3D art came to me during the pandemic, back in 2020. I can’t remember exactly how, but one day in early 2020, I ran across a commercial or ad online about zBrush, the 3D sculpting software. I gave the trial a try and was immediately hooked, the same way I got hooked on web and graphic design back in 2009. The extension of that feeling, the freedom it incited in my soul, immediately resonated with me in a way I’ve felt before, albeit less than a handful of times. And so, I began with the free trial of zBrush. As I searched for answers to various challenges that I came across in trying to learn 3D sculpting, I came across other programs, such as Blender and Unreal Engine. Blender was, and had been, open source, and as of the previous 5 years, Unreal had been free to use for indie developers. Of course, I found this out after dropping $1k on zBrush’s perpetual license, but hey, sometimes you just gotta roll with it, right?

Since then, Blender and Unreal have been my new best friends. For the past year and a half, it’s been a genuine joy to continue down a path of self-enrichment through education (in something I actually love). Some days are worse than others, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

And it was this very path that brought me to my most recent endeavor, which is AI art. I came across AI art by way of social media and jumped into an open beta of Midjourney. Having been self-taught, I never really did get a good handle of translating 3D into 2D… the perspectives were always my kryptonite. Midjourney removes easily 80% of those kinds of issues, laying out such wonderful foundations that already have perspective, light and shadow baked in. It’s truly amazing and I can’t wait to see how these three disciplines (Midjourney, Blender and Unreal) lend to one another in the future.

Looking back, I can definitely say that I, and any other self-made digital artist, would benefit from a well-reviewed and well vetted course on whatever subject they have a passion for. Platforms like Skillshare are amazing for learning at your own pace, and even though plenty can be gleaned from YouTube, I would definitely recommend saving some money, doing your due diligence in reviewing the course you want to level up in, and taking the plunge. Structured education can go a long way… Just as far or even farther than formal education like universities or whatnot.

In my particular case, I found one of my most essential skills in my journey has been my natural attentiveness to detail, and also a natural affinity for pushing through hurdles and roadblocks. An old mentor of mine called it “stick-to-it-ness”. Fortunately for me, I developed that skill at a young age. Coupled with the fact that I have a genuine passion for my craft, I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better journey to take through life.

The biggest obstacle that stood in my way of learning more was time and energy. My primary skill set is web and graphic design, and between attending to my own clients, as well as contracting my services to various marketing firms in order to get these bills paid, it proved to be a bit of a challenge finding time to delve into 3D modeling and AI art. Although the latter is far easier to get into, the former has been a 2-year journey that I’m nowhere near the end of. However, for me, I find great joy in that. I feel grateful to have managed to, at the worst, align myself and my skills to a set of disciplines that I do genuinely enjoy, which is web and graphic design, and at best, “have” to spend good portions of my day doing something I love to do, am really good and doing and have been doing for over a decade now. This combination of factors has proven to be medicinal to my soul and mental health, and I’d recommend a similar path to anyone, regardless of their discipline. Do what you love. Stick to it. Get good. Find a way to make money by doing it.

I got into my industry by working for an old surly mentor back in 2008, who sold petrochemical directories. He used to make table-based websites and had taken me on as a seasonal worker, and then kept me on because he recognized my value, with all due humility. An old client came around, needing help with a website and he bought one single book called the Missing Manual for Dreamweaver CS5, and then passed me the baton. That book taught me html and css and the basics of web building. I then went to work for a major hosting company, and learned how to host and maintain websites. Then I worked for a marketing firm and learned how to extrapolate metrics from websites and help them rank for various keywords.

This chapter took about 5 years, and at the end, I could build, host, maintain, market and rank websites for clients. Since we’re being honest, I was quite pleased with my progress. I eventually got shafted out of the job at the marketing firm over a series of ridiculous decisions by the boss, which of course cemented my dedication to working for myself. I will say that as surly as that old mentor was, he was an entrepreneur of 20+ years, and I definitely learned that mentality from him, which I’ll always be thankful for.

I would dare say that if you’re able to, find a way to sit under an entrepreneur who’s been in the game a while and is still kicking. I’m a huge proponent of entrepreneurship, and unfortunately for a lot of us, that mentality is not taught. Instead, we are taught to be employees. For a great many people, that’s a fine position to commit to, but if you’ve ever had a sense of unease working for someone else and not having your own thing to at least fall back on, your own dreams to work on, your own passions to dive into and monetize, then you probably have an entrepreneurial spirit at heart, and I’d highly recommend you follow that thread.

As it stands now, I offer managed website solutions for business owners who need it. With all humility, I’m quite proud of the range of service I can offer with my own two hands, web and graphic design, SEO and marketing consultation, product and personnel and facility photography and videography, 3D product visualizations, concept art, and coming soon, cinematic grade vfx for commercial use. Being versed in these disciplines allows me to not only offer them to some degree to my clients, but also manage a team, if need be, to take on any project of any size. I am very proud of this, and I hope that anyone I have the honor of working with, whether client or teammate, knows that I am committed to my craft and will always be here to serve them to the best of my ability. If I’m breathing, I’m doing this.

Growing up, my parents were very keen on the idea of protecting knowledge of one’s business and craft practices, but in a very disproportionate manner. I got the sense from them that the knowledge I had obtained about anything I learned to do, that could make me money, I should keep it under lock and key.

I remember stupidly carrying that with me up until I learned Photoshop back in 2008. It didn’t take long for the hypocrisy of my thought process to become glaringly evident. How could I deign to keep my skills to myself when my best friend was answering every question I had and even more so, countless people had taken to the interwebs to post tutorials on how they made their incredible work?

I remember that week being a bit of a turning point in my mentality, and in no small way. I was humbled by my foolishness, yet grateful that I hadn’t quite had the chance to make a fool of myself in this regard. Suffice it to say, I dropped that mentality like the bad habit it was.

I believe NFT’s are largely misunderstood and also highly susceptible to corruption and scamming. Unfortunately, we seem to be a unique crossroad in the history of NFT’s, where because it’s so new, there’s very little in the way of regulations, but also, because of the internet and social media, the news spreads faster than wildfire.

NFT’s are a perfectly legitimate technology, it’s just in my humble opinion, they don’t serve any real purpose in our physical world. NFT’s work off of the same technology that bitcoin and Ethereum work off of. The non-fungible token is basically a unique identifier that helps prove digital ownership. In the same way that one’s bitcoin cannot be counterfeited, neither can an NFT collectible. Unfortunately, the only real platform that can discern an NFT from any other digital file is an NFT marketplace, which is still a foreign concept to most, as the vast majority of people really have no need to peruse NFT marketplaces.

NFT’s as most people understand it, as a digital collectible, won’t really have much of an impact in its native format until we make the move to living the Ready Player One kind of lifestyle. Aside from that, it’s best to treat them as potential collectibles that one should always vet from a respectable marketplace, like Opensea or Rarible.