Recently I met a poly lecturer who showed me a collection of his students’ work. It was a mixture of modelled cars and animations produced by his students after 4 months of training in poly. He was inordinately proud of what they had produced, and after only 4 months of training as he reminded me again and again- perhaps fearful of some critical comments I might make with regards to their quality.

Even lecturers will sometimes fall into that trap we see so often with parents who boast about their children’s results while remaining oblivious to the competition at large. So there I kept my silence, not wanting to burst his bubble.

Just  a couple of days ago, one of the concept artist in my company had showed me a couple of renders of a car he had modelled while still working in china. He spent 2 months learning how to model in 3D on his own and the results that I’ve seen was far superior to any of the stuff that the lecturer had showed me. Not only had he produced better results learning on his own, but he didn’t even like 3D. Its a pity he gave that up because with proper guidance coupled with his strong foundation in painting and drawing, he could’ve been one hell of a modeller.

I guess lucky for the singapore students.

This is why in the few years that I’ve been teaching, the total number of times that I’ve praise any student can probably be counted on one hand. Its not that I find some perverse pressure in being stingy with praise and yes, sometimes an encouragement here and there can produce wonderful results. But more than that I am always fearful of students letting their ego get the better of them.

Singapore arguably enjoy the second best standard of living outside of Japan. With our liberal immigration policy, there is no shortage of artists from around the region who wouldn’t want to work here, often at lower prices and better quality.

This is reality- like it or not.

There is simply no room for complacency. No resting on our laurels. Reality is such that we are in a race in which there is no halftime break, no timeouts and no finishing line. We’ve to compete everyday and the moment we even slow down to look behind us or to give ourselves a little pat on the back could mean some guy already overtook us.

Reality is- nobody is going to cut you a break because of this or because of that, results and quality is all that counts. Nobody is going to give you a pass just because you’ve been learning 3D for 3 months or 1 year.

Life is hard, competition is tough. Reality bites.