Hours of watching tutorials from Youtube and ArtStation gave more insights on my art journey. I used to see it as a linear path as becoming good at digital illustration would open some gates that make it easier to do concept art, environment designs, and 3D because they rely on some basic sense of rendering form from the real world.
Two major routes artists usually end up choosing with their art journey are choosing to do art for self expression vs choosing to do art suited to an industry niche. The former favors those that do this stuff for a hobby and people who live by freely expressing their art with little commercial influence. The latter requires being familiar and obedient with the industry set of rules.
When creating art for your own sake, you're not constrained with what your client wants to see. You're not minding a contract that pays you to deliver. You are your own agent free to create however you please. And if by some means you have gathered some patrons, all the better to make a living out of it.
Being a digital illustration under contract means being subject to deadlines, paychecks on demand, and thinking within the boundaries expected with whatever art industry niche you're in. I'm just generalizing this but there's a lot of areas for illustrators to be in the industry. But that's the general gist.
With this in mind, some bit of reflecting did me some good. While I was inspired by art derived from the gaming industry as my baseline, I confused that as the route to take when I just wanted to create something as good as those but with more freedom.
Still far from the the end goals I have placed on myself but at least I got a more chill outlook on my pacing now.
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