Interesting times ahead
Although we are at a time that there is a lot of understandable fear. The Corona Virus will affect most of us. But It is also a great time to set aside a new set of priorities of what can we do to make the most advantage of this opportunity with this isolation.
Most people might think: We can catch up on Netflix, Stan, Finish our video games. And although it might sound great at first, I would instead seek to delve into discovering or re-discovering past hobbies to enter in a more creative realm of making.
These hobbies can be comprised of things such as writing, art, making music, yoga, etc. Me however I’ll see if I can grasp doing art almost as a hobby on my spare time.
There are several learning pathways I will try to focus on these dire times while I also try to find some remote work.
I will focus on learning how to be a Mid Level User with Blender. I think Autodesk with its yearly updates and focus on monetizing products with an emphasis on monopolizing as much creative software as possible has blinded them on being inventive at making their products better. Their software is buggy, slow, clunky, ugly, irresponsive.
Blender instead provides more tools that are better at a much faster rate. And it is free.
The next line of software that I would like to practice and be comfortable with is Speed Tree. Doing vegetation from scratch takes a lot of time and begin able to create procedurally with Nodes is a huge advantage. Considering that you can have multiple versions with the same type of tree, it is no brainer that to be a good environment artist it is almost a requisite.
Although you would think that after Blender and Speed Tree I would have enough to learn, I also have Mari in mind. I think it is important to be comfortable with this package. Also I’ll try to draw and practice anatomy on the side.
Stay safe, look after each other and make sure to wash your hands.