ENDA Episode 43→ The time when ENDA learned about the obsession in a career

One of the reasons why I chose VFX over music was that I could not become someone as obsessed with my craft to give everything to perfection.

I was right about the perfection part, except for one detail.

Every career, no matter which one you choose, always demands that you become obsessed in one way or another.

➡️In Film: even when you run out of budget or don’t have more days for shooting in-location. You always end up wanting to push everything further to tell the story as you want.
More than a need, sometimes is like a compulsion. Many filmmakers tend to do this, especially with their first films and this helps them cement their reputation for future projects.

➡️In Animation: where the limit is the imagination itself, directors, artists and technicians alike can spend years working on a project so it can reach the quality standards they are aiming for. Once the project is closed, the next goal is to surpass what you already achieved. So you become somewhat obsessed with always doing something even better than before, no matter how many rules or conventions you just broke before.

➡️In VFX: no pixel can escape from an artist in this industry. Every detail counts to make it believable, so you end up being obsessed with improving your craft shot after shot, project after project, year after year until you realize that even as a Supervisor you still have a lot to improve and more to learn.

And I think that is the core of the matter. The obsession (in a healthy measure) is something that drives us as artists to overcome many of the obstacles we find along the way. Always making us search for new ways to innovate, to improve, and to learn more, because “good enough” is not going to suffice.

So we may not aim to be perfectionists, but we certainly are obsessed enough to reach the level of masters.

Do you think of yourself as an obsessive person?