Kyle Youngblom

Hey Gregory! It’s great that you know what you’re passionate about at the age of 17. I didn’t have that figured out till I was in my late 20s. 

When you get old all you want to do is give younger people advice! You feel like you’ve learned so much stuff and you want to go back in time and teach it to your younger self, but since you can’t do that, you have to settle for lecturing other people who are younger than you are. Anyway, here’s my advice:

Learning

Projects

Choose projects for yourself. Whether in art or coding, you'll learn the most if you have a specific task you're trying to accomplish. Maybe you're trying to model and rig a bird’s wing. Maybe you're trying to code a security camera so it looks at your player. Start small and push yourself to grow from there. Figuring out what you need to learn in order to accomplish a task is a great way to keep focused and motivated, and motivation matters more than anything else.

Resources

Find the kinds of tutorials you like. Maybe video works best for you. Maybe text. Check out catlikecoding for some amazing tutorials in coding in C# for Unity. Follow people like @minionsart​ on Twitter for fantastic bite-sized tips. Watch Makin' Stuff Look Good’s YouTube tutorials. (Don't get overwhelmed).

Community

Connect

Learning is hard, and even if you never go to school or meet another game dev/artist face to face, you won’t be learning alone. You’ll be learning from the shared experience of others. Find those people. Find the social networks that work for you. Polycount. ArtStation. Twitter. Tumblr. Find people doing things you like and follow them. Twitter has been great for me, though it may not be for you, and that’s ok. Here's a list of low-poly 3D artists you can follow on Twitter for a start.

Share

Share share share. Take tons of screenshots of the stuff you're working on, and share them on forums and social networks. Install ShareX (Windows only) and have it automatically save your screenshots and gif screencaps to a folder that you keep around forever (maybe in Dropbox). You'll be super glad you have record of the things you're working on now so you can see your progress as you learn. Then take those screenshots and share them. Do it long enough and people will notice.

Tools

I saved this bit for last, because people often think that if they just have the right tools that art will just happen. Really, the previous two sections are way more important; tools are just a means to an end. Ask yourself what kind of art you want to create. High fidelity photorealism? Cute low-poly chibi stuff? Abstract impressionistic stuff? Find and use the tools that’ll help you achieve that goal, not because they’re “the best”, or “what everyone uses”, but because they work for you.

Modeling

I use Maya but only because I use it for work. Otherwise it's quite expensive. Blender is free and apparently pretty good! Modeling programs are very complicated. It’s easy to get overwhelmed at first, but remember that you don’t need to know how to use every aspect of software for it to be useful. Even if you’re just creating cubes and stacking them up, you’re making something, and it’s a start. Ignore the complicated parts until you’re ready to use them.

Game Engines

Experiment with both Unity and Unreal; they're both free and you can learn to make neat stuff pretty quickly. They each have their pros and cons. I use Unity for personal and professional stuff, along with a couple plugins which weren’t free (Shader Forge, ProBuilder, Playmaker).

Hi Anon! Appreciate the kind words.  I’m afraid I don’t do commissions, my work on Guildlings is keeping me tied up more than full-time. Thanks for asking, though, and good luck! :D