The nature of the artist’s work is this that matches better the freelancing style rather the employee style.
Art is considered a non-necessity, but something to show off or something to decorate things.
Since the antiquity, even Michael Angelo was hired to paint the “Creation of Adam” (I’ve seen a documentary about it) and for me was a huge life lesson I learnt that universities do not want you to know.
Becoming an employee needs a stack of skills that fit more into the corporate structure, rather than your own voice. This means that you will be following the chain of command more often than doing your own thing. I don’t know if this is a good thing, but since I have worked for 4 years in a graphics design job I know about this, in a corporate environment, no one is able to appreciate good art, every one is goal oriented.
Hadn’t looked at this thread in a couple of days as i thought i died, but i was suprised to see how many (and how big) answers you gave me.
To add: My intention is not to stick to blender as i know its hard to get a job with it. So far I am young (18), I gues I got time to learn and with a rather calm nature. Many pointed out that i shouldn’t be a douche.
The education here in Bulgarian is just aweful, so that absolutely useless. Might go only because of the “there is now way you are going to be without an education”. But it’s good that I read a lot about almost any technical field (and other), i’d say i learn faster than those around me and tend to lean towards getting a task done quickly and efficently.
Also I did see some job offers about hiring trainees, effectively teaching them paid. But thats in the capital (other city) aaaaaaand getting quite a “bit” off topic.
Not sure if what i just wrote matters but thought I’d reply to those who took the time to reply to me. Thanks!
[QUOTE=BeerBaron;2972297
This is terrible advice, especially considering the premise of the original post. You absolutely should research the market when considering what skills to build. Of course, you may find that the market changes, that’s always the case no matter what. However, if you purely focus on something that you find enjoyable, you may find the market doesn’t need your skill at all, or that there’s extreme competition because a lot of people happen to also find that thing enjoyable. The idea that “the rest will take care of itself” if only you follow your interest is utter nonsense.
[/QUOTE]
It’s terrible advise to an extent, but I realize that I am not a good character animator. I’m OK at it. I can probably improve. But all that time improving will be time spent away from learning lighting, technical animation/vfx, shading and pipeline. I doubt I will ever be a character animator working at the level which I aspire to do technical art and animation - and a big part of that is likely just that I am more interested in the pipeline end of things.
I think the terribleness of the advise was to not focus on skills. It seems like whenever you get advise like this, it’s pretty bad: don’t focus on the technical, focus on the art; don’t focus on learning software, focus on telling stories.
The truth about what we’re doing is that it is all highly demanding. The moment someone says “don’t focus on this” I tend not to listen. For one, it’s usually advise being offered by someone who is already highly technically proficient, and likely has a selective memory, blocking out hours of late night frustration learning how to make something F**KING WORK! But second, it’s BS. All this stuff is equally important.
Yes. Follow your interests. But don’t think that noodling around will automatically produce results. Learning this stuff is hard. In fact, many of my assignments have been among the hardest things I’ve attempted. If you’re not willing to put effort into it, then it’s a great hobby. But this field is demanding specifically because we’re being asked to be artists as well as technicians. We have to create visually interesting work using some extremely complex tools.
Having all the interest in the world won’t help in the least if you’re not willing to learn the skills.
I don’t think so, as the need of good designers for offline marketing purposes, the need for designers are not yet outdated. Today most of the companies or business owners tend to put more effort on their offline marketing such as guerilla marketing which provides an extra source of manpower. Even I had done one such campaign coordinating with a guerilla marketing services company in Seattle. The team include good designers which made that event a grand success.