My Current Mile

I have a new found respect for character and visual animators. I used to think that with only a few selected parameters, a solid rendering could be achieved with little effort from any kind of animation program. The Disney and Pixar movies, I always thought for some reason, were easily made with the help of a computer. I thought to myself, what could be easier than making an animation with a computer.

After almost a month of “blending”, I have found that animation, no matter what kind – character, physical, architectural, visual – is truly a skill that transcends art and science.

When using Photoshop, you have a 2 dimensional surface to work with. Even though you can come up with truly creative ways to manipulate any image, it’s still two dimensional (only the X & Y axes). Once you add the third (the Z axis) and forth dimension (movement through spacetime), the complexity increases a thousand percent.

Add to that complexity the fact that to make an animation look viable and realistic, you have to “skin” your 3D “meshes” with materials and textures that simulate the real world. Yesterday, I worked through a tutorial and discussion from the “Essential Blender” book on materials and textures. I was a bit overwhelmed with all the buttons and sliders and controls the program offers. And limitless possibilities of computer generated materials and textures using any combination of these buttons, sliders and control pushed me over the edge. My question was “where do I start”, “how do I start?”. I completed the tutorial but my rendering did not look anything like the pictures in the book. But, at least I completed the tutorial, even though I wanted to give up.

Whoever said that You  Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks had a tight grasp on reality… at least my reality.

I used to pride myself on the fact that I was a life-long learner, a full time student in ‘something’. When I was young, I said that the ‘old dog’ will never come around me, because I would always be interested in ‘something’ always learning something.

I bought my first house when I was in my late 20′s. I was eager to learn how to hang and finish drywall, so I bought books and videos and torn down walls just to practice. After a while, I became quite good at finishing drywall.

I was a hungry dog… eager to learn something new, something practical. And the learning came easy and it was fun.

It wasn’t only drywall and home improvement projects… the entire desktop publishing and web design and programming came easy too. I spent hundreds of hours educating myself on web design and programing.

But, now that I’ve committed myself to climbing the curve inside the 3D graphics world, I find myself easily frustrated because the curve is very steep and I’m an old man now. I’ve been at it for a week, and bought a $50 book (the Essential Blender), watched several YouTube tutorials, and have about eight hours of dedicated study, and I’ve only learned how to open the program and a few key board short cuts. This new area of study is not coming as easy as I had thought it would.

I hate to say the the old dog is nipping at my heals, but I’m feeling the bite.