Be a Productive Artist

During the course of an artists development there is a lot to learn and it usually takes place after school, work or other priorities. As such, when you do have time, it is important to understand how you can effectively manage it as well as get work done within it in an efficient manner.
In this article, we will provide you with some advice which we feel will help you become a better artist in a shorter amount of time. What this article isn’t, is a quick fix to making professional-grade assets by next week. You’ll still be doing the same routine:
Putting in a lot of effort, fighting through the lows and spending endless hours on matching verts & pixels. We’d just rather see you get things done in 2 hours as opposed to 2 days.

# Day 4 Basic Mesh Complete
# Day 8 Full Mesh Complete
# Day 12 UV Complete
# Day 16 Basic Texture Complete

For some of you this may sound more like a homework assignment in the end, but being able to recognize your tangible short-term goals and act upon them based on your well-maintained to-do list is the way to success.
Check out your list, find the time, and execute. Maybe such a large project is also too big of a jump to start off with. Instead, just jot down for next week "Take Part in GA.net Speed Modeling". Whatever task you assign yourself, it's imperative that you follow through on it to the end. If you’re getting them done, incrementally increase the challenge every week. After all, have you ever seen an industry artist
with a portfolio full of unfinished work?

Helpful Resources:

My personal favorite....
ToDoist (simple, quick and a good layout)
http://todoist.com

For those too lazy to setup a seperate to-do list, you can attach one to your iGoogle (given you have an account):

iGoogle
To-Do List

Distractions
Given you sleep 8 hours a day and are roughly 1 to 2 hours on the net everyday, be it surfing in the unknown or random IM conversations, you've just wasted 1 Month of the Year. That's right, you've just ripped out July from your summer vacation and wasted it on semi-productive or idle time. Once you lose that time, it's gone. You don’t want to regret this in the future. If you're going to get down to modeling or texturing and generally fit the Internet-Junkie profile, do the following before you start:

# Close your Internet Browser
# Close all your IM applications
# Close your E-mail Client or System Tray Notifications
# Turn off your TV (if you have one in your room)

I understand that chatting to someone sounds very tempting when you've gotten to that part of the UV map which is "just too complex to do right now", but the fact remains, you're going to have to do it at one point. You're not doing anything else at the moment, so what better time? Get it done now, reward yourself later.

Helpful Resources:

Top 10 Sources of Distractions:

Free yourself from your Inbox:

Offline Library aka Scrapbook

An absolute must for all artists is to create a physical and/or virtual scrapbook where you save resources which you consider beneficial to you. This will be a source of inspiration as well as solutions to existing problems. Collecting such assets and saving them instead of bookmarking them not only saves you time (loading, searching, etc.) but also keeps your eyes focused on nothing but art.

Keep any eye out for:
# Tutorials -> Save them and categorize them in folders by application (Max, Photoshop, zBrush, etc.)

# Wireframes & Texture Sheets -> Save them and categorize them in folders by type (Character, Vehicle, Map Props)

Scrapbooks shouldn’t be limited to what you find online, but also what you find on
your computer! For 90% of games you will find applications online which can uncompress game files (and sometimes even mesh converters), enabling you to have access to art which was done on a professional level. What better way to learn what the industry demands other than by seeing what they do?

Optional: Developing your non-Artistic Skills
For those of you which already live a productive life you may want to consider developing other parts of your day to day to speed things up a little.

Spreeder

Speed reading is the art whereby you don’t read word for word but read multiple words at the same time. I honestly have doubled the rate at which I read and it’s a big time saver.

Train your mind here (in the settings, enter 2 or 3 words to be shown at the same time):
http://www.spreeder.com

The How-To on Speed Reading here (a sturdy introduction before hitting up Spreeder):

Holistic Learning

There are different ways of learning, and of these is holistic learning. A process which involves creating relationships between various entities and being able to apply this knowledge to problems which you may not have learnt in class.
Check out a brief introduction:
Link
Or get the free e-Book

Conclusion

It's not going to come overnight, but if you apply yourself and actually give some of these methods above a chance, you will succeed in getting more done in less time. I wish for everybody in this community who is putting in a lot of work a successful career . I also hope that our staff can help you attain that goal, and as a result you can help others in the community.

If you find this article helpful or are trying some of the techniques, feel free to make a post in the related forum thread found here . It will motivate others to follow in your footpath. Best of luck and keep us posted on your progress

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