One of the artists that I work with is Philtomato. He’s stupidly talented and every now and then he posts about the impostor syndrome he feels when some beloved artist from Disney or whatever follows him on Instagram or Facebook (giddy like a little girl, I assume.)
I didn’t really get it until today.
It’s funny because it took me years before I considered myself a writer. I wrote stories, didn’t consider myself a writer. I won online short story contests, I still didn’t consider myself a writer. I won the Greek Screenwriter’s Guild award for a short film script, I still didn’t consider myself a writer.
But I had always had confidence in my storytelling abilities. At some point a few years ago I decided to just call myself a writer, and that was after having published 2 novels and a bunch of novellas already.
But in my 3D artist job, things are different. I never considered myself a 3D artist and had no confidence in my skills. But I love it, I love using Daz3D and it’s been a year now that I’ve made renders practically every day. You can see the timestamps on my Artstation for yourself, I was making one render every day for at least 2 months straight and simply publishing everything up there. In 3 months I had a bigger portfolio than most professional 3D artists do.
Lately I’ve been making timelapses of my 3D creation process for no reason whatsoever. People seem to like my renders, so I made them 15 seconds long for Tik Tok. People liked them a lot more, so I uploaded them on Youtube in longer and wider format ’cause honestly, the vertical ratio and the short length pisses me off.
And I posted them on my Artstation too, ’cause why not?
And the lead 3D designer of Square Enix followed me. WTF?
This is a person who creates wonderful worlds, beloved by millions of gamers around the world. THEY MAKE FINAL FANTASY FFS! I’m a guy who picked up a 3D program only last year. What can he possibly learn from me? Talk about impostor syndrome right there. But if you think about it, that’s why he’s so good at what he does, and so do the top artists that follow Philtomato’s work. They’re always learning, always on the lookout for new talent and fresh ideas.
And that’s how you become a professional. You stay humble and simply never stop learning.
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