Now and Then

[Pancakes]

Wow, I decided to take a lil breather ,as you do, when sculpting in 3dCoat. I had a choice between playing League of Legends or doing something else. So I decided to check how much harddrive space I had left because hi res modeling in 3dCoat can take up gigabytes pretty fast if you are irresponsbile with your saves, as I have been recently.

 

Anyway, I found I had almost no disk space remaining so I set out to delete some old 3dCoat files and there must be hundreds here. So I went to my very first 3dcoat save on this computer and what I saw got me thinking.

 

Because recently I've been calling myself some pretty bad names. Saying things like, "Why do I suck...so BAD!?", "I hate myself". Especially since Josh announced the 3d art internship, that I don't even think I will succeed in getting. But when Josh did announce it something inside me started to move. Because I had always shielded myself from getting upset about my modeling by being a little non chalant about it. Not to say I wasn't putting effort into it because I have been. I love modeling and game dev stuff, but my attitude was pretty chill even while spending many hours practicing over and over. For example, I couldn't tell you how many times I've practicing modeling a single finger. And to this day I still haven't gotten it right. Though admittedly I could still practice more than I have been. But hearing about the internship made me start to recognize and deal with the desire that I have to improve. Not to expect to get better, but to sort of demand that I try harder.

 

Anyway, when I looked at the first 3dCoat savefile that is on my PC. I opened it in order to see whether I should keep it or just delete it. And I look at the model which was saved in January of 2010, and I realize that back in those days I never taunted myself by saying that I sucked so bad or that I hated myself because of my modeling (at least that I can remember). But back then I just put my head down and kept practicing. And the best thing that I discovered is that today when I look at them I don't think, "Wow these old ones such bad" I look at them and I can see where i did things correctly and I can kind of plot out what I would need to do in order to correct that which wasn't done properly.

 

Like in the first head on the left, you I see that the brow and forehead are fundamentally sound for the beginning stages of modeling. Even the curvature on the jaw is pretty functional. I can also see what's wrong with it too. And it's reassuring to me that I didn't give up even in the face of how much actually IS wrong with it.

 

Well anyway, I guess that's sort of my point. That even in the face of what's wrong with whatever I'm currently working on, I shouldn't give up. Because I didn't give up back then either. Anyway, back to it! Though I'm sure I'll be calling myself bad names again shortly.

 

Also as a colorful aside, the guy I used to idolize "elsevilla", has really been progressing as an artist during the past year that I haven't been following him much. He was once a pencil artist who wanted to learn colors. And I watched him struggle with that, but I went to check him out today and my goodness his colors have improved so much that I feel ashamed that I ever doubted his decision to change from pure pencils --> color and CG artist. What a fool I was to doubt that guy. Maybe I should allow myself the indulgence of idolizing him again. Though I'm not sure if I need to idolize anyone anymore. I'm too old for it.

[DigitalHax]

I think this is more blog worthy...

[Roland]

Wow... really nice sculpting there.

[gamecreator]

Well put. You obviously have some serious skill. And whether you do it through negatively criticizing yourself (which I wouldn't suggest) or merely doing things over and over and over and over, practice is the magic that makes you better, as your look back in time clearly proved. Keep at it and pretty soon elsevilla will be idolizing you. For me, I just respect that you do this better than me and most others out there.