I´ve been pretty busy lately (pretty much these three last months) getting into All sorts of different softwares that will help me be more creative, and removing loads of the obstacles that I´ve felt are in the way. The huge one is Time. Obviously as a freelance artist, dad to two little boys and a husband, I have little to no time to focus on portfolio and my own art. Wrong. Well, almost wrong. Lately I´ve been using my 3 hours in the evening to get stuff done tho it comes at the expense of not being able to hang out with my best friend in life (my wife, if you didnt get it already.
SO!
That leads me to learning procedural generation using Houdini and damn, it´s a tough one to learn. I would not say that I´ve managed it 100% but I´m slowly getting there. Another program I´ve dwelt in a lot is World Creator 2. A program where I can very fast and very beautifully create a highmap for Unreal. Unreal Marketplace for SkyDomes and Water. Amazing. Speedtree for creating fast trees. Amazing. Quixel Mixer to buy and blend materials. Amazing. Quixel Megascans for populating portfolio pieces very fast....amazing.....with a But.
My main concern lately with using already created assets was the FAKE Artist stamp that kept repeating in my head. I didnt feel authentic and like a real artist when I first started using them. But, as I was sculpting my third mountain wall with jagged edges it struck me. Who the fuck cares. Nothing in the industry when it comes to photorealism is authentic. I mean, do we really think AAA-artists create their own stone textures using their brush? No. They get their textures from either google, make en tileable and generate the maps from that. Or they grab them from Substance Source, Quixel Store and from all different places. There is basically nothing authentic when it comes to photorealism. Unless you yourself want to travel all around the world gathering photos and using a photogrammetry program to generate a mesh.
It all comes down to How you use what you bought to compose the image, the art and the mood. Combining it with you Some of you´re self created art to create something spectacular. Just using a bought asset won´t get you anywhere. You as an artist still have to create an interesting narrative for your art piece and no money in the world can buy you that.
So, I gave up thinking like a failure.
I spent an evening working on my new project, still wip, and I´ll finish it tonight. Two rocks and one foliage.