Okay my digital darlings, I want to share some advice in this thread for new #gameart-ists, and talk about something I wish I had been told as a fresh faced newbie.

It's about attachment.

Something I want you to be aware of, and prepare for, is your work to be thrown out.

Your precious artwork will be deleted, lost, cut, edited, replced, painted over or obscured.

It doesn't happen a couple of times in your career, it happens all the time.

No matter how good you are or how brilliant you think it is, this will happen.

Often.

Nobody really talks about this, so I meet a lot of young artists who take it badly.

They take it personally. Some of them act like assholes. Some fall apart. They can be derailed and their morale blown to bits.

I know because it was me too. I cried for hours first time.

So here is the deal.

When this happens, take a deep breath, pick up your stylus, sit down at your desk, boot your computer and set about the next task with all the enthusiam and love of the job you put into the last peice. The one that nobody will ever see now.

And the peice you are working on? That may get cut or ruined too. And the next, and the next, and the next.

Becaue it happens all the time.

Know this: your worth as a person is not in your artwork.

You earned that money and honed your craft. You made something good.

Now let it go, and do the next one just as good.

Let it go. Stay loose, stay focused on doing your job.

I say it again: your worth as a person is not in your artwork.

That time is NOT wasted. You practiced. You got paid. You can be proud of that.

Let it go.

Always be brave enough to create with no attachment. Your mental health, your team's morale and the project are far more important than losing it over work nobody will ever see.

If you link your self worth to your work being worshipped and praised, you are heading for an epic crash.

Games get cancelled all the time. Years of work will vanish.

Let it go. Its a shame. Move on.

Don't believe me?

What if I told you I designed a main character in Assasins Creed 1 and she was cut?

Or that I spent a week detailing the armour and medallions on the emperor character for Civilization IV's opening cinematic that ultimately was seen from the back?

Or that I made three cinematic characters for The Dragonage Origins launch trailer, but two of them were cut due to running time?

Or that I spent weeks and weeks styling the hair of the Gods for the God Of War: Chains of Olypus TV cinematic, working with the director to get the hair just so
.. only to have the camera whip past them so fast they were motion blurred out?

Or that I worked on a version of Lord of The Rings Online that nobody will ever see?
(I worked on the one after too that got released)

Or that I created 3D environments for a cancelled Ultima project?

After 24 years, I have a lot of cut content, cancelled projects and things that got changed to where I disliked them.

It happens. It WILL happen.

Brace yourself. Learn to disconnect yourself from your work and be able to focus it onto the next asset.

You will be happier.

You are doing a job. That job is making cools shit. So make it. Get paid. Move on.

You will win some, you will lose some, some asshole will ruin some.

Ho hum. Welp, that was a shame. But I got paid to practice. What is next?

I hope that helps you. I hope you needed to hear that.

Your self esteem shouldn't be based on the approval of every single thing you do. If it is, do other stuff after hours, get some help and guidance, look to your friends. Build a you that can withstand these cuts.

But ultimately, work on yourself. Everything you do, explore it, try to learn and grow. The product isn't the artwork, the product is you, the artist.

Nothing, therefore, is wasted.

I hope that helps. Have a lovely night.

Ps. I made Rocsteady's first ever Batman model for their pitch to DC. Not the one in the game, but the one to show they could do the license justice.

You will never see it.

I made Fallout Online characters you will never see, because it was for another company.

Wanna see my take on Optimus Prime that I made for a game?

Tough shit. The game didn't get picked up. I don't own the rights. You will never see it.

Wanna see my work on the film Australia? The digital set extensions I made?

Tough. Baz didn't like the physical set, tore it down and rebuilt it, so my digital sets had to be redone from scratch- but I had already moved onto another project.

Gone. Lost. Nope.

*Rocksteady.

Get the point?

Soak it in. Deal.

Have an awesome career!

Reasons your work will vanish

1) project cancelled by executive decision.

2) project cancelled after market research shows it won't recoup further investment.

3) everyone fired due to real estate on studio spiking and being worth more than game.

4) one exec trying to fuck over another exec.

5) an exec absconds overseas with the funds, taking the project with them after breaking into studio to download it usb drives.

You know who you are.

6) exec has gambling problem

7) someone on your team is insecure and needs to trample your work to prove to themselves they are superior.

8) the level won't download in time to meet publisher approval, so some content needs to be deleted to shave off a few seconds otherwise nobody gets paid.

9) idiots

10) catastrophic server failure.

11) It's great, but doesn't fit with everything else.

12) It's great but it would get the game banned in China.

13) it isn't as good as you think it is, and it needs to be very good for marketing/publisher impressing reasons.

14) design change

15) AI gets stuck on it. Needs to be simplified.

16) Someone has a better idea. (Always, always let go of your version and cheer on the better idea)

17) the director changed the camera angle.

18) it wasn't actually ever needed and a communication error happened

19) politics

Notice that you are not the issue on any of these. Even the "it wasn't good enough".

If your client wants changes and are paying, accept that, ask for how they want it improved and what their criteria are, and try to hit that for them. They will usually respect that.

I have had all my hard work attributed to a guy, and been told I was useless by an executive who kept changing his mind every few minutes on his wanky personal project.

I have landed multi million dollar contracts and been fired afterwards because they wanted a cisgender person

Learning to let go is important.

But, after all that darkness, I have done an awful lot of cool stuff, worked with some amazing people, seen my work on the cover of every gaming magazine, seen it on billboards, got fan mail, worked on several games of the year, toured the world, did live shows, and got paid.

Okay, off to bed for realz now.

If you wanna buy me a coffee, I will gladly drink it. http://Www.ko-fi.com/dellak 

(There are no typos in this thread, some of the letters are just cut content.)

:p