Your First 👎

 Onegai shimasu (おねがい します)  🙇

I encouraged my students to save images of the first item they modeled and not look at it for 6 months. Then look at it after. The reaction is always the same. Disbelief and shock that they made such a rotten model. This is important as it will demonstrate concretely how far one has come. and where one will be many years from now. I showed them a photo of the fist drawing I did in school and how much it sucked compared to my graduation images. Today, I can hold my own with pros (while I look at things I made a few years ago (and cringe).

It's not fair to yourself to compare your work (code, film, models, paintings, etc.) with high end pros. You won't be as good as them at the moment. And that's ok. It's good to favor them. To admire them. To emulate them. Learning their techniques will help develop your own. 

Remember: they all started just like you. DaVinci was not born with his skills. He had to start somewhere. He sucked when he started. It took years to develop his style.

You will develop your own style. Who knows. At some point someone will look at your work and be inspired by it 😊

Be The Change 👁️

Onegai shimasu (おねがい します)  🙇

Let's face it. Ours is a unique industry. While you're in it you will meet a wide assortment of people who like different things and have different view points. I’ve met good and brilliant people. And I’ve worked with assholes.

First off, this is becoming a very open and welcoming industry more and more. It’s becoming less and less of a “good old boy network”. There are more women and LGBTQ+ entering the industry than when I started. It’s growing more every day on all fronts. And it's awesome 😁

75% of my VFX class were women. About 1/2 of the Game Art class were women. It was about 20% women in the Programming Class (and growing every year). Culturally, all these classes are very diverse, and were getting more so.

Diversity can't be escaped. Yet sometimes someone can cause a problems. They will attempt to take it out on you, no matter who you are. I had the misfortune to have to work with elitist types. All I could do is respect their work and keep going. I don’t know where they are now. And I don’t care. 

It is the things that you WILL and WILL NOT do that will always speak as to what kind of person that you are (what you will of won’t do will ALWAYS come back to you). Sometimes, all a person needs is a little help. 
Or, said person may need to complete the struggle on their own, and they just need room. Don't carry a burden for them. This can be very difficult to detect in yourself.

This industry is getting more unaccepting of bigotry. I know that there are still issues everywhere. Personally, I’d rather be a part of the solution. And I really believe in starting with yourself. No need to attempt to change the world (you’d go mad). Just your corner of it. You’d be very surprised at how far the effects will ripple.