How can I advise my friend regarding her career choice?

#1

Apologize in advance for wall of text.

So it always seems natural to me that if someone is interested in digital art, they enjoy creativity. They may not be skilled enough to come up with great ideas, or express them properly, but there is a desire to do so and that’s usually what draws them to art in the first place.

But an old friend of mine isn’t like that. Three years ago she decided to finally pursue her dream and try to become a professional artist, but things aren’t looking very promising at this moment.

She can draw things just fine compared to those with similar experience. I’d say better if my memory from back when I was an art student is to be trusted: she draws better than at least half of the graduates. She is very focused and hard-working, and wouldn’t go to bed until she finished her daily training.

However it’s only limited to drawing from life. When she has to imagine anything that’s not in front of her she becomes utterly lost. Initially I assumed it was just lack of experience, so I gradually showed her examples of art from all genres I could think of, showed her different styles, told her where to look for good reference, toured her through museums…but it didn’t seem to help much. When she sits down and tries to come up with something without clear instructions - anything, she feels a great pressure and becomes extremely frustrated.

She also doesn’t seem to be interested in other people’s art. I told her it’s a good idea to see some art everyday, and she did exactly that: she made it a goal to check out 20 pieces of illustrations on Pinterest everyday and finished it like homework. She probably never missed a day, and I’m sure there has been some improvements in her artistic understanding, but she seems to be suffering and I find it odd.

I suspect she is giving herself too much pressure. But it’s more than just that. When I asked her what she would like to do, like which field she would like to focus on, if she enjoys children’s book illustration or comic or even graphic design, she couldn’t give me an answer. I can tell that she enjoys drawing still life, but without years of experience it’s too difficult to make a living in the traditional art world, right?

Because she is much older than me and not very tech-savvy, initially I didn’t consider 3D to be a valid option. But she seems comfortable creating a somewhat complex scene in SketchUp so it makes me wonder, is she more of a 3D person? She still can’t design well, but making props from reference doesn’t seem difficult for her.

Should I encourage her to take some 3D lessons? Is making a living selling 3D assets possible? Does anyone have any idea why design is so difficult for her? Should I advise her to consider, say, scientific illustration? I have no idea what it’s like but it sounds less abstract and more…factual? Have I been a bad influence exposing her to the digital art world too much? Did I give wrong advice? I don’t know - I’m lost too.

Any thoughts would be welcome. I know she really wants this to work and is losing hope as she sees too little progress.

#2

Before we continue…

I should point out that 3D is every bit as taxing on creativity. To suggest otherwise would seem to do a great disservice to all 3D artists out there, including traditional sculptors and model makers.

Ah. To be that young. LOL :stuck_out_tongue: What makes you think that older people can’t do that stuff? My mom and dad are 74 and 72 respectively. They’re super tech obsessed and each own multiple PCs, tablets and devices. When my dad isn’t working his day job as a CFO, he’s gaming on his PS4 or on Steam. Older people CAN be very tech saavy. Even my 94 year old grandfather has a PC and a smartphone.

I think that you need to be aware that there’s an entire generation that grew up with this stuff. That 24yo who got their first Intel 8088-based PC in 1979 is now 64yo and close to retirement. Think about that for a moment. Seriously. You’re going to be old too one day. :slight_smile:

Her problem? I wouldn’t chalk it up to age. Again, you’re doing a great disservice to another (large) group of artists out there. Some people just suck with tech. Some people hate it. My younger sister just turned 42. She’s had access to tech her entire life. She works in a tech related field. She HATES tech with a passion and simply will not embrace it at home. Some people are like that.

Now that we’re done offending older people and 3D artists in general… :smiley: :smiley: (No offense taken. Just having a bit of fun at your expense. :joy: )

Okay then.

Look. In moving from 3D to 2D, she’s still just replicating stuff. That’s all about technical proficiency, not creativity. Her core issue remains. She needs techniques to stimulate her imagination.

Some people are a veritable font of ideas. To them, it’s not about finding a good idea. They’ve got tons of them. It’s about finding the time to actually bring all of them to life. Other people, however, need a little push. It’s not that they lack creativity, but the proper inspiration or method of accessing said creativity. Here are a few time proven techniques.

  1. Dream journals. She may not be able to come up with an idea when she’s awake, but I guarantee you that this is what she’s great at when she sleeps. Everybody dreams every night. We don’t always remember them but we do. Have her keep a notebook by her bed. The moment she wakes, ask her write whatever she remembers. It might be tough at first, but it’ll get much easier over time. I’ve been keeping a dream journal for about 10 years. I’ve got dozens of composition books full of dreams. While dreams are almost always about self-examination or a recollection of the day’s events, the mind often does that stuff in some wacky ways. Lots of symbols and odd situations or characters. Dreams are a great source of inspiration.

  2. Hybridize. Another super simple technique. Basically, it involves fusing several different ideas to make something new. For example, she could create four separate lists. Person. Occupation. Situation. Style. Imagine the following four lists:

  • Person: Kid, Monkey, Celebrity, Myself, Old Man
  • Occupation: Doctor, Blacksmith, Peasant, Superhero, Artist
  • Situation: Working, Playing, Fighting, Getting Drunk, Getting Ready for a Date
  • Style: Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Gothic, 80s New Wave, Anime

Look at that. 5 options in 4 categories has just yielded 625 new ideas. She could create a monkey doctor getting ready for a date done in an anime style. She could create herself, as a superhero, getting drunk in a steampunk style. There are 623 more combinations. That’s just the start. Everybody’s going to intepret it their own way. I could give the same idea of Nicki Minaj as a cyberpunk artist playing around to 25 people here. Everybody’s version is going to look different. With this hybridization technique, you’re only limited by the length and variation in your lists. Of course, you don’t have to use my categories either. You could come up with your own and do some really radical stuff.

  1. Take a familiar character and put them into a new situation, style, or genre. Medieval Batman. Garfield as a human. Harry Potter doing his taxes. Zombies during the American Revolution. Your ideas can end up being radical reinterpretations or just plain silly.

  2. Visualize your favorite character, scene, or object from history or a novel through the eyes of somebody else like a child. Can you imagine how a kid might envision the main characters of 50 Shades of Grey with only a terse description to start from?

  3. Mind map. Start with a simple idea and create a tree from it just based on the first ideas that come to mind. Dog. Dog mailman. Dog rock star. Dog butcher. Dog mailman getting bitten by a person. Dog mailman sleeping. Dog mailman getting surprised. Dog rock star backstage. Dog rock star writing a song. Dog rock star getting heckled. Dog butcher at work. Dog butcher protesting veggies. Dog butcher on a smoke break. You could literally branch each iteration infinitely. Variations on variations on variations… on variations… til you’re dead. :slight_smile: Mind mapping is just a fancy way of brainstorming. The toughest part is just finding the “trunk” of the tree. The same method can be used for vehicles, scenes, and so on.

  4. Iterate. Suppose that she does come up with a rough idea. Don’t stop at one drawing. Draw 5 of them. Draw 20 of them. Each version will be different and bring something new to the table. Each time she has a few that she likes, refine them. Through a process of elimination, she’ll eventually come up with something that’s doable and attractive.

Creativity is hard work. Very few ideas are 100% truly original. Everything out there is a twist on some time worn theme, archetype, or trope. Movies such as the Matrix blew a lot of people’s minds at the time. However, you could easily trace its roots to other sci-fi movies, comics, and classic philosophies. Even those things have their origins elsewhere.

As they say, there’s nothing new under the sun. Originality is, more or less, an illusion. The difference between a hack and a creative genius is in how well they hide their sources. A hack more or less regurgitates the stuff that they fused together with very little stitching or personalization. A true creative type can take those points of inspiration and synthesize. They’ll mask their sources so well that you’ll end up believing that it’s something new. How well they do it can often be the difference between good, great, and revolutionary. Look at the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, for example. It looks like a reinvention of the original 2000, but it’s more or less also a loving homage to 1987’s Robocop too - right down to the small jokes and opening scene.

Your friend needs to use some of those techniques. Nobody truly wakes up and goes, “Eureka!!!” Those moments happen, but not nearly often enough. Game designers, art teams, and Hollywood writers all employ various personal tricks to keep things fresh and do something new. This is why the pre-production phase and the meetings that go along with it are so crucial. Being born creative helps, but the entire process is as much about muscling our way through the blockage as it is being artistic. The scariest thing to look at is that blank page or screen. It might be full of unlimited possibility, but it’s also infinitely intimidating.

If your friend is good at 3D… encourage her. Find out what she likes most. Is she into characters? Does she prefer vehicles or props? Does she see herself as a storyteller? Maybe she just likes to create materials or light the scenes. Perhaps she is better at animating somebody else’s characters. She might like all of that stuff or none of it. She might actually suck at 3D and prefer to stick to 2D. OR… Maybe she just needs to master the core techniques necessary for the aspect(s) of 3D she likes and apply it to the new ideas she eventually comes up with. Only time will tell.

Again, creativity is hard work. Great novels or movies, for example, aren’t written in one sitting. A writer can sometimes spend many years working on that one perfect story that they have to tell. Draft. Revise. Revise again. Revise again. Tear up 30 pages. Rewrite them. Cut out that character. Put a new subplot in. Take an old one out. Find the inconsistencies. Fix them. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a process.

Some writers only have one good idea in them, but it’s a doozy. JK Rowling. Take Harry Potter and his world away from her… Meh. JD Salinger. Take away Holden Caulfield. Same. Artists can produce TONS of ideas, but only a few of them (if any) will ever stand out as being great. It happens.

Tell your friend not to worry about great ideas. Just focus on getting one out there. The great idea(s) will materialize at some point. If she can’t be bothered with even putting in the work to get one idea out there then maybe art isn’t her thing. Still, she might be more of a technically minded artist, implementing somebody else’s creativity.

There are tons of artists in the film and game industries who only do that. Some concept artist will come up with the idea and pass it along to a team who will then realize it. Unless you’re working solo, there’s a good chance that this is what your career will be like.

If she has her eye on working in some studio, this is her way in. She won’t be judged on her creativity, but on how well she actually implements the ideas. If her work looks lazy, clumsy, dull, or shows other technical deficiencies then she won’t get the job. If she can’t implement OR create, she definitely shouldn’t be an artist.

Your friend just needs to decide what she wants to do. There are ways to improve her creativity. With enough work, any schmuck can come up with a cool idea. How long it takes them and how much work it involves to get there is another story. If she can’t be bothered to put in the work necessary to conceptualize something new, her strengths might be best put to use realizing others’ work. There’s money to be made there.

She just has to be careful about selling assets. There are a lot of things that she can recreate that are IP protected. Just because she can model a fully realized Iron Man model doesn’t mean that she could or should sell it. She’ll get into trouble or have her model yanked from the store if somebody reports the infringement. Even known car brands are IP protected. If she’s going to sell models online, stick with more basic, generic type things.

Sometimes the simplest and most bland models sell the best. Some artists feel that their time might be better spent on the harder stuff. If she’s going to go the asset route, she has to do so with a plan in mind. Find out what sells the best. Find holes in the market. Exploit them, but within the boundaries of the law. Clothing for character models sells well too.

Also, be careful when starting from pre-made base models. The rights to those models might not allow for derivative works.

#4

I’m speechless. I was genuinely asking for help, but you had to look for offense when there was meant to be none. Hindered by my inability to communicate freely in English, I do not know how I can properly defend myself against your accusations. Your decision to paint me a villain has certainly upset me, but I have to assume it’s due to a misunderstanding. Still, I wonder why you thought the worst of me, instead of trying to perhaps examine my words before jumping to conclusions. But alas.

That is not what I meant. In no way did I claim that 3D is, in general, not taxing on creativity. I simply meant there is at least an aspect of 3D production that isn’t design-intensive. A proof of this is that I mentioned drawing from life/traditional art as an option for her, implying there is at least an aspect of 2D that she finds comfortable despite her lack of interest in abstraction and design (again, please do not look for offense. Both are involved in many styles of, say, still life painting, although I always think it’s one of the goes-without-saying cases so usually do not make further explanation like this. But you’ve taught me to be extra safe.) I work on a mix of 2D and 3D projects professionally, and when I create 3D assets from someone else’s concept work I do not usually need to rely on my design skills as extensively (again, relatively speaking), which is why I consider 3D a potential option for her, who prefers to not speak in abstract design language. But I’ve never tried selling ready-made 3D assets for a living, which is why I asked the question in a later paragraph.

I consider myself a 3D artist as much as a 2D artist - the lines are blurring these days. Have you considered this possibility before making extreme accusations that I did a disservice to 3D artists, including myself?

Again, not what I meant. “She is much older than me and not very tech-savvy”, and , not so. She is much older than me and 3D artists I know are exclusively people of my age or younger, so I didn’t consider it an option, because it’s unusual, not because it’s impossible. And on top of that, she isn’t tech-savvy.

I should find this offensive that you assumed we share the same background as people you know, but I don’t. She is from China where PC and internet were introduced much later. It’s not a rare sight to find older people in, say, USA to play video games, but good luck finding a Chinese guy over 70 to know how to send emails - they certainly exist, but are extremely rare. I don’t understand why you were so comfortable making accusations based on your cultural assumptions, ignoring the fact that it’s about her, not people you know. Your grandfather can have a degree in both CS and CE, but that still won’t make her any more tech-savvy. And it’s not because she is older than me.

All this…all these accusations, assumptions, aggression, lecture. All because one misunderstood sentence “she is much older than me and not very tech-savvy”. Can you believe that?

Blockquote

Look for offense hard enough and you will find it. You were offended, to which your reaction was to try your best and offend me. Smiley faces are not good enough to mask that. Now that you are done roleplaying a paladin, I’m done asking for help from strangers. I’ll help her figure this out. We’ll find a way without me magically turning into the arch-villain against all 3D artists and older people across the globe, because of what? Exactly two little innocent phrases I said in my original post the meaning of which you saw fit to misinterpret, and nothing more.

#5

I honestly think that you’re focusing on the wrong things, GhostLantern. Seriously. I wasn’t personally offended in the least. I was merely pointing out how OTHERS might be. Not being able to look beyond an apparent language barrier, some people might feel marginalized. I’m sure that you understand that.

Non-artists and those not in the industry, especially executives, sometimes think that there’s a “Make Cool 3D” button. That’s all I was saying on that issue. With regards to the age issue, understand where I’m coming from. Within the industry and even on these forums, ageism is still very much an issue. You routinely see people coming here and asking if 27 is “too old” to change and pursue an art career. It’s a both maddening and saddening. I was simply pointing that out.

Look. NOBODY is trying to paint you as a villain. I might have labored my points a bit. That much is true. I’m a verbose sonuvabitch. Also true. Rest assured, however, that you didn’t piss me off in anyway.

All I had to go on were your words. TO ME, some of the phrasing came off as a little weird and easily open to misinterpretation. After 17 years on this forum, I’ve seen it happen. IOW, “This is how ‘y’ person might interpret ‘x’ and why.” Get what I’m saying? That’s it. That’s what I was trying to point out. Frankly, your reaction is even more ridiculous and overwrought than my initial response.

Again, you accuse me of focusing on the wrong things, yet you’re doing the exact same thing here. Instead of looking at the substance of nearly 2 pages of (hopefully) helpful exposition, you choose to focus on 3 paragraphs of prologue.

Language is the barrier. You’re right. You wrote “x” while I saw the potential for “y”. Fine. Understood. No offense was intended on your part. None was truly taken on mine.

FWIW, I used my own family for illustrative purposes. Whenever possible, I like using practical, personal examples in my posts. That’s just me. It’s how I write.

As I said, I didn’t take ANYTHING that you said personally. Choose to believe what you will, but it takes a LOT more than that to get me offended. You can call me old, ugly, stupid, asshole, or whatever. No big deal. I might’ve gotten violently angry 20-someting years ago, but not now. There are a lot bigger things to focus on. AGAIN… I was making a more generalized point. I’ve been a member of this site for about 17 years. I know how some of the others might interpret your post. That was ALL I was saying.

FTR, don’t misinterpret my use of emojis either. I wasn’t masking anything. I write as I speak, for better or worse. I smile a lot. I wink a lot. I give snarky, sarcastic little looks. I’m probably the least offensive person in real life though. I’m about as threatening as a poodle. :stuck_out_tongue:

Some of this stuff doesn’t translate to forums and text. I get that. 100%. Just take a deep breath. You’ve painted a bizarre picture of the situation that’s so far off course. The whole black knight / paladin thing… WOW! So much for the concept of proportional response. LOL

Seriously though… Let’s both just take a few deep breaths. Relax. Chill. Refocus.

I will not respond further. My larger goal was to help your friend. Pointing out “x” along the way was an unnecessary detour to be sure. I agree. However, I have ZERO desire to pursue any further argument. By and large, this is a community of professionals. Clogging it up with childish back and forth is both unnecessary and unbecoming. For my part, I’m just going to walk away and bid you a good day.

My core points, the essence of that 2-page wall of text that followed the opener, still stands. That is my advice to your friend. Take it or leave it.

#6

“Seriously. I wasn’t personally offended in the least. I was merely pointing out how OTHERS might be. “

-after dedicating half of your post to a lecture based one two words I said, both of which you took out of context and misinterpreted in the worst way possible.

-and after accusing me of doing a disservice to all 3D artists.

How convenient it is to first burn someone at the stake, then casually explain that it’s not you who wanted to burn them at stake, but only burning them in case others might want to burn them instead. How convenient and safe! How considerate! Again, I’m speechless.

No, there weren’t OTHERS. You were the only one here lecturing me, going on and on and on about how old people can be whatever, how 3D is a creative field, as if I meant otherwise.

You were so full of your righteous self, making assumptions one after another, on my age, on my cultural background, on my motivation and on my experience. All so sure, as if you knew anything about me but the fact that I was asking for help.

Yes, help, not a DND session, and definitely not to be judged so mercilessly, so without any doubt that I was anything but a close-minded fool.

If not for taking personal offense, then it only means that you enjoyed it all. May I go ahead and assume that you do so on a regular basis, jumping to conclusions that others are below you, morally and intellectually?

The damage is done. I will not reply any further. Enjoy yourself - I’m sure you do.