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Behind the Scenes: My Path in 3D Art and Future Plans
🕑 Added 2024-11-06 12:02:55 +0000 UTCHey Patreons!
Thank you for the continued support – it really means a lot to me!
You might have noticed that I haven’t uploaded anything in a while. There are a few reasons for this, which I’ll explain here. I also want to share my story with you – how I got started with Blender, landed my first job, and what happened over the past two years that led me to upload on YouTube and eventually here on Patreon.
Before starting, I wanted to mention, that I've recently released all of my Gumroad Products for my Tier 2 Patreon Supporters. This Includes my Custom Planet Addon, Planetary HDRIs, Planet Pack and Spaceship Model Kit.
With that said, this will probably be a bit of a long read!
My Story:
I’ve been working with Blender for over 10 years now – wow, time flies! I started when I was just 14 or 15, I’m not exactly sure (I was born in 1999). Even before that, I was always creating things. As a kid, I loved playing with Legos, though my family didn’t have much money, so most of our Lego came from cousins or secondhand. My twin brother and I were huge Lego Star Wars fans, but since those sets were so expensive, we had to buy the cheaper ones with our own pocket money. Some of our friends had the bigger sets, so we’d play with theirs and even borrow them sometimes.
At one point, we got an old camera from our aunt, and that’s when we started making stop-motion Lego Star Wars movies. We didn’t have software like After Effects back then, so we added laser blasts and lightsabers frame by frame using Paint. It was time-consuming, but we loved it. Looking back, that was probably my first step into the creative digital world. We even uploaded some of those videos to YouTube, and they’re still up today! Though finding them will be difficult, since they don’t have a lot of views.
In 2014, I watched a lot of YouTube, especially gaming videos. One German group of creators, in particular, inspired me – they looked like they were having so much fun and actually making it their job. Like a lot of people my age, I wanted to become a YouTuber too. So, my twin brother and I started recording ourselves playing video games on a pretty bad laptop. We didn’t upload anything, but we recorded a lot! Since we couldn’t afford screen capture software, we just set up our old camera in front of the screen and did our best to avoid reflections.
Why am I telling you this? Well, back then, it was popular to add a quick intro to videos with the channel name and some unnecessary loud music. While searching for ways to make one of those, I stumbled across Blender. I really liked that it was free, since I wasnt able to buy anything online at the time. Even if I had had the money.
Some people were offering free Blender files that let you just type in your channel name and press render. But I wanted to make my own, so I started watching tutorials on how to do it myself.
I’m not even sure why I kept going with Blender, because it took years before I could make anything decent, and I was working on an ancient laptop. But somehow, using Blender was more fun for me than gaming. So after getting a little better (still within the first two years), I decided to create a YouTube channel focused on Blender content. I even uploaded a few videos, though I eventually deleted them.
At some point, I became almost completely focused on Star Wars projects in Blender. That was what kept me motivated all those years – the dream of creating a full Star Wars scene, maybe even a short movie. Since I wanted to make everything myself, I would usually start by modeling the spaceship I wanted in the scene. I’d spend months modeling and texturing each one, but often, by the end, I didn’t have the motivation to do a full scene. So over the years, I mostly kept modeling stuff.
Fast forward to 2019. I’d finished school in 2018 and decided to take a year off to focus on improving my Blender skills. I already knew I wanted to work with Blender professionally, and my first idea was to work in a VFX studio since I’m a huge fan of TV shows and movies. But I didn’t feel ready for that yet, so I decided to go to university and study media computer science in Berlin. After one semester (six months), though, I realized it wasn’t for me – it was mostly math and theory, with very little creative work. This was early 2020, right when COVID hit.
During the semester break, the first lockdown started, and since university classes were going online and everything changed, I decided to quit uni and try to get a job in a VFX studio instead. I spent that year (while everyone was mostly at home anyway) building my modeling portfolio. I even started using Maya, since that’s the industry standard.
Here a video from that time of me creating the HMS Victory in Maya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kct3GxweVI
In the summer of 2021, I was lucky enough to get a job at Pixomondo as a modeling artist, working on House of the Dragon, Ant-Man, and other projects.
This was the Reel that got me an internship, which turned into a traineeship, wich turned into a junior position: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FmAmYK2spA
I moved from Berlin to Stuttgart into a nice apartment near a lake. Unfortunately, this only lasted until the end of 2022. Due to a lack of projects, there were several rounds of layoffs, and I was eventually affected too. The whole industry in Germany and probably the rest of the world was struggling, so getting a new VFX job was nearly impossible. I ended up taking a part-time job at a warehouse just to cover my bills, but I didn’t enjoy it at all.
Looking for alternatives, I remembered Ian Hubert’s Patreon and how he was able to work on his own projects, while still getting paid for it. So I decided to make videos for my new YouTube channel again, which I’d started a few months earlier. The first video was this btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIrI0XR1wA
The first videos did not get more then 100 views, and very few reached 1000. First this tutorial went a bit viral, giving me 30k view over a few days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5EfAf9yAhw
This helped all my other videos as well, though after that it was still hard to reach more then 1k views. The interesting thing is, that videos oftentimes take a while to pick up views. Sometimes they are online for months, before somehow getting a boost in views. Similar with this video, which took over 1 month to finally take off.
With around 765k view at the time of writing, it is my most watched video by far.
Around that time, I also began developing my first Blender add-on, which I could sell. I didn’t know Python, so my twin brother helped me with that part. When releasing it, the initial sales weren’t huge, but enough to cover my rent. Since I was really unhappy with my part time job, I quickly quit that, thinking with more time available, I could grow that income.
Unfortunately, the add-on sales dropped after a while. I tried to create other products, which did not sell as well.
So eventually I had to move out of my apartment and back to my parents’ house in November 2023, since I could not afford the rent anymore. Back home, I worked on my portfolio, learned new programs, and tried to get back into a VFX studio. But in May 2023, the Hollywood writers' strike had begun, which affected job opportunities even more, with more layoffs happening. Even though the strikes ended by the end of 2023, it was expected to take a few months for the industry to recover.
During this time, I did some small freelance work for various clients, but it wasn’t very well-paid, and I eventually stopped making YouTube videos because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Since I was focused on earning and getting back on my feet, there was a lot of pressure on these Videos making some views and getting people to buy my stuff. I just looked at good ways to market my products, without doing the stuff I was actually motivated to do. At some point I simply stopped producing any YouTube Videos.
In the early summer, I was really struggling with how I should continue, and wondering if I made the right decision to pursue my 3D career.
But then, a smaller animation studio working on a video game trailer reached out to me. The art director had come across my videos and thought I’d be a good fit for the project.
Suddenly I was earning good money with work, I actually enjoyed. Even though the Project was canceled midway through, it opened the door for other freelance opportunities.
As of now, I’ve been freelancing for about four months, and I’m really enjoying it so far. Its not all great, since I’m currently out of work, but I’m in talk with other clients atm, giving me hope that this is actually a good path I’m on.
Since most clients found my stuff on YouTube, I really got inspired to do start uploading to youtube again. Currently I have multiple Videos in the works, where one is already uploaded here on patreon to my paid supporters.
I started this Patreon a few months ago, right before I got the big freelance gigs. So I did not have much time to really get started with patreon, figuring out what to share on here. Still, there were a few people that supported me even though I did not upload anything. As a thanks, I recently shared all my Gumroad products for the Tier 2 Supporters. That includes my Custom Planet Addon, Planetary HDRIs, Planet Pack and Spaceship Model Kit.
For a different project, I recently created a quick pack of 2D clouds, which I’m going to share on here eventually.
I’m still thinking of creating a Discord server for all my Paid Patreon members.
Recently I had the Idea to create new Tier for people interested in some sort of mentorship. This would not be this one on one mentorship some artists do, which includes personal lessons and stuff, but rather a “I’m here if you need help with your project” kind of thing.
I don’t want it to take all of my free time, but I like helping people individually.
If any of you support other artists on Patreon and have ideas about what I could offer here (especially things that don’t necessarily involve creating more videos), I’d love to hear from you.
Thank you for reading this! Any feedback is appreciated.
Wishing you a great day!
