The trick to building?

So, I've been asked a lot how I got to be able to build so good. And I always say the same thing, practice. Every time I try and do something, I always try and challenge myself, and every time I always get better. And the trick is, to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, because then when you do accomplish, you can look back and really notice how much you improved.

Here is a picture of the first sculpty I ever... a pillow. And that was I believe back in the summer of 2007. I was completely new to Blender and 3D modeling. But, I kept trying to make new things, look up tutorials, and try out different techniques. One of the main tutorials I used was from Machinimatrix.

Now fast forward to 2010, and here is some seating for the auditorium for the new Oceanside Elementary that I am building. Each seat is 1 prim, and when you sit/unsit the seat got up or down. And it also has baked in shadows, and the texturing was done completely in Blender.

Now I know some people are going to say "Oh, it took you 3 years to get that good." But, everyone starts at the beginning. If I just said "I'm never going to get as good as these other people." we would never have a lot of the fun stuff for camp, or the cool stuff from HKE over the years, or even a lot of the houses my family lived in.

Its also about not putting your goal too far out of reach. It's like if back in 2007, when I never touched Blender, and I wanted to make the seating. I would never been able to do that, I would have become discouraged and just given up. Its about setting an immediate goal that challenges you.

I don't know if this will help anyone, but I hope it does. It's very satisfying when you look back on something you just made, and you are proud of what you did. And I love to be able to share that with people.