Different ways to think about your Goals for personal art:

I have always taken the approach with this blog to just post up my artwork. Rarely do I post anything without an artwork update. I feel that isn't as helpful to myself or to you, my fellow artists, professionals, and the overall community at large. We should be sharing our ideas. We should be spreading them and working collectively towards becoming masters of our craft.

Let's talk about personal artwork goals for a minute. I don't want this to be confused with contributing to a side project. I am talking about going through the motions of just making a character for yourself and your own satisfaction. Most people think of things in terms of goals. It is in our nature. When it comes to creating a AAA game character there is a very clear road to follow. Block out, High Poly, Low Poly, Bake, Texture, Rig, Animate.

There are steps in between, but this is the basic road map. While this works on a professional level, I find it difficult for these goals to push me when making personal artwork. In the end I find that having a singular final render as a goal isn't always enough. In the end it becomes a file on my hard drive and a still image (maybe a video turn around) on a website. This isn't a bad thing. It's great we can all share these works. I am not downplaying their awesomeness for one minute. For myself though, that hasn't been enough. Everything ends up feeling like it is just practice outside of work. It is too easy to abandon a personal character work early on, and move onto sculpting something else.

What I have concluded is that I have needed a shift in goals. I need to make things that are more tangible for me. I got into the art field because I wanted to create pictures. I love sculpting, I love making characters for games at work, but I still haven't found myself personally satisfied. I believe I have found a way to change that by shifting my goals.

My goals now are to create illustrations and art series pieces based on my high poly works. My new goals go as followed:

1. Decide/Design the character you wish to make. (Keep in mind all of the following steps when designing.
2. Plan out the art series. (I feel some of this you can freeball as you go, but you should at least give it a thought)
   - How many pieces do you want make?
   - How do you want each piece lit?
   - How do you want to pose your character for each illustration?
   - Do you want to make album covers?
   - Do you want to split a render up into 2 or 3 panels?
   - Do you want anything printed on canvas?
   - Do you want to mount this stuff on board? Etc, etc.
   - What pose do you want the 3D print to be in?
3. Make the high poly character.
4. PolyPaint/3D paint it.
5. Build a low poly and bake everything (This to me is an optional step, it's all about what I wanna do with it right?)
6. Pose out your high poly in the various poses and scenarios you need/want for your art series.
7. Get the digital sculpture 3D printed in the pose of your choice
8. Render your character in various lighting moods.
9. Photo shop those images and turn them into illustrations with different moods and environments.
10. Get them printed on board, or canvas, or whatever. Get the sculpture 3D printed as well. Get this stuff physical.
    Step 10 is the most important step to me. Make it real. Make the art you want to make. For me I always have wanted to make paintings and things for people to physically see, something they can hold, touch, hang up, look at, pass out, show off in the home. Don't let your creation be another file on a hard drive. This methodology hits my personal artistic goals while using everything I have learned.

We create beautiful pieces of 3D art that we usually pose once, render out, and call it a day. But because we have this 3D work, we need to take advantage of our ability to pose it, and light it as much as we want, and get drastically different art pieces. You can turn 1 character into a series of 2 – 5 completely different illustrations. You can get creative with text. You can make album covers, book covers, illustration panels, etc etc.

Just typing all this gets me excited. I am excited because I feel it give my work purpose, meaning, longevity, and most importantly it gives me a clear goal when I am making a piece. It makes creating the character just one small piece of a greater whole (just like a character in a game) but all the work is focused on that character you have created. With just 3 characters, you could make an entire gallery of things that people and yourself can enjoy.

The main thing I am trying to communicate is this. If you find yourself struggling to finish personal art. If you find yourself struggling to create it. Re-shift your entire perception on what your overall goal as an artist is. Gear your personal work to what you would like to see. You may find you finish more art.