I always mean to post here more. I don’t really get round to it enough, though. I’ve currently got it named Riya’s NPR Log, but I do mean for this blog to be more than just about that. It’s good to talk about how things are going, thoughts on things, etc. Nobody is listening, but it is good to write it out.

I’ve been very frustrated recently. With my sculpting, and art capability in general. I actually started getting back into 3D several years ago, after I met Millie. Her art is very cute. It inspired me to want to make some myself, but I can’t draw. 3D is all I’m good for, and even that is marginal. I hate myself. After all that time, what I can show for myself is…Very little. I always felt inferior. Looking around at what everyone else was making, they were…Vastly superior to me. My best was utterly insufficient next to their “sketches”. It still is. I’ve been working hard all this time to improve, and I have made progress…But I want to be better than this. I always feel “It’s not good enough yet“. It’s such a frustrating feeling….That, always, always, if I could get that one more thing, I would be satisfied. That the flood gates would open and I’d be able to do so much. But it never comes. The goalposts are always moving. Shaders/art style, mesh quality, anatomical accuracy, efficiency…I wonder why I hold them over my head so much. But somehow, I got into the habit, and it’s difficult to stop.

Everything I make, I feel crippled on. All I can seem to see is what’s wrong with it. I want to finish more things, but I can’t stop thinking about the myriad ways in which they’re lacking. That they don’t do justice to what I was trying to depict, or aren’t good enough to be seen. I really wonder how to fix this. I’ve been trying hard to improve my skills, but every time I improve, I end up feeling like what I did before wasn’t good enough, and thinking of a higher bar for what’s “acceptable”. There’s no such thing as “good enough”, or “good”; just things I can stand, for a little while, to call done. And then never want to see again because I’ll see all the errors and inadequacies.

I really don’t know how to fix myself. I wonder when I became such a perfectionist. I feel like a letdown. But I’m tired. I’m sick of being that one thing away from being good enough.

I really like to sculpt. I enjoy it. Anatomy is interesting. There’s a lot of diversity in people’s appearances. I like to learn about different NPR techniques and try applying them to the styles I want to create and replicate. There are lots of things I want to sculpt and render. But I really wish I could feel like anything I made was right, good enough or decent.