For the past four years I have struggled with the thought.."do I want to be a concept artist, or do I want to be a 3D artist?" I tried to get as good at both as I could. To be honest the goal of being a character artist is a very very recent thing. I think it was really more of a buy product of how much life drawing and anatomy studies I did in my 2D pursuit. Then came along a little thing called sculpting, followed by a tool named z-brush. I have had a love of digital and traditional sculpting forever, but I tried to hide it as best I could by never really doing much with it (in public) and by focusing in an area I was improving leaps and bounds in but still struggled. Sculpting and Digital brush modeling have seemingly come very naturally to me, but for the longest time I denied it. Running from fate I guess. I want to place the disclaimer that these next few thoughts are not of arrogance. Just thoughts in my head. I know I am not at the super professional level yet. That said I shall continue. I didn't like being good at digital sculpting or traditional sculpting for that matter. I didn't like being able to slam out base meshes quickly without every practicing modeling. Why? Because it was not my goal and that frustrated me to no end. I wanted...want to do concept. But now I have come to a place of aceptance. I am never calmer or happier then when I am in zbrush or I am constructing a new character. There I said it lol. Really though, it is the most relaxing thing I can do with my time. I enjoy it. And I am not gonna run from my secret love anymore. I still want to do concept. I still want to be the best 2D artist I can be. But right now, I want that to be just a fun hobby I use to make my 3D better. One day I will journey back down the 2D road. But for now I will just dabble and continue life drawing and studying, but nothing more. For 3D really has become a burning passion, and one that seems attainable. I want to be a character artist. I want to make the heroes my friends run around as in their games, and the fiends they see in their favorite movies. And just typing this, I feel a great amount of stress lifting up and away, as finally I realize what bath to continue my journey down. No worries though. I can never give up 2D, I shall continue to draw and paint. But for right now, I don't wanna try to make doing that my living. So here is a w.i.p. of a character I am currently working on. This ia about 4 - 5 hours in, and I have a lot more to go before his head is complete. But I figure it's a good way to kick things off.
-Joe
