The next step

Hey there,

Third and final year is coming up at university which presents me with a situation where I feel this is my one chance to really enrich my skills and my portfolio before
starting the job hunt. During the last two years I`ve tried to enchance my skills in several key areas of CG, so I can become efficient throughout the whole work pipeline. By this
I mean that I`ve focused to become a CG/3D Generalist, because my ambition does not allow to me to settle down and focus on just one or two areas of this industry.
I want to be able to create a final piece of work (may it be a still image or a video) from scratch. There are a couple of reasons behind this:

1: the more areas you can perform in, the more valuable you are. Also the job becomes more interesting as (given the opportunity) it becomes more varied.
2: when I will start working for a company, there is a high probability they will set me a specific role (modeling, texturing etc.) so that might be pretty much what I
will do for several months or even more. Focusing only on one area of CG for an extended period of time can become dull. I would like to produce my own, freelance work to keep
things all the more interesting. Freelance surely asks more of me then just modeling or texturing. Freelance most of the times requires you to create something from scratch and
produce a final piece of work which covers several areas of CG.
3: as I`ve mentioned, my ambition does not let me to only just model for instance. After a while I get this itch to start unwraping, shading, lighting, rendering, postwork etc. I really
NEED to stasfy my CG thirst.. that's it :) .

So, with that said, what I need to do this final year is to push my abilities as far as possible. My aim is to create a piece of work which represents all the knowledge I
have gathered so far. Not only that, but my plans for this final work asks to further look into areas which I need and want to improve in. One of these areas is organic modeling. Without believable, lovable, hugable characters in your work, you leave a huge whole in areas like story telling etc. Organic modeling demands several things.
One of these things and I think the most important one is anatomy knowledge. I don't have an artistic background as I have attented mathematics/informatics class in high
school, although I did have an interest towards art. With that said earlier this year I've decided to tackle this problem and started learning anatomy from books, video tutorials.. from wherever I could. I grabed a pencil and began drawing the anatomical structure of the human being. Drawing helps to understand and see/feel the shapes better.
The start is tough, but after a few weeks of practice I`ve found that I`m more confortable modeling humanoid, organic things because I am starting the understand the underlying structure and the fundamentals.

My final work will be an animation and the storyboard is currently being developed, but one thing is sure: I will have characters in my animation. My aim is to create stylized, realistic CG work. In order to create realistic characters I first started learning the skeletal structure of the human being. It is a step by step, frustrating process at the beginning... but I've always felt that hard work has the upper hand over talent. I never considered myself talented when it comes to drawing, but in all fairness I have never given hand drawing a chance, so who knows. One thing is for sure: after a couple of weeks of studying the bones of the human body, I began drawing the entire skeleton
from my mind which was something impossible for me in the past. Someone could have offered the queen's jewels and I still couldn't have had drawn a skeleton. That has changed and apart from the fact that there is SO much work ahead of me still... I feel I've made progress and a whole new world is opening up before me.

In my next post I will write a bit more about my journey of learning anatomy and applying that knowledge to CG.