So although I've been too busy to do a lot of sculpting - or blogging about it (apologies), recently I've had to undo, re-do, and even scrap entire pieces of my work-in-progress 40cm girl. Like, I had legs almost perfect (in my overworked eyes) and once I compared to my minifee and strung her up, realised they were a good inch too short for what I had visualised and adding entire chunks to basically small tubes is frustrating to say the least. So in my opinion I had to start over. Days of sculpting gone to waste - experience earned, certainly - but wasted resources, time, effort, and a good portion of confidence lost in my own skill.. So, that said, what's your take on having to start over, drastically change or completely scrap an idea? Do you find it frustrating and disheartening? Or do you take it as gaining experience and just as part of the process?
I find it super frustrating, but just roll with it. Like with my doll, I had her first thigh absolutely perfected, and had just finished retrofitting the hip piece to sit against it perfectly, only to realize that the thigh was overcooked after it shattered in my hand. I take it as a great opportunity to learn, but when you've just broken your first good thigh out of three attempts, you give up for a while XD
Tell me about it!... :pout I'm working on my first bjd, and I don't even own anything to compare it to. It's a huge learning curve to say the least. Anatomy is a challenge all in its own, but I'm also not very good with large scale (and my girl is 65cm at the last measurement), for some reason I don't feel the proportions on bigger stuff at all. So, things like that happened to me more than once. Needless to say there were tears, inappropriate language and throwing in the towel attempts. However, I do try to look upon it as a learning experience, I find that now I'm better at anatomy and sculpting and I spot my own mistakes quicker. Furthermore, I know I make the right side (viewer's) smaller so I try to overcompensate while sculpting. The latest casualty was a piece I spent the longest on, and when it broke so did my heart :dead But in the end the new piece took me very little time to make, and the new joint (i chose to reverse it) is a much better option anyway. So there's usually a silver lining, because you end up improving your doll through trial and error. So I'm not really afraid of scrapping something, because good things have to go in order to make room for better things. The only thing I can't reconcile myself with is time loss, because it does take yonks! I try to tell myself it's not exactly wasted, you could look upon it as practice. But I do wish I had someone with more experience to guide me. This would be so much faster! However practice makes perfect, and there's simply nothing for it, but to put in the hours. I know that the next doll I make is going to take me half the time, because I've found the right tools, developed my own techniques and I'll also avoid the rookie mistakes I made this time. And at the end of the journey I will be able to congratulate myself on finding my own way, it's important to me. It can be so very very very disheartening... The trick is to keep going I suppose... You have to be in it for the long run. It's definitely a marathon and not a sprint. I just WANT to have this doll so MUCH that this desire overrides the blues and my vague attempts to quit, and people here on the forum are very supportive and helpful. Taking breaks for a few days/weeks can also help to see your doll in a whole new way. You can totally overwork it! And often the problem is not the exact piece you are working on, but something around it. You kind of have to learn to see the "bigger" picture, and this can only be gained with experience. I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for in an answer, but I hope it helps somewhat.
Ugh. The day before yesterday, I was spraying my final coat of primer in the cup of an ankle/calf piece. Sprayed a little more than usual because I was trying to coat everything evenly, but figured it couldn't hurt. Of course, I was wrong - that final layer of primer refused to set, and when I tried to scrape it out, I found it had dissolved all the layers of primer beneath it as well :dead My solution to stuff like this is to put my doll away for the day, and come back to it fresh the next day. Stuff that seems super amazingly frustrating at the moment it happens seem to fade to 'just another thing to fix' the next day (and honestly, it didn't take me that long to sand back the bad primer and begin re-priming it - I'll hopefully be done with it today )) The thing that calms me down the most is remembering that anything can be fixed with enough time and effort. If I got it there in the first place, I can get it back there again. It might be annoying, but it's not impossible. I definitely do see re-doing work as extra practice (which doesn't mean I'm unhappy when things work right the first time :XD)
When something isn't working out, I prefer to redo it. When I was making Puck's head, I was already priming it, when I discovered that it was too a-symmetrical for my taste. I then decided to cut away almost 3/4 of his face and rebuild it. Of course, I could've tried to adjust a few of his features, but my experience is that this almost never gives me the result I want. When you fiddle too much with a piece, it starts to lose some of its personality. I'd rather redo something than be unhappy with the end result. After the first time I redid a part from scratch, I've been a lot less nervous about taking such drastic measures. It has almost become a standard part in the process for me. Don't like how the lips are turning out? Cut out the entire mouth and start over. Dislike the torso? Toss it aside, 'cause I can do better! To me it's quite liberating to be able to do this.
depends on how well a piece was going. If it was crap, redoing feels great. If it was going really well and I have to redo because I did something dumb, then it's totally demoralizing.
I love starting over lol as long as i have an abundance of sculpting materials. This is a bad thing in my case since i hardly ever finish anything because of this i dont mind though cause I find that the more i do this the quicker i can sculpt. Not to mention what i learn from the process.
I started my entire doll over, in a completely different format. It was upsetting, packing away all those pieces and knowing I wasn't really going to use them, but the knowledge and skill I'd gained in making them was still with me, and without making those initial "wrong" parts, I never would have been able to make the right ones. The time wasn't wasted - I had just converted it to XP and levelled up a bit. It's frustrating, definitely, to have to redo work you've already done... But I've always found that once I get over the initial frustration at having to start over, I'm able to do version 2 (or 3, or 5, or 12...) much quicker and better than the previous try, and usually I'm super happy with how it came out, with improvements over the previous version beyond whatever I'd scrapped it for.
Ugh it's so nice to see that other people have similar problems and experiences, although it sucks so bad to have to redo anything, it can be for the better, or just in vain as my current redo has been -.-
Embracing Failure Failure is a part of the creative process. Expect it. Embrace it. Learn from it. Many beginners labor under the delusion that there are 'happy accidents' which become 'masterpieces.' LOL! Art, including drawing, painting, and sculpture is skill-based. You should be able to do it at will, again and again, over and over, as long as you live. The more you practice, the better you get. In the beginning, there will be many mistakes made. As the beginner gains experience, those mistakes are not made as often. Even experienced sculptors will continue to make mistakes. Those mistakes will not be the same mistakes that a beginner makes. Rather, the experienced sculptor will have created more advanced challenges for herself, so the mistakes and failures will be at a more advanced level. The sculptor who no longer makes mistakes, who no longer fails, is no longer creating anything new. They are following their own formula, and have given up on being creative. So take a look at what you are making, and IF you are satisfied with it, and haven't made ANY mistakes, is it really what you want to be making? Maybe it is looking like the same sculpture you have been doing for many years now. If you are NOT making mistakes, and NOT failing, when making a new piece, then you are no longer challenging yourself to do better work. Look at it in the mirror. Take photos of it, then study the photos. Flip the photos upside-down, and flop them right to left.... anything that will get you to really look at what you are doing, anything that will get you to OBSERVE your own work, critically. Actually, posing the doll, and drawing it is probably one of the best ways to really observe her. Drawing is all about observation. Drawing forces you to really look at what you are drawing. Drawing is a fundamental skill of the Visual Arts. If it isn't what you want, do NOT be afraid to start over. I guess it is just human nature, or something, that causes us to continue working on something that is not really working the way we want it to? We seem to want to hang on to it, even though we know something is wrong with it. Here is a post I made when I decided to scrap Version 2 of my doll, and start Version 3. Embracing Failure Nº 1 I am so happy that I started over !!! Happy Happy Joy Joy !!! (^_^)
It does get frustrating, I know. I think I'm going to have to scrap the idea of making a thigh joint on either of my dolls. The measurements just don't match up so the joint doesn't really work. It does twist and turn however so I may keep it for that purpose to have a little more poseability. There are of course other issues, that was just the latest. I couldn't live with myself if I had to scrap the entire doll, not now. I almost did with my very first doll. She's 43cm, single jointed, and in pieces right now. I decided to make her double jointed and do some other work on her, but for now she has taken a back seat to my other two projects. I have also taken plenty of breaks. Some have even lasted a couple months. Things would definitely go faster if they went the right way
