We can all feel a bit stuck on what to pursue, what we enjoy, and what is right for us when in an age of abundant content, tools, and resources.
When I started my creative journey, there were limitations of software and money regarding what path you could take. So, taking my situation into account, I went with what was most affordable and creatively freeing: pencil and paper.
Eventually, many of us came across something that allowed us to kickstart our creative adventure— a “special” version of Photoshop.
When transitioning to 3D, every studio would mention Cinema 4D. This route was a challenge, with everything behind a paywall. The combined costs of courses, software, plugins, and the render engine made it almost unsustainable to learn on the side or as a student.
After some time, I kept noticing Blender’s updates and how fast it was improving. This was something that looked much more manageable to sustain on the side, and for anyone who isn’t aware, it’s a completely free program!
What I wasn’t aware of at the time was how this would create a massive shift within the community and the new generation entering the industry.
Now, having a extensive software that isn’t gatekept and has no paywall, anyone with a computer can pick it up and start. With it being so easily accessible, it meant a bigger market of users, which made many experienced 3D artists make the shift and create a lot of content, courses, and tutorials, since they’d have a much bigger audience.
Now we have a wonderful community where nothing is gatekept, the paywall is very low, and anyone with enough talent, hard work, and passion can create beautiful work and feel creatively free.
For its low cost and low risk reasons, we also had other staff casually picking Blender up on the side. With these extra skills at our disposal, we’ve been developing a new pipeline in the studio, integrating it into our projects to either facilitate processes or create more unique visuals and experiences.
Even though Cinema 4D is still the industry standard and we have bounced between the two, I often find myself turning back to Blender for quite a few reasons.
I have found the render engines to be much faster, which gives us more instant visual feedback, quicker tests for clients, and overall quicker turnarounds for projects.
With us predominantly working with After Effects and still mostly doing 2D work, Blender’s NPR shader and grease pencil with Eevee render have also been great additions to grab existing brand elements and transform them into something new.
Our recent project with Royal Parks Half is a fun example of how we’ve combined it all.
With complete access to a tool that allows you to create anything, there has been an amazing influx of artwork created by many amazing artists. The bar is being raised, and we have a pool of knowledge at our disposal, so I believe we will keep adding more layers to the world of digital art.
It’s not something many agencies do and I'm aware we can only do so with being smaller and newer. But I’m here for distributing knowledge and creating an environment where artists feel creatively free and do the work they want, without everything being gatekept or pay to win.
I’m excited to see what roads will be paved and how the world of digital art will keep shifting during these uncertain times caused by AI, but that will be on the next blog post.
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