posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 11:41 PM
A year ago
I issued a challenge to myself and my fellow community members to work 1000 hours on art for the coop. Instead of re-explaining why I chose 1000, read this from last year:
I am issuing a set of challenges to myself and the community as well by creating the Thousander Club. It is based off the somewhat well-know idea that practice is just as important as talent (I read about it on the great GBGames blog) and that mastery of a skill is achieved after 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. That even 1000 hours can lead to the level of experienced expert....I will be challenging myself to dedicate 1000 hours in 2006 to creating artwork for here. That's a lot.
And, indeed, it was a lot. I topped out at 283 by year's end. A few others took up the challenge, and one,
Gianfranco from GBGames, also continued to report his hours all through the year and he should net out at just north of that, especially if he counts the full 365 days from the time he actually started. I think I could have gone as high as 350 if this had not been such a busy year for me with the arrival my third child and could have gone even higher if I had expanded my definition of what constituted valid work. It brings me to a conclusion of sorts -- that a developer/artist with real life commitments such as work, family, friends, or school can, with discipline and persistence, do about 300 - 400 hours of work on the side. This is something I'll be coming back to from time to time during the year as I examine some project management concepts in this blog.
As part of the original Thousander Club idea I threw out some other 1000-based goals for the Coop team. Here is a rundown of how it turned out.
1000 models. I overestimated this by a longshot. Basically it came down to two things. First, I ended up devoting a large chunk of my own available time to texturing and preparing files for delivery instead of adding more models to the library. Secondly, the one aspect of maintaining this project that suffered the most from my time away with my new baby was team communication and the continuance of momentum. So, as a team, we did lose some steam at times this year which cut into the final tally of models created. No big failure in my opinion, though. I just ended up thinking it would be more fruitful to deliver 60 completely textured and exported models than to throw out 1000 incomplete models. My hope is that the spirit we have espoused here will spread and the indiegame community as whole will produce 1000 models by the end of this year.
1000 Visitors per month. Quite simply, we shattered this one in the first month and never looked back. We had over 3000 unique visitors in December and there is a positive outlook for the future. Thank you to everyone who has helped spread the word. We hope to bring you all more useful stuff in the near future.
1000 Downloads. Um, yeah. We've had 1000 downloads of the final Gilman pack alone since we released it 2 months ago. Overall (and I did lose count mind you) I think we ended up somewhere around 3000 for downloads on all our work combined. Needless to say, this is very encouraging to us and you can count on there being more to come.
Now, what I would love to see in '07 is 1000 screenshots of our work in your game. Whaddya say?
~~~
Sooooooo, yeah, 283 hours. That's not even close 1000. It is great as an experiment but it begs the question.... what now? Where do I go from here? I see a few possibilities:
1. Take what I've learned and move on. By keeping a close watch on where my time is being spent has taught me a certain kind of discipline and focus and that is something I will carry along with as I move forward in my career as an artist. It certainly has set me up to be a better freelancer than I was in the past.
2. Start over. Start a new quest to do 1000 hours in '07.
3. Continue on. Keep going until I hit 1000. After all it is not about doing it in a year, but in hitting 1000.
I pick number 3. I am going to continue to count my hours. If things go as planned and I end up making game art my full time profession this year I could get there by the end of the year.
But, I can't just leave it at that.
This is the beginning of a new year after all. Something new is in order. So, I am vowing to concentrate on a new 1000 -- something I have been neglecting for way too long.
Exercise. The sacrifices I made over the last year in order to find time to work on art have left me pretty much tapped out. I need the energy that comes with good health in order to meet the demands of shifting to a game developer's schedule. In the past, the exercise that has given me the most benefit, especially since I am big and need to lose weight, is jogging. So, one year, 1000 miles. I can't wait to get going. I'll let you know how it goes.
To end, I'll just repeat what I said a year ago "I hope that my example of hard, consistent effort and belief that quality work can and should be free will inspire others to do great work as well." Join me. Start your own Thousander Club goal.
Stay free.
~shs~
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