Starting and Finishing Your Projects
So! You’ve got the basics down! You have familiarity with the tool, got basic understanding of characters, environments, lighting, camera and rendering, and you can finally start with that idea you had in your head! The reason you wanted to join in the first place!
Alright, now it’s time to get started… hmm? It’s been a while, how has the project progress been going? Oh? You’ve been working on random Blender tutorials? You got more project ideas you wanna work on? Interesting… You’ll finish this one ri- oh, you lost motivation? Hmm, well what abou-
You get the picture.
Welcome to the hardest part. Putting in the work.
Making creative projects is both an “Art” and a “Science”.
- Art: The stylistic choices, story, characters, looks and feel of the overall work.
- Science: The in-the-weeds details on how to make it real, studying from references, color theory, etc.
However, it is not enough. You can be as skilled as you want, you can have as many amazing, motivating ideas as you want. You’re still not finishing anything. Time goes on and on and on, and others are finishing things, but you’re still yet to finish that animation you wanted to do.
Is this you?
Let’s help you break out of that. But how?
There are LOADS of reasons why people can’t finish their projects, and some may be totally legitimate. However, you’d be surprised as to how much can be an excuse.
- I can’t decide on what project to do.
- I don’t know how to do it.
- I’m going through a bunch of tutorials right now.
- I lost motivation in the project.
- I don’t have the time to do work on it.
- Etc.
And to all that I say: sure. If those are reasons to have you stop, then so be it, we don’t know you or your life. But do you know the secret?
There is actually a third part to the creative process.
Indeed, beyond having the creativity and the skill, there is a third, legitimate reason that people can’t finish their projects.
And that is…
Project Management
You thought I was gonna say something silly like “more motivation” or “more passion”, huh?
Sure, those can be important, and can help big time. But those are super finite, and worst still you don’t know when you’ll run out of those. And then… what’s left?
No, you need something more solid, a foundation, a to-do list and a timeline.
“But I thought animation was supposed to be fun!”
Oh yea, it absolutely is when you finish something. It’s crazy when you realize how much you are thinking about a project instead of actually working on it.
After a certain point, you may not even open Blender anymore. It’ll just another hobby that sparked your interest because you saw a Youtube video, and wanted to do something like that, but then fell by the wayside.
Let’s keep it simple. This is what I do for every project, you can follow it if you wish, but if you find something that works better for you then do it!
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Pick a project. This is easier than you think. Pick the one that motivates you the most right now, and just GO FOR IT. Pick that idea to animate.
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Open a Google Doc Yea, not Blender yet. List down: characters that you need, locations that you need, your goals for your project, what sort of effects you will need, and an overall script. Be as specific as to what you need as you can, and you may not even know what you need, but that comes with experience.
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Open Blender Just open it. It’s insane how hard this part is. It’s like going to the gym. Once you’re there, you’re fine, and working out. It’s getting there that is the problem.
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Set things up one asset at a time Have a foundation scene (explained in a workflow later), and add in all that you listed down in the second step. Once you have everything there, things will start feeling doable, because you are already there!
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Set up a timeline/time cadence to work on things A few hours a day? Heck maybe even half an hour. Keep it doable, keep it consistent, set an alarm and hold yourself to that. Deadlines also help keep you pushing.
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Find a buddy to keep you accountable Both of you work on your projects simultaneously and enforce regular check-ins. Make sure you have something to present each check-in!
Now, guess what, you have a list of what you need, you have a timeline, and you have everything ready in Blender to get started. You are no longer working on vibes or motivation.
What now?
You may not know how to do things.
Perfect, learn it now. DON’T go learning things beforehand, and end up in tutorial hell. You just have all this useless information that you will probably forget because you are not actively using it.
Figure out what you are stuck on in your project, find a tutorial or seek help to solve it, solve it, and move forward. Falling into silly tutorials like the donut tutorial will only waste your time, and take away the fleeting motivation that you had to “learn Blender”.
In fact, don’t even think about it as “learning Blender.”
Blender is just a tool, a boring looking one at that, a tool that has all the documentation you need to figure things out later/ask for help. Think about it as “making your project”, because that is something only YOU can do.