Skip to main content

04 tips to track your progress toward reaching your goal


Setting goal is quite easy, but reaching a goal can be quite daunting depending on how big your goal is. Once you have figure out what the outcomes you want, you have to reverse engineer and plan out a course of direction which act as a map to help you get from point A to point Z. The following are some safe guards to help you jump over hurdles in your path and help keep you on track and focus to reach your destination.

Milestones- you should have weekly checkpoints and review on your task and performance. You can break down larger task to smaller chunks.. For instance, you may say, " I want to design a new sci fi concept matte painting per week." The milestones for that task can be broken down to research, rough sketch or composition study, value block in, color study, collect photo textures, apply photo textures, adding finishing touches and so on. Then slowing chip away each little task everyday. By breaking down large task to smaller chunks will help you track micro progress that lead up to macro success. 

Trackable activity- you can establish the amount of hours each day you want to devote to a particular activity. You can set specific amount of drawings you want to accomplish each day and you can set how frequent you want to repeat the process per month. Being able to quantify your action give you visibility into where you are on the map in correspond to your destination. 

Sensory acuity- That is like a having a navigation system that help you sense your pathway and activity.  When you are lost, confused and stuck at something and not sure how to proceed, the sensory acuity will help guide you out of your rut and get you back on track. To sharpen that sensor require you to develop constant self-awareness and monitoring of your action and the results of those action. Keeping your sensory acuity sharpen will help you get back on the right track when your action takes you off the beaten path. 

Cultivate creativity- there are many ways to get to a goal and not every way will get you there or is it the best path to take. But no matter what, being able to think outside the box, and come up with a new ideas or solution to get over problems along your journey is a powerful weapon to have. Let's be honest, everyone will fail here and there. Michael Jordan got cut from his High School team, Thomas Edison didn't invented the light bulb on his first attempt and Steve Job was fired from Apple, the company he help created, at one point in his career. Every so called success story have a few failures along the way. When one door is shut on you, get your ass up and figure another way to get in. Try the chimney, or the backdoor, maybe the window. If you want to get crazy, go underground and dig your way back up or build your own place in this world. You get the drift. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Portfolio Review Request

A very strong portfolio is the one most important asset you have that can help you break into the industry. Getting the first one is always the hardest! It gets easier from there. And first impression matters! It s very important you take it very seriously and understand what to include and more importantly what not to. Most company will judge your artistic value base on you best piece as well as the worst piece. In this case, less is more. A strong and short portfolio have more value than a big and moderate portfolio. You want to leave them wanting more! So lately, I 've been getting a lot of email interest for portfolio reviews. So if anyone is looking for portfolio feedback, please leave your name,  a brief intro, a link to your work. I wont have time to get everyone, so the first 10 will be the ones I will review. Read more here .

10 things you can do to get started to become a concept artist

01. Sketch book - If you don’t already have one, you NEED to buy one and keep it with you. If you’re in still high school, start drawing things from life…NOW. Don’t just copy what you see, but see what you are drawing.  02. Ask question- Why does the chair look the way it does? What material is it made of? What does metal reflect the way it does…why is the shadow there? You get the point. Ask a lot of questions and try to answer them.. if you cant figure it out ..Google it! 03. See, don’t look- There s a different between looking and seeing. Seeing requires effort. Don’t just look around your surroundings, learn to see it.  See the patterns in the wood grain, study the way light reflect on objects, and make little mental notes. This helps train your eyes. 04.Build a reference library-  This is very important if you have not started one. Make a folder and start collecting images on the web that interest you. Gradually grow this inventory of references. I organized the i

The Science behind Drawing!

There are some people out there that can draw from the day they are born. Then there are the rest of us who need to learn how to draw.  But like learning how to drive a car or ride a bike, there are steps along the way that you need to master for you to be able to perform those tasks effectively and efficiently. The act of drawing is no difference, it 's just a more challenging skill to acquire and require more time investment to develop. There is a science behind drawing and can be broken down to two major components. They are the physical and mental aspects. Physical: The act of sketching something require the muscles in your arm to extend in a specific direction to make a mark on the paper. Drawing for the first time can feel like writing with a left hand (if you are right handed). The lines aren't straight and your arcs are wobbly. But after a few days, you noticed your drawing hand is more steady and have more control over how you laid down the lines. This is caused