I will be documenting my process for my MA thesis over the next months - making a cute terrarium diorama with tadpoles! c:
Here's a crappy 1st concept!
Art Research
One of my goals with this thesis is to increase my hireability.
I looked at what styles & skills the companies need I want to work for.
- Unity
- sculpting, modeling, texturing
- VFX as bonus skill
Also I wanted to choose a topic I'm personally interested in. Tadpoles + terrariums are both something I have personal experiences with (macro photography, making terrariums). And I made art pieces on terrariums before, which I can use for inspiration.
And I'm inspired by 2D art as well!
Ideal Work Schedule
I will work only on my MA thesis for the next 4 months + personal projects. So all stuff with no external deadlines.
(with the grant I have I'm not allowed to take on any more freelance work)
So I think this is a great opportunity to experiment with my work schedule.
What I learned skimming through some papers & articles:
- there's not one ideal work hour amount, but it depends on context
- there's a point after which productivity per hour plummets
- it's likely that creative/ focused work can be done for less hours a day before productivity per hour plummets
- for me mornings tend to be most productive & after lunch there's a slump
- I want to have time + energy to work on small creative projects next to my thesis
My schedule I wanna experiment with:
- 6 tracked work hours a day max, using Toggl for tracking
- from that 3 hours creative/ focused work max
- exercise or walks during lunch time to lessen post-lunch slump
- frequent breaks, get away from PC in longer breaks
- start work at 9am, no more work after 5pm
- focused work in mornings, low intensity stuff in afternoons
Most of this stuff I experimented with before & I know it works for me. But now I wanna see if actually working less hours per day makes me more productive.
Lastly I want to leave you with a cool mini documentary about tadpoles!
Next Steps & Questions
Next up is to make a style test in 3D & start blocking out the scene.
Have you experimented with your work schedule before? What did you find to work for you?