Have no talent? That might be the problem

Like myself, many of you may think that you have no talent because you can't make anything that could be easily observe.

Maybe your real talents are not making artworks. Maybe not even solving problems so you could be a good programmer. What else do you need to work in game development circle? Of course it's storytelling, apparently you're also suck at it!

Now what's left? These are the holy trinity of game developments. Maybe you're good at talking with people? Oh, this is not the case too? Maybe you're good at making catching phrase? All of your phrases are all cliche? Well...music maybe? No? How about sound design? No?

What's left? VFX? UX? NONE AT ALL?!?

What did you do in your life?

Just kidding. Yeah, I can do everything but I'm suck at everything. I bet you guys can at least do something but suck at them too right? Maybe something not even related to game developments at all like feeding cats....and even cats hate you.

Good news though, these things I mentioned above are all skills and not something that required talents. You just need to learn "How to" in order to make something. But what is the real talents behind these skills?

Here is your answer, it's called "aesthetic". Basically it's your tastes, your preferences, or maybe you could called them your selections?

Apparently aesthetic is something you could also improve. It's harder because people are stubborn by nature. I said and meant it, people are stubborn by nature and not some stupid traits that appeared randomly.

So you'll have to take a sniff at a random flower and try to feel it. Well something like that. Basically you've got to experience many things in life in order to improve your aesthetic. If you're stuck at a shitty dubsteps or chiptunes and never listen to classical musics, then you're missing out and would never be able to compose meaningful dubsteps or chiptunes that you wish you could compose but lacking in talents.

I'm not saying dubsteps or chiptunes are shitty or something, but I wanted to portray that if you're stuck at something similar and basically would sound the same the more you listen to them. You're likely to think that dubsteps and chiptunes are shitty and you'd never be able to compose such great legendary dubsteps and chiptunes that you listened over and over again trying to extract their very essences.

I have a good reason for advocating classical musics here. Many good music composers I knew are all listening to classical musics to some extent. Though these people also listening to many different genres, they're generally like natural sounds more than musics. Surprise right? You don't need concrete proves from me, and I'd rather not naming these people because it might cause problems.

I'm listening to birds chirping everyday. It's not like I choose to do it, but they're just hanging around the trees just outside my bedroom. There are quite a lot of trees surrounding my house, so birds are living here.

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This is a serious matter. Many people looking down on the word "aesthetic" becauase they thought I'm talking about "graphical fidelity" or even straight out photorealism artstyle.

In fact, aesthetic means the balance of everything. Basically everything will have to fit in each others in order to achieve higher aesthetic level.

It's different from personal aesthetic, which is the level of understanding you have toward something you could perceive. Aesthetic in videogames mean how well every elements mixed in together. For example, does the gameplay fit in well with the settings? Does the world building fit in well with the stories?

There are many things you could use aesthetic to measure. This is why I said that "talent" you're lacking isn't the "skills" but the "understanding of the essence behind those skills" or "aesthetic"

The key I just got last night is to "understand the workflow between blender and unreal". That's right, this is what I truly lacked from skills aspect. The moment I understood this, I could feel myself finishing my game much clearer. I wanted to even say that I could finish within a few months, but I'd rather not confirm it since there are still various variables that I couldn't see at my perspective.

During the past years, I'd been sharpening my aesthetic by playing many videogames and even boardgames, listening to various musics and even natrual tunes in later stages, and most importantly reading many stories though they're mostly just some stupid fantasy web novels that never got a chance in commercial publications. Of course I read a lot of manga, manhwa, and manhua. I didn't watch anime since a few years ago, though I only watched TsukiMichi recently. The last time I actually watch something was in 2019, I subbed to netflix for a month and streamroll many animes on the site. Well the most prominent ones were Reincarnated as Slime and Overlord.

That's right, you guys spending so much time consuming entertainment wasn't for nothing. You're sharpening your aesthetic. Is it time for you to further sharpening your aesthetic by actually utilize it in your own creation? Only you will know.

If you're not ready to create, then don't. It's alright to continued consuming more entertainment. Once you're there, the place where you can't enjoy entertainment anymore. It's time for you to start your own journey.

I'll be honest with you guys here. I started my creator journey as a novel writer. I wrote a bunch of unfinished novels and some wacky short stories. I even published low quality novels on kindle and I'm not proud enough to actively advertise them. I'd rather not advertise something I'm not proud about. Yeah, that's right. I have my own pride too.

I tried to do digital painting. In fact, I tried to draw my own anime waifu like PewDiePie do. But I started since 2010 and as you've guess, it's failed. I drew since I was 10 and now I'm over 30, but I can't say if I'm talented. Most likely not. I don't like my own drawing is something I'd expected from any artists out there, but most people don't even care about my drawing. Then this is the sign that my drawings are not good.

Well the problem is that I tried to draw stupid humans. The moment I stopped drawing humans, apparently I'm a talented artist. That's right, I could draw monsters better than human.

I want you to learn from this. You might not be the best person in the mold. Just break the mold and find your own path. That's the thing in our world. Stop trying to be like someone else...well I didn't try to be like PewDiePie, but you've got it, I just use him as an example here.

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Right it's time to wrap up and get back to work. So I'll use this last section to tell about my own project.

I'm not sure if I already shared this but the synopsis I made for my project at first was big enough for me to split them into trilogy. This is by no mean of me making a trilogy out of the game, but it's allowed me to further lower the scope of my game by 2/3.

Then as I mentioned above, I just learnt about the workflow from blender to unreal. I have to be honest here, I used to study about this and I made it work before. But somehow there were so much problems back then, so I decided to study on this matter again. This time I thoroughly study and even took notes using my personal studying method. It's super effective btw.

With just a few hours, though it's spanned for 3 days since I have limited time and energy to do so. I could optimized the entire workflow, enough so that I gained hefty amount of confidence to continued working on my project and even finished it much earlier than I expected.

Though I'd say it's thanks to all my past efforts that I worked so hard to improve my own skills. Last year, I spent an entire month to work on a single character for the entire process. That's right, it's when I made so much problems that caused me to decided to study the process again.

A single character for the entire month of working every single day with a few hours everyday. Not to mention I was already quite familiar with blender too.

Well this is the real reason I spent an entire month. I wasn't confident and spent too much effort in working. So I had to redo many times over and over again. Not to mention the fact that all my efforts were in vain because I couldn't import to the unreal project several times.

It's like I wasted so much time and energy in something that's supposed to be easy.

But thanks to a tutorial that just uploaded since half a month ago, I learnt the rough concept of the workflow. Then i spent my time analyzing the workflow and coming up with my own replication of process. So I didn't follow the turotial directly, but formulate my own solution in order to learn. Though I'd say I just copied most of the process and even variables because I didn't want to think as much. It's still better than follow along with the video. Because I recalled the process in my memory, so I made sure that my brain absorbed the entire process.

Of course it's not the perfect recall either. I read the notes I took on the second time of watching. The first time I just watch and the second time I'd rewind the video just to take proper notes. The video was like an hour long, but I spent over 2 hours to finish watching it.

Then as I mentioned, I formulated my own solutions and then optimized the heck out of it. Things I would use, things I would not use, things I would add to the workflow. With my limited knowledges and PC, I came up with my own workflow. That's right, my PC is also limited.

The very first thing I'd do if I have enough money, I wanted to build an expensive performance centric PC for the sake of using unreal 5. I'd rather use nanite than using my current workflow since it's simpler to work on and more beautiful as a result. But limited resources required creative solutions. The result might now be the best, but it's works.

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I know there are some views on my previous blog posts. But I don't know if someone read until the end. My blog posts tend to centered around myself or my own perspective. But you could tell right immediately that my post is legit from there. It's not something fabricated just to advocate something that you'd find anywhere on the internet.

That's right, I'm a real human and you should start to follow me to learn from an imperfect human like me.

You might be better, richer, more handsome, more beautiful, and more talented than myself. But who knows? You might be able to learn from someone like me. It's different perspective friends.

Now I'm not gonna promise that I'll keep writing blog posts. I don't want to just "push contents". I want my posts to be as legit as I could get.

My goal is to share my learning experiences and new perspectives on things. Maybe a small amount of political but I'll make sure to limit that aspect to the minimal and focusing on learning.

Lastly, I love beautiful women in videogames. Though I'm sorry in advance that my games might not have beautiful women. xDD