Burnout

[melmer]

I read a blog post by Jonathan Blow yesterday. Interesting read, one thing that stood out for me was the section about experiencing work burnout

Talking about the first game he worked on:

"That game was never very successful. It had design problems, but also, we didn’t really know how to talk about or promote a game; lastly, this was before many people played games over the internet, so the potential audience was pretty small.

Back in those days I worked very hard. When we started the company I knew nothing about building 3D games; we learned very quickly. I would work long hours, late into the night, intensively. At some point we all burned ourselves out, I think.

After we closed down that company, I went on to do a number of contractor things, game industry lecture things, magazine article things, and working on various independent projects that I never finished. Through that time, I was still very burned out. If you have never experienced burnout, it’s hard to explain. Burnout is not just “I don’t feel like working right now”; it is about your mind refusing to permit you to work, because it has seen what happens when it lets you work."

Have you ever experienced this?

It really struck a cord with me, i pretty much felt like this the entire time i was at university. I did a 3D computer animation degree back in 2001 at Portsmouth uni (UK). At the time there were only three universities in the whole country that did courses of this type, with Bournemouth being the flagship, and Portsmouth (as i soon found out) had just jumped on the bandwagon to milk money out of students.

The course was run by three art or film lecturers that probably got forced into the job, you could tell none of them had any interest in the subject. They had no idea how to use any of the software we were using (3D max 3, photoshop) with one of them being completely computer illiterate.

So my first project/animation i decided to create a homage to the evil dead. I built and furnished an exact replica of the cabin, the iconic Oldsmobile car, the destroyed bridge... i went to town. I had never put as much work and effort into anything as i did that project.... i barely scraped a pass. To be fair, it was an animation course and the animations were marked on their artistic merit, but nevertheless it was soul destroying. My second project was half arsed garbage and by my third project i had given up completely, making an animation in 4 hours the day before deadline (of a 2 month project) and getting a better mark then my first. Fuck you Portsmouth university i could've been a game designer If only i was mature enough to ignore the grades and just concentrated on building a portfolio of work i was proud of who knows where i'd be now.

[syntheticgerbil]

It makes perfect sense for burnout to affect you on new endeavors. I think I've just started experiencing this the last two years. Long hours and tiring development for art and animation on unfulfilling games just makes me feel it's all so pointless (and unstable).

But part of an artist's duty to keep working in the industry is to keep an updated online portfolio. The last thing I want to do is create new work or arrange completed art work when I get home these days. I'd rather do dishes than do something creative sometimes. I was at a local sketch night last Wednesday and I just sat there forcing myself to redraw the same sketch until the composition was just like I liked it. After about 7 attempts where, I was just dissatisfied, crumpled up the papers, and went home. It's supposed to a meeting to have fun and just draw whatever and talk to people, but to me it just became more work, no fun.

I wish Blow would give more techniques on how to get out of this funk outside of time off, but I know that's not what his article was about.

[Luftmensch]

That's part of why I quit my last job. I was doing t-shirt graphics, which is kind of cool and fun, but I was doing it with incredibly short deadlines (usually only having time for one draft), having too many responsibilities (doing graphics, answering the phone, helping customers, printing, cleaning, inventory, and more often than not making up for work someone else didn't do) without enough time to dedicate to any one of them. It was really fun at first when I was just playing and learning and was expected to be creative, but after a few months I was expected to churn out routine formula designs. I would have made templates if I had time, but I didn't have Illustrator at home and at work I was always jumping from one job to another so I didn't have time for serious problem solving. I don't think I experienced serious burnout, but after about a year and a half it wasn't worth not getting paid shit to deal with it all.

Truth be told my old bosses owe me a lot of money. I accepted the chump deal at first because they were family friends, I didn't need the money so much as the experience and something to do, and unlike anyone else, they offered me a job, but they're way the hell behind on paying me.