant and even though you couldnt do a lot, I was already really amazed. I developed first ideas, like: What if this thing had more power, what if you could actually use characters, put them into the scenes and tell a story?. At that point, I started to lose interest in video games and the first ideas about a shortfilm came to my mind.
A few years later, I had the chance to learn 3ds Max. I just finished school and had to wait a few months until I could attend my military service. I didnt want to waste my time and since this 3d stuff was always amazing to me, I thought that I could just try it and see what happens. I registered at discreets homepage and they sent me a trial version of 3ds Max incl. character studio.
Thats when everythings changed. I installed 3ds Max and went through a few tutorials and after like 3 days I knew that Id spend a LOOOT of time in the future getting my brains to work the way 3ds Max wants it to work. I did very simple stuff back then, but it was amazing. I created a cube, applied a mesh smooth modifier, translated a vertex around and felt like a champion. I told all my friends and my family about it. I dont think that they were able to understand why I was so full of euphoria. For me, it was like I found the formula thatd turn stone into gold.
After that, I saved all the money I got from the military service (instead of buying food or stuff), until I could afford to buy Maya Complete, since I heard that Maya is so cool for doing animations and stuff and I couldnt afford to buy 3ds Max, so this was it.
After I saved some more money, I bought tons of books and I tried to learn everything there is.
This is my story of how it all began. So where is this heading? Eventually, I naively tried to get a job at local gaming companies. In the last years, my interest in videogames has decreased more and more, but I still thought that such a job would actually be pretty cool, since Id be able to make a living doing 3d. My portfolio didnt look like much, so there was no chance that theyd hire me, but I thought I should try. Of course, I was very insecure when I had the first job interviews and, truth to be told, even I wouldnt have hired myself.
But thank god nobody hired me. It was devastating at first (you know, I always used to be the guy who was sitting in the last row in school, drawing all day long and people always were like Man, where did you learn to draw like that?, so this was the first time that I actually heard something like Nope, youre not good enough.), but boy, this set something free in my head. It was very clear to me that if I wanted to go that path, I should study. I shouldnt do it in my free time, I should do it with all of my heart and put all my brains into it. And I did. I went to the local art school and signed in to a 4 years program (the first year was kind of a test-year which decided if the student is good enough or not).
This first year was another life-changing experience. There was one teacher who was like the most sarcastic, but also funniest guy youve ever seen. He knew what he was doing and he took his art very seriously. I was always kind of the outsider, since I worked so much on the computer and fellow students didnt quite understand why I was attending this school. There were often conversations like:
Hey, this looks cool! How did you do that?
Well, I actually worked on a computer, I used this or that program to sculpt it all out of polygons and then
Computer? So why are you showing me this?
But this teacher wasnt like that. He wasnt really interested in my little computer-world, but I used to talk to him a lot about my ideas, about my shortfilm idea and I think he understood what was driving me. But he also questioned it. He made me think about what I really want to do with this art form. Everyone questioned it. And I questioned it, too.
At that time, I already had a good knowledge about software. I always spent a lot of my free-time learning every software that seemed interesting to me, no matter what subject. In fact, this first year, I had so much work to do, but I didnt want to stop learning the digital side of things, so I kind of overdid it. I was working like 16-18 hours a day, just to get both things going. That was also the time when I first realized that my work was actually quite good. I mean, Im still never really satisfied, but I know what Im doing now. All these years of learning about as many subjects as possible in the digital world have actually paid off. This first year, even though I never had enough sleep and was full of worries if the school would actually allow me to keep studying after handing in my portfolio was still one of the most productive times I had up to this point. I was pretty foolish about my lifestyle though:
Sometimes I woke up at 3am, had the feeling that I didnt work hard enough and started working again. Also, my family and friends never really saw the things Im doing as work. I think thats a cultural thing, a European attitude, I guess. Its like Youre not yet making money out of it yet, so its NOT work!. So I had this feeling of guilt, that everyone was working and everyone made some good money and Im sitting here, doing my art stuff and do not earn a single cent at all, even though people started to email me, asking about doing tutorials and telling me that they really like my work.
So the semester ended, I handed in my portfolio and couldnt quite believe that they accepted it, since I did so much digital stuff and the school is still very traditionally paced. In the following summer, I reorganized my life, I actually started getting 8 hours and more of sleep every day, I enjoyed life and started doing things Ive never done before. I took my time, started to write down the script and the screenplay for the shortfilm that I had in mind for such a long time now and fell in love with that. I was back at telling stories. And this particular story was something that I carried with me for a LONG time. Again, I started to see things in a different angle. Now I had the time to finally work this thing out that was in the back of my head for years.
And today? Well, Im still working on the short film. The script is finally done, Im currently in the design/storyboard process and Im both having the worst and best time since years. Im happy that Im still in school, so that I can actually invest all my time and energy working on something that I myself came up with, working on something that I really believe in, instead of probably making good money at some company, but working on a project that probably isnt really me. Its really hard to do these things, keeping faith in it and doing things that are so widely different from one another and Im struggling every day with the creation process, but I guess thats just how things are working, because, if youre having a day where you really struggled and really gave as much as you could, looking back youll see how far you came. Its like youre walking through the desert, youre not at an oasis yet, but the last big rock that you came across isnt really visible anymore. And it starts to rain ;)
My short is quite a big project and Im still organizing things, trying to get the screenplay right, trying to work out the reel, trying to find out what problems I could encounter, trying to lay everything down, so that I can be as efficient as possible later down the road, stuff like that. And even though Im doing this and even though Im doing so much planning and stuff, Im still insecure about it. On some days, I feel that itll be the most amazing thing ever, on other days Im less confident and ask myself if I can actually get it done.
So, why am I writing this? Well, I talked with many, many artists about how they managed their life and people still keep mailing me, asking me what theyre doing wrong if a model or something didnt work out and people keep thinking that youve got the answer to everything, just because you probably invested more time in this or that field than the other guy. I slowly started to accept that this is how your life in the field of art looks like (doesnt matter whether youre a digital or a traditional artist), its a constant learning process and youll never reach what youre after, since once youve achieved what you were going for, youre already unhappy with it and want to achieve more than that. Youll always struggle and thats actually a good thing, even if it makes you mad. It can be so frustrating, but its the only way to actually take the next step. So if youre one of those insecure artists whore not sure if what theyre doing is worth being done, be assured that there are a lot of people thinking the same way
So if you find yourself frustrated by your work, read this text and hopefully my way of making an idiot out of myself will help you keeping faith give you some new energy.