EYE TRAINING: CROSS-TRAINING
Perhaps the most important thing I learned in college was the power of study habits. I hope the breakdown of my post-college study habits for compositing in VFX is helpful!
“Cross-training is athletic training in sports other than the athlete's usual sport. The goal is improving overall performance. It takes advantage of the particular effectiveness of one training method to negate the shortcomings of another.” - wikipedia
I’m taking a painting class on Schoolism, and my favorite quote from that class that best sums up my training routine for compositing in VFX is: ”Even when I’m not painting, I’m painting.” This to me means that I’m always thinking about how what I’m currently doing can apply to help me achieve my larger goal: with cross-training. This is not to say that I don’t have side hobbies that have nothing to do with visual effects, but I did structure a main rotation of hobbies that would keep me focused on skill building largely to benefit my visual effects goals. Some hobbies were unintentionally added to the rotation without initially having a direct link to VFX, but I keep them in the rotation because they do have cross-training value.
A rotation of main hobbies keeps the overall training from getting stale. And if you want to learn with new hobbies, I find it best to first learn how you learn! That way you can best design your hobby rotation to fit your learning style and attention span. Below I listed my hobby/study rotation I go through throughout the year (Not including exercises I do directly related to compositing in VFX):
ACTIVE WATCHING
This hobby might seem the most passive, but watching movies/tv is one of my favorite ways to eye train, especially with genre variety. VFX is not a requirement for the movies or shows.
Recently watched: Mamma Mia, Batman Forever, The Rocketeer, X-men: Dark Phoenix
Overlap with compositing:
Building a mental or digital library of images that strike you or seem uncanny
Understanding camera and actor blocking
Graphic Design
Logos I made at the end of 2019:
Overlap with compositing:
Knowing how to compose hierarchy of information
Knowing how to simplify an idea and get a clear, graphic reading
KEYART DESIGN
My key art designs from 2018-2019 using 2D and 3D:
Overlap with compositing:
Knowing how to relight characters for more appeal
Learning which colors and color values to adjust for more appeal
PAINTING
Rough master copy paintings focusing on matching shapes and picking color by eye:
Overlap with compositing:
Being able to match colors by eye
Building a better eye for seeing positive and negative shapes
Understanding light and surfaces
PHOTOGRAPHY
Overlap with compositing:
Understanding exposure
Understanding lens flares
Building an eye for looking for elements that would create a “finaled” frame
PROGRAMMING
This isn’t exactly a hobby because part of my job involves programming, but I do find it extremely helpful for my artistic development.
Overlap with compositing:
Building a script with other people in mind, keeping your work clean
Building shortcuts to make repetitive workflows faster
WRITING
Meta moment! Writing a blog to mentally process or expand on what you’ve learned or want to learn has been crucial for my artist growth.
Overlap with compositing:
Making mental connections between related concepts
Learning to articulate concepts to an audience
Broadening my sources for reference
This is certainly not a roadmap to following the same end goal I have because every person is different. My creative background is design-heavy, so It’s always something that I’ll return to for eye-training. But if you’re looking for a way to improve, try to map out exercises that could fill in the knowledge gaps of what you ultimately want to learn! The process for me was slow. since I certainly didn't learn all of these skills in the same year. So, be patient and rotate if something gets too boring :)
Happy studying!