Becoming a better artist, part 1.

Yes, finally someone speaks out. The big mystery of how to render fantastic, photo realistic images is revealed. 

Well, not really…

We’re getting questions on facebook basically every day about how we do this, how we do that, and as I stumbled upon a very funny thread in the Corona forums a while ago, I felt it could be appropriate to write a little article on the subject.

Please understand, that this whole article is philosophical and highly subjectively written based on my own personal experiences and what seems to be working for me. I have no idea if others will see things the same way as I do, and I might also have missed some good points.

Anywho, I’ve always been trying to get better, to make better images, just like everyone in this industry. My goal has, as so many others, always been to beat Bertrand “The king of 3D” Benoit. But the more I tried, the more I failed.

Then I came to a few insights that really helped me improve a lot.

“The main tricks of Bertrand Benoit”

Let’s first talk about this thread in the Corona Render forum. It starts with some dude writing that he’s new to Corona. It seems to be his first post on the forum and he goes straight at it, asking the community how to make Bertrand Benoit-quality images, adding a link to Bertrand’s Varenna-project made in corona: http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/varenna/

And I think to myself: “Here we go again”. 

The dude goes on, asking about “the laws and ways” of creating Bertrand’s work. He writes that he’s not interested in modelling or shading as that is covered by the “making of”, instead he wants to know exactly how Bertrand has done…. uhm… everything?

In fact, he literally asked for the “main trick” Bertrand was using. I don’t really know how he would expect people to deliver this knowledge. Maybe someone would record an uncut, 150 hour video tutorial of the whole project, since the “making of” was obviously not enough. And that someone would of course have to be Betrand himself, since it’s his project and he’s the only one who knows exactly what he did. And it should probably be shared for free as well.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely nothing wrong about asking for help.  But you should ask the right questions (more about that later). Let’s once again try to kill this discussion:

The tricks you’re asking for doesn’t exist

It’s true, they don’t, and everybody should know this by now. I’m certainly not the first person saying that. I know that a lot of people really wish there were some magic trick which they could just learn over a facebook chat and then suddenly they start creating amazing CGI.

Let’s face the truth: The word you are looking for isn’t “trick”. It’s called “experience”, and this, my friends, is something that cannot be thought or in any way transferred from one person to another. 

You probably already know how to add a sunlight in your renderer, you already know how to model a wooden chair, you already know how to make a black plastic material and how to adjust your image in Photoshop using “Curves”. And if not, there are plenty of tutorials for it. For everything. There are literally not a single thing in the whole process that isn’t covered by any free tutorials on YouTube. In difference from me when I started learning 3D, you live in a golden age where all information you need to learn is available to you for free in video form.

So if everything is available and shared for free, why is it still so hard?
Well, all this knowledge is merely some building blocks. It’s up to you as an artist to put those blocks together. It’s not about the technicality of doing certain things, it’s about your personal workflows and being able to see what looks good and what doesn’t. It’s about being an artist.
And for that, you need experience.

So instead of asking “What’s the trick?”, one should really ask “What’s the experience?”. And that is obviously a weird question with no answer.

Let me share some personal (subjective) insights.

Your attitude

First of all, I’ll just explain a little bit of who I am because I think it contributes to the point I’m trying to make. Just bare in mind that everyone is different and might not be able to relate to this at all. I am Swedish, which basically means that I’m raised to be modest, to blend in with the crowd, to not stand out. Therefore I never really have any high thoughts about myself or anything I do. I may be proud of my creations, but I’m never pleased.

Compliements are something I can’t handle, really. Every time I get a compliment I feel obligated to say an equally nice compliement back to make sure we are both on the same level of hierarchy. I’m not rarely referred to as “master” or “sensei” by some following me online, which, as fun as it may be, is giving me a bit of a hard time because it feels wrong to be classified in such a category. Especially when that’s very far away from what I think about myself.

I know that I am good at what I do though, but I don’t know that because I think so myself. Only reason I know that is because other people tell me so. And I think this plays a huge role in my creative achievements, because I never think what I do is good enough. As said, proud, but never pleased.

For people who know they are good, because they think so themselves, I think it’s harder to advance because they have not as strong subconscious incentive to advance. Self confidence is good, in fact it’s great. But you should aim that confidence to “I will learn this” instead of “I’m good at this”.

While in my case, no matter what I do, I always have that reason to do better since I’m simply “never really good enough”.

It’s feeding me with a lot of inspiration and willpower into my chase for the better image. It can be dangerous though, because sometimes it gets me so hard that I think it’s pointless to keep on going and I need a break from 3D, but the inspiration always comes back after a while, stronger than before. Staying humble and being modest about my own artistery and competence, I truly believe is a key to why I’ve got to this point in my career where I get to speak at conferences, fly across the world to meet with clients etc.

“Second product syndrome”

I watched a Pixar documentary a while ago, and Steve Jobs were talking about the “second product syndrome”, which basically means that after you’ve had a success with a product, you start to build self-confidence and you believe that you now know exactly what to do to reach the same success the next time. In many cases, this is why movie sequels are usualy not as good as the first ones.

This is not really related to our industry but there are definitely similarities. I think the same kind of mentality applies to us. It’s easy to make ourselves comfortable in the way we work, start to trust our experience and our skill, maybe we’re not spending time on R&D, meaning trying new softwares, renderers, plugins or new idéas anymore, and the strive for gaining new experiences is not as strong. That’s why I believe it’s important not to get too self-confident about ourselves and our skill. We will never finish learning, and the day you think you’re finished, you’re on the path to failure. 

Our attitude to our own work is really important. Stay humble.

... Await part 2. :-)