Focus on Creative Skills, Not Technical Ones!

So damn tired of these type of questions.

What software should i learn? Where did you do this? How to learn it? Which one is better?

Honestly, none of them is to choose! Back in the day, I wasted a lot of time on this and can confidently say that it was almost entirely useless. I learned way too many programs: starting with crappy 3ds Max, then Softimage (my first love), Maya, Houdini, Blender, Nuke, AE, Mari, Substance, 3d coat, PFtrack, 3d equalizer and many many others. I tried a ton of render engines Mental Rays, 3Delights, Mantra, Redshifts, Octanes, Arnold, Karma, Maxvell and some other i probably forgot. Sure, it was fun during my school and college years when I had plenty of free time to waste on this nonsense. But none of it helped me develop real creative skills or brought me any real value and speed up my way to get a dream job. About 50% of that time could have been completely cut out without any loss.

Yes, this might sound harsh or exaggerated, but I want to warn those who just started, all beginners and juniors, not to waste time on technical stuff, do not focus on it please! Most of it can be done by tools, addons, plugins or soon by AI. Instead, develop your imagination, creativity, drawing, photography skills. Study the art skills, colors, composition, and so on!

The only thing that really helped me to get an art base is an art university, where I was given a solid artistic foundation: drawing plaster casts, still lifes, gouache and watercolor techniques, composition, and color theory. Big thanks to the university for that! Later, I kept developing my interest in concept art, drawing, and photography—something I still do now. But if I could change anything, I would trade the time spent chasing after new software (which you can never keep up with) for a deeper dive into concept art, colors, and composition. Now I’m having to catch up on that.

For those saying, "But job postings require specific software knowledge," yes they need it but not as a main skill. Big studios—like Lucasfilm, Weta, DNEG, MPC, and others—will retrain you on their tools (and they have thousands of them you cant even know cuz its all inside companies). They’ll spend 1–3 months or more getting you up to speed. Yes, they’ll ask what software you’re familiar with, and that might speed up the process a little, but it’s more of a bonus than a deciding factor. The first thing they look at is your skill: your eye for framing, lighting and lookdev, colors, and composition. The second thing is your English. Yes, your English skills will be almost as important as your creative skills because you’ll need to communicate daily, especially now in the post-pandemic world, with 5–6 meetings a day, damn we have too much of them. And you have to understand all vision explanation from Lead and Supervisors. How will you do that if your English isn’t at least B1?

And one thing is also important is your team work skill, be open minded, fun and small talks guy, big companies wants a friendly team mate not just employee that will close itself from everyone and silently trying to do his tasks without any questions, and yes the more questions you ask the more they see you getting deeper in the task and you are really interested to do it the best you can, they even tell us ask more questions, its fine, do not stuck with the task for hours or days, ask for a help always, they even insist you to do this!

Conclusion: Focus on Creative Skills, Not Technical Ones! Screw those softwares!

p.s. how to improve art skills and why and how it help to you 3d work will post soon!

And here are some photos how i draw and where and what i use, dont care if i dont have time or ability, always using whatever i have now, paper, smartphone (buy a $10 pen for it, how i did when i didnt have ipad), ipad, tablets and etc. Draw on spare time and anywhere, in the park while you watching you kids, in the cafe, on the plane, while watching shows, eating, shitting, sleeping, always! Do not make excuses like you dont have its a bullshit! Do it! Now!