Animation Update

So since the last blog I had literally, on the day of, started a massive animation project. I didn't realize how massive it was, but it has been about 3 months now and it still isn't finished despite having worked nearly every day on it. I had a whole schedule for it too, work 5 days a week for 2 hours animating. I thought that'd knock it out of the park, but I've only animated 3 minutes so far and I'm getting really burnt out by it all so I hadn't actually worked on it for the last 2 weeks. I can't tell if the break is doing me good or if by slowing down I only shot myself.

I'm like, way better at Blender now than I was 3 months ago though. During the break I felt guilty about stopping wholesale, so I had made a 30 second animation and I had finished the whole thing in just one week. Something about that makes me really happy, and really depressed. If I had that same level of pacing back when I first started I can't even imagine how long this thing would be after 3 months.

That did make me realize something.

To work on something every day, constantly and genuinely, will always give improvement. You won't see it or understand it until months ahead, but these improvements are massive even just a week apart yet you'll never understand it in the moment.

I feel mixed on it despite my massive improvements. Ever since I started the Patreon and uploading every week on such a strict schedule for 3 months straight I only ever got the support of two people. I know that's not necessarily true since I hear words of support from plenty of people I talk to, but when I look at the money I've earned it feels like it.

I got 3 dollars for a 100 hours of working. I'm not sure if this experience would even help get a job considering most of it is NSFW. That's not really something you show in interviews. I even tried opening Commissions, but well, nobody really bites. I can't blame them since I can't model that well, or rig a character, or even port models into other programs. Most I can do is offer still images of models that other people made.

The only real artistry I have is how I paint over the models I work with. I often try to delete all the shaders they come with and build my own from scratch to match the art-style I want to go for, but that's fairly small compared to what others do. I know a guy who got 30 animation commissions and pumped out an animation every single day to fulfill that by the end of the month. I wonder how much longer it'll take for me to be able to do that, and how much longer would it take for me to get paid for it.

I think I understand where the starving artist came from now.