Our Art Director, Jan, shares his insights on the skills needed by CG artists. What are the struggles of juniors? Is self-learning enough or is a mentor a must? What is the difference between a good artist and a great artist?
You meet a lot of junior artists. Is there anything they struggle with in general?
Every person is unique and individual. Everyone has different challenges, but a common issue is either low or high self-esteem about one’s abilities. This can be addressed with the patient work of a mentor or, if working in-house, an art director. Another problem may be that the CG artist doesn’t feel color, or lacks a natural sense of visual harmony and composition. Both can be trained like a muscle, and how much time it takes is very individual.
Can a mentor or working within a team help with the latter two?
It really can, and I can show it on my journey. In the beginning I had a mentor who had great technical skills and learned all the processes and tricks – he gave me a solid foundation. Then later I had the chance to work with more artistic people. From them I learned a different approach. And in my experience, the mix of both is what you need to get great results.
What if you don’t have a mentor?
First of all, I would recommend starting somewhere in-house. There is a lot of remote collaboration in our field, but in my experience it can only be mutually beneficial if both sides are skilled enough and know each other.
Without a mentor, you can still make progress, but you are never sure that you are going in the right direction. It is natural for people to expand the skills they feel they are good at. And only a small percentage of people will also focus on the skills they struggle with. A good mentor will push you to expand and work on all aspects of yourself.
The one thing I can generally recommend to juniors, with or without a mentor, is to absorb as much art as possible. For example, go to ArchDaily and search for and look at photographs of architecture. It is a huge library of very diverse projects from all over the world. So far, I enjoy going through it, looking at the images and being inspired. I still do the research before we start a new project. And since I have been doing this for years, I have my own photo gallery in my head.
What skill or mindset separates a good CG artist from a great one?
In my experience, people who can think many steps ahead make better archviz images. To me, creating something in 3Ds Max is like a game of chess: you have to be aware of what the move you are making now means for the next ten moves. If you screw up at the beginning, you will lose later and have to go back to the beginning.
A lot of repeated starts can certainly take the wind out of your sails…
And we are back to low self-esteem. It is okay to mess up, we all have and we all will. This is literally how we learn. The key is to learn from it. If a junior CG artist messes up, I will show them what went wrong and how to do it differently. But I expect them to try to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. This is how a CG artist learns to think analytically and strategically. The more they focus on that, the faster they will learn the processes and the better they will be able to create their own. And that is an extreme life hack, no plugin will ever replace that.
You mentioned that a good mentor cultivates all aspects of a CG artist. What else do you look for?
They may be a chess master at modeling, but lack the ability to perfect the image graphically. Others will struggle with modeling, but compositing and lighting will come naturally.
Some might say: develop what you are good at. However, I believe that to be at least a good CG artist, you should not forget all the basics. There is plenty of time to specialize later. So I try to nurture all those skills. Encourage what comes naturally and push to practice what hurts the most. Everything can be learned and taught.
It takes a lot of energy to practice what hurts. Do you experience a lack of motivation?
I think this applies to any field. There are people who do a job just as a job, and that’s fine. Then there are people who take their job as a hobby or as a mission. Both can do an excellent job, but only one will do the extra.
Creating archviz is one of those jobs that you really can’t leave behind in your office. That means it really depends on what the CG artist does after working hours as well. For me, the best approach to grow, learn and get better is to expand the skill set evenly. Practice modeling, work with textures, play with lighting, plus do the extra: when they come home, they still have the interest to learn, watch videos, explore inspiration. A person who does this extra will of course grow faster than the CG artist who doesn’t put in the work to educate themselves. There is only so much we can do in the studio/office.
What if this extra motivation leads to burnout?
This is where mentors come in again. Any motivated person can drain their energy too quickly because they are just enjoying the process so much. My job as an art director is to feel the difference between the artists on the team and help them navigate and even slow down. As a mentor and leader of people, the key is to know what skills the artists have, develop the strong ones, point out the weak ones, and motivate them to improve without draining all their creativity and energy.
This article is part of our effort to support and help the archviz community. The knowledge we share is based on our experience; yours can differ, and we would love to hear your opinion and feedback at marketing@monolot.studio.
