aschwaggs

Yeah the research gives you inspiration! It should fuel your creativity. Creative fuel is finite. When it is full it should power you to learn all the things. When its low this stuff can feel like work and deter you from pushing forward.

Research and learning go hand-in-hand. But, sitting and looking at stuff all day won't improve your muscle memory. It can help build your visual library but practicing rendering inspiration will make it sink in.

Hope that helps!

I have been at this for two years or so? I am on Lesson 6, 250 box/cylinders.

Check out Evenant and Paintable. They have groups on Facebook, Instagram, etc. that will give you avenues to get feedback. I am more than happy to give you some feedback as well. I am training to be 2D/3D Concept / Environment Artist. On DaB to brush up on my foundational skills.

Gathering references is an important part of the design process. Really helps to flesh out ideas, moods, etc. But think about it this way... Would you charge your client for you gathering references? Probably not. Client wants ideas so they can begin fleshing out other parts of their project. Some pieces... that may be waaay more important than the pre-production stages.

You might say... Gathering resources is part of my design time which I bill to clients. Okay but there are 30 other designers that don't bill for that and you just lost a job.

My personal opinion, gathering references is part of your OWN time. The fun side of the 50% should be actually DOING and exploring different techniques, renderings, practice, etc.

Feng Zhu's Episode on Time Management talks about this at length. Highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejh4kkFF-sM&t=1914s

Oh man you just made my day!!! Boom. You probably have alot of students but I remember us having a conversation awhile back when I had to start over when moving to official. FINALLY caught back up and it feels amazing.

Revisions located here https://imgur.com/a/5k4c8ch

Moved away from using markers and tried pens for the line segment checks. Felt like you would be able to see my lines better. Markers felt pretty heavy.

Sorry again for wasting your time with the first submission. A lot going on and didn't give this the focus it deserved. However, this was a good wake up call.

Lol how embarrassing. I got cocky... Didn't even bother to check my previous work either. 50 more well deserved.

Woo hoo!!!!! Thanks man. I really have Elodin to thank lol. Even my wife saw improvements in my sketches. Her quote, "They don't look so sketchy." lol.

Ok took some time off (Due to personal matters) found some time to continue Lesson 5. Worked with Elodin this week as I was getting pretty frustrated. Needed to try something different.

Latest revisions can be found here.

https://imgur.com/a/FTrjDf0

Also got a new scanner. This goes up to 1200 dpi. Lines look alot clearer. Enjoy! Thanks for the C+C.

What are you going through Molly? Maybe we can help/inspire each other. At the very least it may be theraputic to get yout thoughts out.

Alan