ENDA Episode 15→ The time when the Endless Apprentice learned about the Artitst’s complex (Part 3)

Regarding the perfectionism that comes with the Artist’s complex, it is not bad to want to achieve high-quality work. In fact, that ambition is what takes most Junior artists to evolve into Seniors. The problem is when that perfectionism becomes an obstacle to your work.

When you start to see every iteration only as “not perfect”, you’ll lose sight of all the things you are doing right and you’ll enter into an endless pit of “It is not good enough”.

I’ve seen artists incredibly gifted who lost opportunities just because they think in their minds that because their work is not perfect, they should not show it in order not to get criticized.

Well, here is another hard truth: “No work is perfect, not even the professional ones you admire”. Even if you could manage to achieve a 100% perfect iteration, that work will suffer changes by your Supervisor and then by the client, who will give not one, but many series of changes that you would have to do. And that’s only for an individual freelance task, in a production your work is later used in many other areas:

If you did concept art, the digital textures will not be 100% accurate to your colors or the animations will not be 100% exact as in the pose sheet you did, because the client will ask new poses in the animation process.

If you did a 3D model, the Rigging and Animation departments will have to deform it to test the rig or to achieve impossible movements in front of the camera, that the client asked.

If you did digital textures, remember that the Comp department would change the color and exposition of some of them to create depth in the scene or because the client asked for it.

I could give more examples, but the core of the matter is that perfection is not the goal of a project, but delivering a product that would satisfy clients’ demands while keeping a high-quality standard. Be aware: high quality is not the same as perfect.

Usually, a project in the best of circumstances would achieve 90 or 95% or all their potential, but never 100%. Even great directors confess that if they could, they would continue shooting or refining the animation a bit more, however, they must deliver the film on time to the distribution company.

So in the end, the Artist’s Complex exists in every artist. It is something that we cannot escape, but we can learn to control it. The best artists that I know are those who excel in having a good balance between talent and compromise. Professionals who know how to keep in line with that voice that tells them: “It is not good enough” and use it to improve their work without having to sacrifice the delivery date.

Those who stopped being just artists, to become professional artists.