1. I would try to fix the bug issue foremost. It's clearly driving you nuts and if not solved soon, could even make you sick.
2. Then I would focus on finding cheap housing, look into social housing where people (maybe even illegally) live together and pay a very small sum.
Or you could try contacting some friends to rent a place together. Or maybe even go back to your family?
3. Accept that 3D art may not be a future you can afford right now. Try to focus on securing a financially stable situation. And who knows maybe in 5 years you can actually start focusing on 3D art again.
It's clear you want to be successful. The ice cold determination to be successful is what makes success. I'd probably get some methamphetamine, load up, and fucking crush the shit out of the bugs, Breaking Bad style. Everything in the world represents something that loves you. Get a fucking witch doctor to induce paranoia while you blaze up on cold krush and brew a fucking potion from the insects bold enough to infest your tenement. Make those roaches / centipedes / crepusculars (moths, etc.) your bitch. Drink them in on a hot draught of orc blood. Slay your cat. Feather frosted glasses with its furs and knit gloves with its claws (unless it is declawed).
Whatever you do, don't lose your sense of humor. Don't give up hope. Love your neighbor as yourself and try to smile once in a while. Life is a long event and by simply raising the standard for yourself you apply pressure to obtain the vigor needed to face life head on. Look at life as serious competition between humans, animals, fungae, and the other classes of organism. Even if you get fucking creative, scabbing over injuries with salt and voodoo medicine the essential property is to remain steadfast in your determination. You don't have to be a saint to find freedom, you just need to be yourself at all times, even if that means embracing the ethereal energy of otherworldly excitement. The world is in your mind as much as it is in your perception. If you just believe in yourself all things are possible. That's the nature of quantum mechanics and the mind as reality. Just don't forget that what we see in the mind is not always what we see in the world.
I know that my situation isnt really THAT bad, I mean it sucks, but I think a big part of why all of this shit is driving me so fucking mad now is that school spoiled me. Before I went to college this was the norm, kinda just filthy and mediocre. My siblings were lazy fucks who made their lives out of either doing drugs/drinking or having so little ambition I am baffled to this day how a human being can function on what I imagine is pure contentment.
After graduating from college I'm really starting to feel the disadvantages of being poor. I went to school with some RICH motherfuckers, most of my college was minimum upper middle class, fuck one of my few friends was actually a millionaire, her mom flew in from Hungary WEEKLY to visit here, back and forth, spending money like I can't even believe. People around me went to do internships at companies their families had connections at, they traveled for fun and really just seemed to be enjoying their lives in a way I still can't understand, I could see enough of the photos on facebook'n shit that I KNEW they were traveling and having fun and it just makes me so fuckin' bitter that I didnt think my life through when I was like 12. If I had the kind of wealth these fuckers have I COULD be a stellar artist. I went to a world class art school and lemme be frank; the kids were mostly terrible.
They were either, A. Pleasant people but pretty poor with regards to thinking their concepts through, or B. Crazy SJW types.
I know SJW is a contentious term around here, I do not use it lightly here. In my Character Design course we had an assignment where we were to study a culture and reinterpret it in some way shape or form. The first thing that happens is people go all "This assignment isn't right, its cultural appropriation." I mean come the fuck on, how do you plan to make a living at illustration in ANY capacity if you refuse to leave this wretched mental box of, "if it looks chinese it MUST be chinese, if you fuse chinese and scandanavian cultures its RACIST!" come the fuck on. Shit like that happened a lot. Ever heard someone way a painting of a vodka bottle wrapped in bacon was inappropriate because they said it referenced bondage? They seriously were speculating the image was inappropriate because bacon wrapped around a vodka bottle is imagery that is too powerful?
And man were they clique-y. Talk about an echo chamber, I don't think many of them were bad people, but they were really uncomfortable with challenging ideas in any capacity. A huge part of RISD is critique, every class everyone puts up their work for the week and we're meant to dissect and destroy the artwork with words. I have never heard so many people who coddle each other in the lamest of ways.
That was a mildly tangential rant. Its not to say college was a bad experience, I really, really loved some of my professors, they're some of the sweetest people around and also some of the most hilariously intelligent and talented fuckers I've ever met. They made me experience there so much more tolerable and less isolated than it could have been.
But fuck it makes me so bitter (and I was already BC fuckin' headache powder bitter about my life) that people who can't break through a hardon for basic Tolkien fantasy get to pursue their dreams in luxury and comfort with internships as junior fuckin' art directors at big movie studios some-fucking-how, and I have to go home for the summer to work an under the table job doing public school flooring with a bunch of literally drug addicts. Like two of the people I worked with regularly took meth, popped pills directly before work, and my boss was a literal fucking CRACK HEAD, as in he smoked crack and fucked actual crackwhores.
I can't claim to be the most talented person alive, but I know that I CAN succeed, I fucking KNOW I can, I'm unceasingly critical and negative and let me fucking tell you that is a blessing in this line of work. It just fucking irks me that EVERYTHING I do tends to turn to shit. Everything is a struggle, everything is hard, every fucking thing I do seems to take a herculean effort from me and let me tell you I am tired, I am so, so, so tired. I can't even imagine how my mom must feel, she works three jobs! I can't let myself fail, I have two fuckup money drain siblings and I am the good one and I will succeed, I have to succeed, I fuckin' need to succeed, I'm an investment, I have potential and if I don't realize that then I'm nothing more than the same kind of fucked up money drain that my sisters are.
Just very, very tired.
Also I don't do drugs of any kind because growing up with drug addicts makes that a really unappealing way to go. Hell I can barely stand drinking, and not just because alcohol tastes like shit. So no, I have no such vices to work with, the last time I drank I drank like 8 shots of whiskey and coke and was pleasantly buzzed for a night, which was nice. Kind of freaked me out how effective that was in making me go from seriously depressed into really just feeling pleasant and happy. I don't think I need to tempt the alcoholism thing any more than is necessary.
For what its worth, my long winded bitching is cathartic and I appreciate your advice/listening and all.
Maybe if you are tired of where you are should try going tree planting. Probably going to have wait till the summer (maybe not, might be different in the southern part of the states), but you can make some decent money AND you get to get of the place you are living in right now. Also, from a social perspective it will force you to meet new people.
Anyway, good bitching. It's horrible when you keep everything bottled inside.
Choose one thing to fix and take necessary steps. Obviously choose something you're able to do (e.g. financially). Adjust where you need to (dont buy a bed, look for someone donating one). Try to keep active.
If this thread dies and you feel like talking, just PM!
On September 27 2016 11:46 Zambrah wrote: I know that my situation isnt really THAT bad, I mean it sucks, but I think a big part of why all of this shit is driving me so fucking mad now is that school spoiled me.
best move i ever made was to go to a Co-op school that makes it impossible for this university campus fantasy-land mindset to exist. my school get criticized for being a boring, workaholic school.
most four year degree programs exist for rich kids to protract their adolescence into their early 20s.
Art is a lifetime journey. Make small, achievable goals and make them happen one step at a time. I don't know how well you're doing in terms of your artistic journey, but draw everyday, or model something everyday, work on your portfolio every spare second that you have away from your part time / current non-art job, and I'm sure you'll succeed and escape whatever crappy town and situation you're in.
Wish you the best!
Oh and why go on? Just because we all only have this one life to try to make anything at all out of it, so why not? Your family may be shitty, but think of all the friends you've made, the people you care for, whether it be a big or small amount, the dreams and all the things that you still want to achieve! I'm assuming you're around your early 20s right now - you'll be 30, then 40, 60, 80 years old before you know it. Life moves fast; make the most of your time on earth!
I don't know the specifics regarding you and your situation but from what I read you feel really sorry for yourself. You're portaying yourself as some heroic person that is tragically being held down by life and victimized by all these, in one way or another, unworthy people. Don't get stuck being this tragic hero. Your ego might like being at the center of all that tragedy since you can just stop trying and feel bad for yourself, but you're basically avoiding having to take the step from tragic hero into reality where you're just another struggling pleb.
Don't be in such a rush to decide your book is going to be a tearjerker.
Many good ideas have been listed, so I'll just add a song that helped me getting through some hard times and allowed me to use my anger and desperation as fuel to keep me going and made me mellow
your luck is gonna change, it's gonna go from bad to strange
lol well maybe i can cheer you up. as you know maybe from reading my blogs I've had schizophrenia for the last 5 years which has been a funny / bad / good / humorous experience. it has mostly been good / bad. for instance i had to take anti-psychotic medications that gave me a sort of temporary amnesia where I'd forget everything that happened during the schizophrenia. this was the absolute pits (and if i might brag) surely worse than what you are going through....
antipsychotics are kind of antiweed. in the way that weed / other psychoactives seem to layer the world, antipsychotics unlayer the world. actually it makes taking the antipsychotics themselves a sort of self-inflicted torture. sure schizophrenia is (apparently, evidently) delusion in its way. but then at least we seem to be dealing with just too much information. on the other hand, do you really see yourself taking a medication that will transform the world into a place that makes perfect sense? there are jokes like "are you too stupid to know you are stupid" but when they seem to really hit home is when you are smart enough to know you're stupid.
in addition to all that the reality of antipsychotics is they limit brain function to the point where you just feel like a ghost all time, floating around unable to amend anything, unable to really perceive the world, and without the willpower to really effect any change. needless to say (at least in my own view), the schizophrenia is a lot better now even without medication. but i still find myself medicating on occasion when things become confusing or when apparent delusion seems to be wresting control of my thinking.
so now I'm confronted with the questions you're undoubtedly worried about. life seems to be off-track, perhaps really really off-track. no one seems sympathetic to the situation, and most of the desirable prospects that I'd set my sites on seem to be probably not possible any more. there seems to be absolutely no motivation at all compared with before (when there was no motivation at all, lol). in short, why pick up and start over when things are worse than before?
there seems to be no reason, and maybe there isn't. but then you get into this kind of suicidal mindset where every shortfall seems to have only one best answer. there's utterly no way to win in that mindset, which is a reality. but when you really start to ponder the suicidal stuff (which i have), it starts to seem unappealing. you know you get into this mode where you ask whether you can do this or do that (art of course is sort of bad). will you be able to recover to a desirable situation in the near future. in short what I've discovered is you can recover to a desirable situation pretty easily. just motivate yourself to do a lot of pointless shit that won't help you like kill all the bugs, clean the apartment, go to an antique store and repopulate with new furniture. actually just having a sound living environment can be quite a lot of fun if you really put into it. you can spend not much money and build a cool house, and it doesn't even require the kind of heroic intrapersonal effort that you need to have a "nice situation in life" (which requires politics).
shopping like a gay person (which i am informed that i am not) has brought me a lot of satisfaction recently. and in fact if it were couched to most people whether you should kill yourself or not they'd probably be happy to give you a helping hand. it certainly seems impossible to wake up day after day and want to improve your life but then when you start simulating the actual situation in your mind it seems hopeless. it tends to be the actuality that no one has enough time or the psychological know-how to say what they want to say--what i mean by this is that most wisdom is to tell people stop doing what you're doing (which is rarely what we want to hear). therefore by the time you've actually arrived in a morbid suicidal state, you look around at the world and it seems to be a very hostile place. ironically this is often because people have it in mind to help you, they just aren't you and don't understand your situation completely.
for me the answer has been to investigate everything carefully and try to dispel the defeatism. if you are "patient" you will see that most people really are willing to help you. there's simply this weird mindset where people take a lot of responsibility for you and your situation (which you might not like). thus often enough it's a weird reflection of sympathies that actually creates the illusion of hostility. that's why the best advice is to approach each interpersonal interaction carefully and patiently and try to get a good idea of what the other people are thinking. it's a weird observation that people are actually very opposed to other people killing themselves (and usually for good reason), and the common wisdom is that being tough on the person is the best way to prevent suicide. in fact this turns out to be true, but only works when the person begins to challenge the environment (at some level). the biggest danger in my opinion is that when you're in a suicidal mindset it's a defeatist mindset and the last idea you have is usually to try to create challenges because they seem like antagonism. so that's why my advice is to approach the situation carefully and try to see what kind of meaning people actually have with their behavior and language. almost always it will not be as hostile as it might seem, but the people are trying to foster a kind of aggressive vitality by making things hard for you.
surprisingly this really probably is the best strategy from the people looking from the outside in, but no one is perfect.
I second most of what was said before, if you want to succeed hard enough you'll likely do so. If I've learned one thing from college than it's that this world is full of people who are so dumb it hurts (similar to your SJW-example), so not being one of them should definitely give you an edge.
Btw I assume you tried to get a job as a digital artist for gaming companies like blizzard? They are supposedly working for d3, so torture monsters sounds like something they might need soon. And not just them, many medium gaming companies need digital artists for their games.
This is hard to say living in the relative social paradise that is New Zealand. Staying away from the addictives sounds like a pretty damn good idea for you. You do seem to be pretty smart so that is a positive.
Frequently in these types of situations there are government agencies or charities that can help with basic things like getting an ID sorted out. Of course getting what you really need, money, is like getting blood out of a stone, but often many helpful things can be obtained if you know where to look. The annoying thing is that finding out about this stuff is usually really difficult. Maybe try and find some Democrats to help you get registered to vote and as a side benefit (main benefit from your perspective) hopefully that will help you, or require you, to get an ID first (Democrats just love getting poor people registered). Maybe you can get the student loan organisation to send you a letter for proof of address.
Foster the part of you that is different from those around you. The goal is not to become a narcissist, but to strengthen your personal identity so you are more resistant to following the herd (the herd seems to be in danger of heading off a cliff soon, unfortunately). Summer fades, but try to spend 10-20 mins each day outside on some grass or under some trees to reflect, without anger (difficult, I know) and be away from the bugs (shit, I should do this more often myself).
If all else fails (and this is hard to say as a born-again atheist), try to find a church or church group that you can tell your problems to (this will be emotionally excruciating). The more established or older the church the better, so Catholics are best and Lutherans (IIRC) are good too. Evangelicals are right out. They could well be able to help you a bit with some real-world problems and there shouldn't be much pressure to become a believer.
The next year of your life could well be your hardest, but that kind of means that every subsequent year will be better. You seem to have already done better from your starting position than average.
The drawing looks really vivid. So you clearly have skills.
If 3D-jobs are unrealistic to get into straight away seek for jobs that at least have some minor aspect leading into that. Enough of those kind of stepping stones (in one employment or in several) will lead you to your goal eventually. And like someone said here, people easily underestimate progress they can make in 5 years.
Fuck those younger graduates and artists you're talking about. You have no way of knowing if they will be better than you or chimpanzees.
I wanted to make something with zippers or torn flesh so I decided to do a combination. After that I found it important to introduce something more on the beautiful/graceful/serene side of the spectrum to provide contrast to the darker weirder zipper-flesh and organ-things going on.
Here is my specific situation with regards to art:
So, I can draw in pencil well. I'm good at handling 3 dimensional form in a monochromatic way. The difficulty is that I lack two of the truly most fundamentally important aspects of handling 2D art (in the entertainment industry this more or less boils down to painting textures or doing Illustrations, a la Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone or books) which are, 1. Speed. You need to be FAST. Like, real fast, now I'm not inherently slow, but I'm simply not confident enough in my abilities to really get this speed going. What you need to be fast is the mindset of continuous overall paint advancement, ie. you setup the sketch, you add a rough layer of paint, you add a more refined layer, and then a more refined one until its all detailed and pretty where you want it. I'm not good at this. I will spend more time than I should designing and redesigning something in small ways that, while an improvement, are simply not worth the time investment. I also get caught up in small things that mean little to the overall image as a whole. You'll notice that many paintings for Magic: the Gathering are actually really not very finished looking, some are downright fucking abstract in nature (go look at Hallowed Fountain from Return to Ravnica, preferably in Play mat size.) The fact of the matter with image making is that you rely on the abstraction of light, shadow, and color to convey depth, emotion, action, and generally everything about the damn image. I nitpick abstractions far, far too hard, I notice them and once I notice them I will never forget them until they're changed. Its very detrimental and this sort of nit picky bullshit pervades everything, for instance I took a class on Storyboarding, so we'd learn about cuts (which I literally hadnt ever actively paid attention to) and then I began to notice cuts and it drove me mad because every time a cut was made my brain would say, "thats a cut" and interrupt my enjoyment of the movie. It kind of ruined movies for me until I spent enough time not watching movies and not storyboarding to not automatically notice the cuts anymore.
Issue numero dos is color. Color is hard, color is complex, color conveys emotion, and color is something EVERYONE expects excellency from. My problems with color are easier to deal with than my problems with speed and shit. Color is a matter of such complexity that lots of professionals actually manage to do a poor job. Heres the thing about color, color can't be thought of in a local fashion (ie. the boots are brown, the shirt is red) color needs to be thought about all within relation to itself and whats around it (just like black and white tone) If we think of tone as a 2-dimensional level of relationship from black to white then color is a 3-dimensional relationship between the visible color spectrum including black and white tone. Color exists in a complexity of relationship that noone ever really gets to understand it from a serious logical vantage point, theres too much to understand to systematically plan out a complex image system of color and tone. So what most people rely on is their intuition, or taste. Taste is obviously incredibly subjective, but think of it as relying on the part of your brain that makes you go, "that looks nice." Now this rarely is the only thing people rely on, but its what they rely on to make many decisions within their painting. They layer their taste on top of some basic aspects of color theory, such as complimentary colors.
Complimentary colors are simply the color opposite a color on the Color Wheel. So, red compliments green, blue compliments orange, yellow compliments purple, etc. Complimentary colors don't necessarily always work well together, which is where your taste comes in. Complimentary colors have a unique relationship in that they make each other "pop" in theory, so if your whole room is green then one red object is going to stand out more than say, a blue object, or a yellow object (assuming we're negating tone as a factor.) This is an effect important to designing an image because its one of the primary ways you decide where the viewer's eye is going to go. Visual contrast is just the key to designing imagery so as to control what the viewer looks at. Black next to white is more visually jarring than dark-grey against light-grey, so if you want someone to look at for instance, a pencil drawing of a sword, the blackest part butting up against the whitest part is generally what is going to get looked at first. The same goes for detail, less detail less visually jarring and less attention demanding. Color, again, works the same way, complimentary colors are going to stand out against one another. This is all the very basic information that goes into image design, not even counting things like composition or lighting (the way light works is fucking obnoxious and is probably the biggest problem I have with overthinking.) Unfortunately I have a very serious issue "feeling" my way through a painting, I really tend to be the type to logically pace through what I'm doing, I don't get a ton of emotion out of color, for me emotional reactions derive more from subject matter. This is a viable way of handling things, but its not very efficient combined with most of my problems, since I'll pace myself in logical circles of "does the light extend this far or hit this fold of fabric this way?" which mean almost absolutely nothing.
Oh, and thirdly while I'm on the subject is the primary thing that keeps me from really feeling confident in being a concept artist. Concept artists rely on being able to very rapidly shit out TONS of ideas on everything from characters, to environment props, to environments themselves. These ideas are almost never wholly original or wholly successful, but thats precisely why they shit them out in raw numbers, because among them are designs we all know and love. Did you love the Protoss LotV cinematic as much as I did? I'm willing to bet Anthony Jones (designer of the High Templar design) did a metric fuckton of designs to arrive at that point. Or maybe he didn't, Anthony Jones is very much a freelancer hired for the particular way he does thing, he doesn't have a lot of versatility but he can apply this one thing he's good at very liberally and its just hilariously visually appealing and hes exceedingly fast doing it, so hes an excellent example of someone whos technical ability, speed, and style offer up an easy package for someone to hire as a freelancer more than an in house designer (a la Samwise Didier, or Wei Wang) as they see the one thing hes offering and then hire him to do that in one place and then voila it all works out. I'm trying to think of another concept artist that has done work recently that does things in a more versatile way, but nothing is really springing to mind. Anyways, what I'm poor at is shitting out multiple ideas, I can get started with starting interesting visual premises (and lets really just forgo the use of originality, nothing is original, nothing ever will be, the only thing that truly matters is how good you are at making your audience forget whatever came before you, which is why Tolkien fantasy is hard, you see anyone do anything Tolkien-middle-ages-elves-and-dwarves-fantasy and you arrive at, "hey, thats very Tolkien) but I often fail to quickly refine that into anything. Quickly visual diarrheaing doesn't come easily to me, I can get to like 5ish ideas and then I'm dry, and anything after that is like trying to rub one out for the sixth time in the last hour, difficult, a little painful, and while you might get that last one out its not going to be very easy. I also have very severe issues in defining shapes confidently. Defining shapes in a character or image is the first layer of attention paid to it, you get your concept in mind and then you start quickly shitting away at the image in your sketchbook or something to flesh out the design to a level where its ready to be sent to modelers, or illustrators or what the fuck ever. Remember that issue I mentioned earlier about my hangups with minute things bothering the piss out of me forever? Thats also a very real issue in wanting to be a concept artist. Where I should be doing like 30 ideas in quick succession I get hung up on the small refinements and this isn't wholly wrong, but the mentality of perfectionism that it comes from is a serious detriment to this line of work.
And then the final issue is that EVERY fucking person wants to be a concept artist. People with brilliant minds, people with shallow, depthless minds, EVERYONE wants to be the person who designs characters for a living (environments too but to a sadly far lesser extent.) All of the SJW-y types were all wanting to be concept artists, which is why they were so asinine to me, noone would ever hire a concept artist, whose main job is to be a thinker, who places arbitrary limitations on what they thing is appropriate to be drawn or painted.
And the final nail in this whole coffin is that I'm just not particularly good at painting itself, I'd practice more but my laptop doesn't really manage Photoshop anymore, so I'm left with more or less just working with pencil, which is good but doesn't really allow me to flesh out a portfolio that would ever come close to passing any threshold for any gaming studio.
So, now that we've established why I'm not particularly fit at the moment to be an illustrator or concept artist we can move on to my difficulties with 3D.
Let's forget my aging, dying laptop for just a moment.
I have one program I am proficient with, Autodesk's Maya.
This program is a massive catch all animation program that can handle modeling, lighting, textures, etc.
I have one program that is an absolute industry standard that I know a little about, Pixelogic's Zbrush.
Zbrush is a nightmare program of such complexity that its often said that if you have to ask why something is the way it is in Zbrush the only real answer is, "well, it just is?"
I can do a number of simple things with Zbrush, and I own several excellent tutorials about how to do things in Zbrush in a professional environment. However, whats lovely about Zbrush (and all fucking 3D program) is that when something in it breaks I am incapable of knowing what went wrong, why it went wrong, or how to fix it.
For instance, I've been wondering forever how to make belts in Zbrush. I know the tool, but it doesn't behave anything like it does in my Zbrush as it does in the Zbrushs of every professional tutorial I own. I do not know why, nothing I look up seems to work or help, and noone I know has any answers because its Zbrush. Zbrush resists my attempt to learn it through it's arcane systems. These same arcane systems are why its an industry standard of excellency, but they make learning it highly enigmatic and it tends to lead toward people figuring out janking "eh, its good enough" solutions. What I do love about Zbrush is that it makes sculpting feel very much like drawing, I can draw well so I can sculpt pretty well in Zbrush, but while I can make a nude human figure with relative ease, putting clothes on it in a way suitable to videogames, or adding accessories, or adding and retopologizing hair is a little out of my league. So I have this good thing I have with Zbrush and Maya and I like doing them, most people HATE doing all of the technical bullshit in 3D programs, but I like it. The problem is I'm struggling to seriously learn it because 1. I have no help, at RISD almost noone knew enough about Zbrush to troubleshoot it, and when I mean almost noone I actually mean literally noone. The internet isn't very helpful either for numerous understandable reasons.
And now we can jump back to my dying laptop and not only is my ability to understand why Zbrush does things hampered, but its actually impossible to learn it while my laptop is unable to properly handle it.
Now thats its own cup of tea to deal with, what I haven't even begun to learn is:
Topogun, for creating retopologized models (taking huge polygon sculptures and making them suitable for use in games) Substance Painter, for painting on UVs (the skin of the model, that the texture is applied to) Applying normal maps, or any maps really, every time I try it fails for a reason I never really understand (normal maps are maps made from the high poly sculpture that is applied to the low poly model to give it the appearance of a higher polycount) The entire process of texturing is something I fuck up every single time I try ever. UV unwrapping (taking the skin on the model and flattening it into a 2D image to paint on) is done either heinously tediously in Maya or I can't do it period at all.
So basically what I can do is make Zbrush sculptures that have no clothing or texture, no low poly form, and are lacking in so many of the things necessary in the entertainment industry that I would be entirely useless to any team I was thrust into.
Thats without the issue of requiring a top notch portfolio that will DEFINITELY require that I am not only capable of doing all of these things, but that I am at least capable of being proficient at them, if not an actual expert.
Not to mention 3D programs are unlike painting programs where Photoshop is just the king forever, 3D programs come and go and theres new shit to learn yearly. Basically being a 3D artist is hard and technical and complicated and I have serious issues working through the technical complications of it all so I wind up being stonewalled with regards to learning the software. I probably would still be confused by Maya if I didnt have a professor who had worked with Maya literally since it was released. Even he admitted that sometimes Maya does inexplicable things for inexplicable reasons (like all 3D programs)
I wish I had a workstation and the time to really sit down and work on this stuff, I find Zbrush to be absolutely entrancing, once I get into Zbrush its the exact ideal kind of trance state that lets time just float on by. I want to pursue it, I want to learn everything I can, but I can't and it irritates me, I feel like I found my niche, my crack into the video games industry, but getting into that crack requires the help of Zbrush, and Topogun, and Maya/3DS Max and Substance Painter, and Photoshop, and Marmoset and I'm still stuck at Zbrush. I'm not even to the point of learning workflow methods that make the process more efficient (a true necessity in the games industry) I'm stuck on trying to understand the complexities of the software. I know one day I might get proficient, but I feel stonewalled as fuck, I dunno how I'm supposed to get all of this knowledge, professionals are too busy to help (I've emailed professionals, believe me) and my ability to learn shit at school has expired, the internet is only so helpful and I'm unable to actually go in and figure it out for myself. Its frustrating.
This turned out to be an exceptionally long art blog.
If speed is a major problem I'd try scribbling a lot. Read a book or watch a movie, and just try to draw a scene in 10 minutes so that someone who looks at it gets the gist of it. I think it's important to stop after 10 minutes and use the frustration of the unfinished picture for your next try. You also don't need your laptop for that. I think if you do it with more abstract descriptions that also helps with your third problem.
I think the main factor behind storyboards and sketching is reducing details to the absolute minimum while still keeping it useful. You likely don't need me to tell you that, but if you actively draw with a clock ticking in the background and a short timer that will probably help.
I'm by no means a good digital artist (I do some sprites for a university project of us and am terribly slow), so take my words with a grain of salt.
Colors are fucking hard btw, I'm colorblind so i mostly work with rbg, which is a huge pain in the ass. Not that I'd be proficient enough to do stuff like hallowed fountain and the forest from Martiniere anyways. Still loving a lot of the Ravnica land design.