I plan to leave tech to pursue art | Hacker News Reader

I plan to leave tech to pursue art

liamhz.com

167 pointsifvictr145 comments

Hi! I'm the author of this post -- it was an unlisted draft that I shared with a few friends, was planning to rewrite most of this before publishing. Please forgive the rough edges

Main changes I'd make to this article

- Agreed with others that I might be naive, but I'm 20 y/o and now's the right time to shoot for my dreams rather than settle

- I'm applying to animation school soon (Sheridan). I started coding when I was 12, I expect this career change to take a few years, and am in it for the long haul

- My worst case is I don't enjoy working in art, and go back to tech. I don't believe you can make a successful career change without going all-in

Happy to answer any questions :)

Made a little music video with some of my art if you'd like to take a peek

https://twitter.com/LiamHinzman/status/1589660449271959552

> "I'm just afraid that if I died today, then my life would have amounted to nothing".

> When I imagine the ideal version of myself a decade from now, I'm not a grizzled infra engineer or a founder who has raised millions of dollars.

You are 20. You have a long life ahead of you. Enjoy the exploration and I hope you continue to realize your self.

If you commit to eat sleep and breathe art and you are lucky enough to never get tired of it you will succeed. Draw and paint as much as you physically can. Keep an entrepreneur’s mindset and hustle. Be prepared to use technology to stay competitive. Try out 3d, VR, AI, everything at your disposal.

I think it’s a good move if that’s what you’re itching for, especially at an early age. I’ve been for 20+ in the software industry and would myself want to do art instead but I am now 40+, have a family and hard responsibilities. I still do it (I paint) and loving it but as a hobby instead. If I had the chance to make the same money I’d switch in a glimpse. I wish you a great journey, regardless where your destination ends up.

You are 20 and talking about a career change. You are going to do great!

I learned to program in art classes at USC and UCLA. While you may go analog, it’s likely your tech & art skills will blend somewhere down the line.

Check out UCLA MFA Design Media Arts program [1]. Casey Reas [2] teaches there. He co-created Processing at MIT [3]. Arduino programs are called “sketches” because the Arduino IDE derives from Processing [4]. Art & tech always push each other forward :-)

[1]: https://design.ucla.edu/programs/mfa

[2]: https://arts.ucla.edu/single/casey-reas/#!

[3]: https://medium.com/processing-foundation/a-modern-prometheus...

[4]: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/connecting-arduino-to-p...

Don’t worry about all the people going negative and saying AI will replace you. Those people aren’t artists.

You can’t be blind to AI… it’s coming and you’d be foolish to ignore it. But, AI is like any other tool artists use. Great artists use new tools and methods to push their ideas & work forward. No one expects you to mix paint or make your own clay. Banksy isn’t making paint cans. No one cares about those skills because that’s not the cool part anymore. Stay focused on the cool part :-)

Who the f is this... making a downright suspicious amount of sense.

Enjoy your studies! Sheridan is a good place. As a third option, you'll find many opportunities in the industry as a hybrid artist/coder "TD" jobs if that area holds any appeal. Larger salaries are possible if you are dedicated and are willing/able to travel to where the high profile work is being done.

My only advice would be to research the available jobs, and if you can, visit a studio or two so that you are going into this with realistic expectations of the industry you are about to enter into. Keep sketching and good luck with your portfolio!

Can you expand on TD roles and where how to break in? I sort of fit the bill.

Sure! It’s an acronym for “technical director”. I don’t think it is standardized across the industry at all, besides it employing people that can code that are also familiar with art production in some capacity. Don’t let the “director” in the title scare you, it is primarily writing tools to serve production.

You might be working on tools to help set scenes, versioning assets, managing asset pipelines, tracking, CI/CD, rigging, managing levels of detail so that scenes are performant for animators, tools to help with animation etc.

I think you’ll mostly find this role in larger, more established animation and vfx companies. I think that applying for one of these positions would be the easiest way in. Apparently it is a difficult position to fill. My way was slower, I taught myself to code and started writing tools on my own time to help solve issues I encountered as a generalist at a smaller company with tight deadlines. I don’t recommend this way, besides as a stepping stone to something more formal.

Best wishes! When I've had a strong notion like what you've described, I've tended to act on it, and I've never had any regrets for it. I think that art can be a tough business to be in, but like you say the worst case is if it doesn't work out you go and do something else instead - and I believe the time you devote to art will pay dividends for the rest of your life.

Take names friend, good luck with your future endeavors!

If I may offer some unsolicited advice: you'll generally find the most success as a freelancer, so study up on the aspects of freelancing (i.e. business). Uni generally won't offer much career prep other beyond a course on web site building (which you already got down). Marketing and networking are underrepresented the art school curriculum, but arguably the most important skills after graduation.

Also, the point of art openings is not the art on the walls, but to rub shoulders with other people.

Apologies if any of this was overly pedantic--I wish you the very best in your new endeavors!

@LiamHz: ^ This is really good advice. Already from your video it's obvious you can start doing freelance work right away. That's where the money is short term, and long term, as you grow your rep.

>I don't believe you can make a successful career change without going all-in

Meh. I've transitioned between several pretty different careers without ever going all-in on anything. But you do you.

I did art before making the switch to IT, I want to wish you all the luck and success with it! Got my stuff on deviantart.com/aszantu I wasn't skilled enough to make it a product and I resent marketing and social media a lot, so I made the switch eventually. Wish you all the luck!

I wish you the best man, fucking awesome.

I like the idea of doing what you love. As long as you can live like that, it is the best thing for a person.

The only caveat: at 20 years old is not difficult at all to have a relation with potential to transform into a (happy) marriage. However women are, in general, smart enough not to marry someone that cannot provide a decent living for the potential children, and that tolerance for low income partners is decreasing with age. This is just an information to consider, not to discourage you.

Good idea to share here as I didn’t have this kind of community at age 20. I think your perspective is solid and will enable a good working career in the US if you aim for it. Half the job is just showing up it seems like, but you do need to be in demand somehow to get a good pay rate. More skills are more and can open doors!

Have you heard of generative art? It's a very cool form of art that combines visual artistry and computer programming. With your skillset it could be an interesting avenue to pursue.

The scene is exploding on the blockchain right now. Lots of demand for this work.

You only have one life, too precious to waste on things you don't enjoy. Best of luck!

I have degree from film animation, one year in indie game development and for now I'm an visual artist freelancer over 7 years.

To be honest, I cannot say that make living by what is your hobby is good decision. It could easily became just work that needs to be done. Which is fine if you'll do it with passion. But especially in art it is huge difference between creativity for contract and creativity for expressing yourself. Those in second category are extremely lucky if able to make living.

Also you would probably not spend your free time by doing art.

The grass is always greener! :-D

I smile because I left commercial art back in the 80's to become a software developer!

More power to Laim and I hope it works out well for him, but I have my doubts. Working as a full-time (especially on-staff) artist answerable to an Art Director sucks!! Artists are not respected, paid terribly and just generally considered disposable. At least that's how it was in my day.

Again, Liam, go for it, but keep your eyes open going into it! Some things are better left as hobbies (which I do not consider a dirty word)!

I stood at a fork in the road, so to speak, when I was kicked out of the house and had to decide whether to pursue art or tech (I enjoyed both). It was clear to me tech would pay the bills — the art I could do in my spare time.

Retired (am I?) now, I can do all the art I want.

This is the way I plan to go!

I love coding and I have my own dream projects. My plan is to earn enough to be independent and follow my dreams.

Not retired yet, but collected some nest egg. Since then, I stress less, only work on what I find interesting and speak up when I want to. Funny part: I only got raises faster this way.

It's a risk/reward thing. Some people go all in with their passion first, consequences be damned, and it pays off. Others, I think the larger portion, aren't so lucky. Conventional wisdom is to take the safe job first, and then go from there - the risk here is never getting out of that rut. It's a hard decision, but being really focused on defining and attaining what independence is for you, is the key to taking that safe job first. My 2c.

Being in a rut is better than being homeless.

Without a shadow of a doubt.

Also I have been able to pawn or sell extra guitars acquired when works was better. Art tools can retain some value.

I hear you. In my case I was finally able to get to music late (past 50). I'm so grateful I was around long enough to do that. It does not pay any bills, but it gives me much happiness, even though the guitar playing is subpar.

Don’t worry guitar is an awful instrument in design and worse than learning German. Enjoy the ride, the quirks, and all the fun songs along the way. Nothing like Tom Petty to make a whole room feel great!

Well said, indeed! I am in fact working my way through some Dylan, Neil Young and Tom Petty, among others. I simply Won't Back Down. ;)

For me, "following the dream" is a failed concept. It means I know what I want, which might look true but it isn't. Currently I try not to dream. I try to be awake, and open to whatever comes my way. Some things that come to me I never dreamed of, and they are much better than anything I could imagine.

An interesting philosophy I have seen in others but find myself unable to embrace. I have friends I admire that are more like a leaf on a stream. I suppose by the same analogy I feel more inclined to be the salmon lest the stream take me to some stagnant pool.

If we're going on analogies, I'd be a crayfish. Happy to go as the river takes me, but I'll migrate if pickings become scarce. Avionics took me far until COVID. When the weather got stormy I was quite happy to jump ship.

The problem is that by the time you are retired you are most likely so unplugged from the cultural zeitgeist that fuels art that you can’t possibly be good at it. You can’t possibly create anything meaningful that would speak to people who really consume art, because those people are young. They’re a few examples of outsiders who buck this trend but it’s a little presumptuous to think you’re as good as them. So now you do “art.”

I think this is a very narrow view of what art is, who can partake, and what it means to be good at it.

I don’t care.

"Presumptuous" is (nevermind the unfairness) far less concerning compared to the arrogance that speaking on behalf of the entire art world and/or zeitgeist entails.

I try not to be presumptuous- as I honestly have no idea what art is because I’m too old to keep up- so maybe you can give me some examples that buck the trend? If not I’ll just assume you’re offended because you’re old. And honestly, if you think art is as easy as retiring and doing it; you deserve to be assumed to be presumptuous. You have a lot to prove and nothing to lose. Suck it up. Prove yourself or deal with mediocrity. Or worse, you’re just pretending.

So if you have no idea what art is because you're too old, why do you presume you can gate-keep art for others?

> I’ll just assume you’re offended because you’re old.

I very strongly suspect I'm younger than you. And I've no personal interest in artistic pursuits, to be explicit.

The only reason I took offence was that you were, in short, acting offensively. Even shorter - you were an asshole.

In the longer - you were telling people who wanted to pursue art that they were presumptuous for daring to do so because they weren't the right age in your opinion. That far exceeds presumption and veers directly into arrogance, as I mentioned earlier.

> Prove yourself or deal with mediocrity

We are nearly all, in the scheme of things, mediocre. That's just how normal distributions work.

But, you don't have to shit in someone else's Weetbix just because you're feeling your age and Scrooge's "Bah humbug" makes more sense than ever.

Just stick to yelling at those damn kids to get off your damn lawn.

You’ve read too much into what I’ve said and taken too much offense. Text is hard so I don’t blame you. “retiring and doing art” is an absurdly simplistic path to point someone towards and it’s not helpful to anyone who wants to actually create anything at all. And it probably doesn’t work in most cases.

“It’s what I’ve done!”

My apologies, I only responded to what I read, I don't think I extrapolated beyond that, but could be wrong.

You seem to be aggressively pushing the idea that "doing art" means a very specific thing - i.e. influencing millions. Someone painting for their own pleasure is also art. And even if they never exhibited it, they are still creating things. Your definitions seem far too narrow.

You’ve got me all wrong- surely you would agree there is a difference between arts and crafts… right?

Sure. For example, painting a picture is art; painting a wall is craft.

> You can’t possibly create anything meaningful that would speak to people who really consume art, because those people are young.

This seems an unusual statement. I consume a lot more art in my 40s than I did in my 20s for example.

As a counter-example, Stan Lee only began drawing superheros when he was 43. Hard to argue his work isn't consumed by young people.

And of course Paul Cézanne only got his first exhibition when hr was 56.

That is very cool about Cezanne, but I suspect he is one of the outsiders I am referring to.

I am a MA of art and an avid consumer of it. I work at an art school.

What you say can happen, but it must not happen. I have seen 70 year old artists doing more modern and interesting works than graduates. And this is not rare, which you would definitly agree to if you are an avid visitor of art exhibitions.

Also modern or high art is something different to animation which our poster here wants to go for. I don't see why age would matter there — and even if it would OP is 20. We have many people who start to study art at that age. The average age might be 19 to 20.

It is true, that not everybody is made to transition into art, especially if they did not do any art their whole life, but that has nothing to do with the Zeitgeist and everything to do with the time it takes to develope the eyes needed to see what needs to be seen.

What you describe is not art, it's derivative commercial products that use "art" skills. True artist almost by definition does not care about audience, or tries to predict what they will like.

And yet if you don’t have an audience, what is the point? Even the most outsider artists managed to gather a following some way or the other. It isn’t just happenstance.

Don't caring about audience doesn't mean not having an audience. But, caring about an audience, by definition means creating derivative commercial works of low value. It works in business, but not in art (unless your goal is to just make money and/or be famous).

For the longest time, caring about your audience was the only way to get food on the table for an artist.

Michelangelo and Carravagio were contract artists and so were most of the others who are considered great artists. Of course, their audience wasn't the plebs.

And what is considered true art today is nothing but a rigged money game of the big art houses and galleries.

Uh, just no.

> And yet if you don’t have an audience, what is the point?

Point is art itself

If nobody watches me play video games, what is the point?

That i enjoy it.

Some people enjoy doing art.

What's your definition of 'true art'?

... wow!

I have to disagree with every clause in this statement. First, you don't have to be "old" to become "retired"; people can take extended sabbaticals away from the money race at any time in their adult lives to pursue their current passions - if only for a short while. If/when the money/support runs out, "un-retire" and prepare for the next "retirement". Second, being part of the "cultural zeitgeist" has nothing whatsoever to do with artistic ability - unless you're more interested in artistic fame/fortune than producing art that realises your vision. Third, you do not need to be young to "consume art" - btw that is a truly awful phrase that grates against every fibre of my alleged soul. I for one didn't suddenly stop appreciating the creativity of my fellow humans on my 30th birthday.

I'm sorry this comment has turned out to be so negative, but art is, for me, not a job description; it is a passion, an addiction from which I never want to be cured.

> You can’t possibly create anything meaningful that would speak to people who really consume art, because those people are young.

Why do you think "people who really consume art" are young? This seems completely false to me.

> So now you do “art.”

That's fine. I would never do art for someone else anyway. It's not that it's a selfish thing, I don't do art to amuse myself, but rather I do art to express a thing I need to express (for some reason). That is not dictated by the whims of others.

He could just move to Product Design for half the pay of a swe and the same treatment as a production artist. Worst of both worlds.

High tech pays designers the same as engineers and in my opinion it’s a much better gig. No one’s looking over your shoulder to see how many lines of code you commit.

At a FAANG, a Product Design IC can make up to around $350k/yr. A SWE can regularly make $1M/yr. My BiL is an eng manager and he makes a little over that. One thing I've noticed is that most engineers seem to be relatively happy and stay at places longer. Most designers seem to be miserable.

Just my 2¢, but having hard, understood metrics can be easier in many ways vs much more nebulous things that can be hard to quantify. That kind of turns into more of a popularity contest.

Not so long time ago, there was this man who loved to make barbecues. At weekends, he loved cooking, preparing and eating the food with friends. He would talk about the best temperature, the best meat, salsas, and lots of other technical data.

One day, a butcher from a local store joined the barbecue: - Hey, you are pretty good! Would you like to leave your current job and work for our store? We have special discounts for workers, and the job is good.

The man thinked twice before answering...You are that man. Some choose Yes without hesitation. Others say No.

- No thanks, its just a hobby for me.

Great example - this is why I stayed 100% in music. Even a fringe artist like Grimes claimed to have problems with her well respected label over creative issues. None of those problems for me.

The beauty of a hobby is that nobody has the leverage to make you compromise, or perform when you don't want to.

Some thoughts:

- Reminds me of a GitHub commentor saying they left tech to build furniture out of wood ("I no longer build software" [0]).

- AI art might eat your lunch, especially in the concept art world. The main guy on Twitter who put out the thread about Stable Diffusion was a concept artist [1], and I think concept artists, graphic designers and generally non-fine-art artists will be hit the hardest.

- The part about a more diverse player roster was interesting given that ATVI use a tool for it, although not for Overwatch apparently [2]. Some people were outraged online (on both sides of the political spectrum) but personally I don't see a problem with it. People may not necessarily remember the various axes on which others operate (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc), so there's nothing wrong with a tool that can help people analyze that and create characters for that. It reminds me of the outrage doctors first had over needing checklists for tasks, but they actually do work when studied. They're just tools, nothing more, nothing less.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32461138

[2] https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-creators-explain-they-didn...

AI won't eat lunch, but it may crowd the space with more people getting paid less.

A marketing person can't sit in front of Stable Diffusion and work it towards the campaign they want. They still need an art department that can iterate and make it match the campaign. The artist may very well be sitting in front of some iteration of stable diffusion/imagen/dalle but they still need to discern between AI generated outputs that work and that don't, and to iterate on it until it's right.

Why do you think an 'art department' is still needed? The only reason why in-house art departments are needed, is because previously its hard to communicate 'exactly what you want' to an artist, hence in-housing to reduce communication friction.

In the future, the marketing guy, can just create a draft/visual guide through AI, and send it to some outsourced artist to refine. The outsourced artist can be from any country, because again, language for precise communication is less important.

Competition is going to be brutal, especially for more traditional corporate art (The standard corporate memphis style can already be perfectly executed by SD+dreambooth, because its so easy to draw)

Much better to be in the comics/animation/movie business, where demand will boom in response to drastically improved quality.

If you make marketing create art and talk to outsourced creators then guess what, you've turned the marketing department into and art department. Clearly the art department is still needed - according to yourself.

I heard a talk last week from a co-founder of a social first agency who no longer hires storyboarders because it's cheaper and faster for his agency to make them themselves with freely available generative AI.

They also use AI tools for creative direction and text generation.

Before you declare this important find out if the product is any good. Any sweatshop can cut some jobs and replace them with a shit ai artist but how are the storyboards and how do they translate into the final product. There are many companies that do foolish things to replace a cheaply paid artist because they can't see past the savings and into how it affects the product.

If their storyboarder could be replaced completely by AI they needed a better one.

> AI art might eat your lunch

Show me an artist who will regret their lunch being eaten, and I’ll show you an artist who worked and/or slept through breakfast and dinner.

> In the near future I want to become a concept artist in the games industry

Worst industry ever by all the accounts I've heard. Part of the compensation package is that you are working in the gaming industry. Long hours, lousy pay, ill treatment. Go for the art mate but pursue a different industry.

Its also literally the worst type of artist to be. Concept art is the most vulnerable type of art to AI. AI already does concept art way better than humans, 1 concept artist can now do the job of 10. Because AI is good at variation and creativity, bad at detail/coherence, concept art favors the former, needs less of the latter.

Why doesn't OP MAKE games instead of being a mere artist? If you can program, and have a passion for art, you can just make indie games, think of the undertale legend.

I'm not worried about competition from "AI art" — am I just stupid and ill-informed?

Pursuing game concept-art though appears to me to be a drag simply because of the sameness of it. I know the author of the article thinks it's become a wide open field for creativity but my eye stills see the same fantasy-super-hero-manga genre that probably keeps computer games from being seen as deserving of being called "art" to society at large.

The thing I find frightening about AI image generation is the speed of iteration. Some of the images generated by Midjourney within seconds would take a human artist quite a long time to create. You can take a complete work from a paid human artist and run it through some prompts to get closer to the result you were looking for while retaining most of the original work.

Even if AI don't completely displace concept artists in the immediate future, it will certainly displace at least some portion of a human concept artist's workflow. I think the "detail work" for concept art is a good candidate to be offloaded to AI. Why pay an artist to paint every blade of grass when you can just take their rough draft and apply a series of "incredibly detailed grass texture" (etc) prompts to it?

Imo, the writing on the wall is pretty clear. While I'm sure that human concept artists will continue to find work, I'm pretty sure they'll be fighting an uphill battle, and probably won't feel very valued after awhile.

As Artists gain the ability to do more with less standards and expectations will change. The arrival of the printing press, the photograph, and the rise of digital effects were all ineffectual at putting artists out of work.

While I agree that human artists will always find their way to fashion, you also have to consider that ten years ago there were a lot of people looking for good-enough concept art. Good enough just won't make it anymore.

>the sameness of it.

the skills required to do entertainment design are broad enough that they give you access to a pretty wide range of jobs across multiple industries. if you get bored of being a render monkey, it's really not hard at all to switch to something like storyboarding or color scripting.

I have to agree. I couldn't think of a worse time to be getting into concept art. I subscribed to Midjourney's rendering service not too long ago just to test the waters, and I've already seen it improve dramatically twice.

I don't use the service often, but sometimes I'll spend an evening experimenting with prompts to generate images that I might use in existing or future projects, and it feels really cool having those images "in the bank" in case I decide to use them later. Even if I eventually wanted to hire a human artist to create the final product (for instance, to avoid potential copyright issues), the generated artwork is an amazing help for shaping an ideal scene.

Yup. And it's common for a large studio to do mass layoffs after every release. The entire industry is a front for exploitation of those who get into it because they are passionate about gaming. Go work literally anywhere else, and enjoy video games in your free time.

concept art is fine just as long as you go in with the right expectations for what the job actually is. also if you already have a technical background there is nothing stopping you from finding a marriage between both of your skillsets and working on smaller, more creatively fulfilling games.

Concept artists are usually contractors early in dev, not part of the death marches at the end.

But also in general it's not that hard to work in games and avoid crunch. Just respect yourself and don't let the trappings trap you. There's always other studios that will treat you better.

OP I read your text. As an teacher of VFX in an (european) art university let me give you a few tips:

You are only 20. You should not worry about your age at all.

Art school is ¼ about the skills and tricks you learn there, ¼ about being forced to put something in front of others who won't be wooed by fancy eye candy, ¼ about creating and finding a network of people and ¼ being exposed to other styles of art. Some of those things are influenced by the size and location of the art school, some of those are influenced by how much time you can spend with your collegues and at exhibitions or similar. Make sure to go to a school, where people are better than you. Going there just to learn the handywork is a waste of time. You should go there to learn the skills AND to create a network that can help you get jobs after. Feel free to take on work during your studies.

Also: The things that matter when doing great art are mostly about the brain. And the ability to see the right way takes time to develope. Make sure to do something daily. Maybe a daily comic strip, a daily drawing or whatever. Put it online so you are forced to never skip a day.

Super great advice and I agree a lot as a guitarist. Very same principles about diversity, challenge, and practice. In my teenage years I averaged probably 2 hours a day reaching for shred like Yngwie Malmsteen - because of that push and reach, 80% of normal playing is a walk in the park.

Once you get the technical aptitude it’s great to explore other cultures and methods and then your brain gets to express itself even more. Quite a lovely journey but also delayed gratification is built in and challenges a lot of people. Myself included…

As a technical person, it’s an interesting time to do this given the change that’s coming from “generative art” tech.

I’m 30 years (and one exit) into my career in tech. Still thinking about being a rock star… or at least learning to play guitar well enough to share it with people.

I still struggle with the question of whether to follow passion or money. I recently had an exit as the CEO of an HR Tech company. I’d love to make a Sci-Fi game. My old co-founder and I have it partially spec’d out. We love it and there’s much joy in building something like that.

But games are like movies… the audience is fickle and you can easily make a good game that is a total financial (hobby) failure. Where as another HR Tech startup feels… not like a total layup exactly, but like making a dish that you’ve made several times before, a crowd favorite. You know how to do it. You feel good about pulling it off. It’s not super fun content but at least it’s creating something and you feel like you can make something good that people will like, which means financial success.

Good luck to you. YOLO.

Why not do both (or all 3 including music) at the same time while giving yourself 2-3 years to start slowly ramp up your focus on the game dev or music side as you keep on learning while reducing your involvement with the management work?

I'm personally someone attempting to find a balance between my full time job, music & game dev/3d graphics. I don't see the latter two paying off any time soon but I see myself doing them for the rest of my life. The one thing I can say that after attempting to give it a go for 2+ years, a certain type of synergy between the different goals start to emerge. Skills & ideas I gain in one area help me do better in the other two in unexpected ways.

The experience & skills you've gathered from running a company would not go to waste and can be your source of strength. And just starting by dipping your toes is the best way to find whether you'd really enjoy being involved in these areas.

You should check out my article basically trashing the future of AI/ML music generation. I just submitted it recently.

Funny, I left art for tech. Making art is intrinsically rewarding but doing it for money can be absolute hell. Best of luck to op.

I was an artist. A fairly decent one (I don't really have a gallery of my stuff up, anymore, but here's a couple[0-1]).

That was a while ago (a long while ago. Over 35 years). I figured out that even a top-shelf artist (and I don't think that was my destiny) wouldn't make as much as mediocre programmer.

Nowadays, I have sort of "run off to join the circus." I write software for free.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/art/Cavalier.png

[1] https://littlegreenviper.com/art/Sentinels.png

Now a programmer that can do art? That may come in useful!

I do most of my own graphic assets.

I know there’s many better artists, out there, but I’m good enough for government work.

Pretty dope drawings.

Thanks! But that was long ago.

There’s a picture of Arteeste Chris, back then, in this story: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...

Nice! I stopped about 10 years ago - last time I was active was 2011. I didn't think I had anything left up, but I was able to dig up some very old Behance stuff:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/2201575/Drawings-2010-2011

https://www.behance.net/gallery/2992181/Vector-Works-2010-20...

Those are great!

Really fun.

I've always suspected that the guy selling paintings on saw blades at the local wine and art festival is doing better than most artists in the field.

I did the same, hah. Not because of the money though; I made a decent career and money in art (television and film), but because of the wind of change I felt from within. I'm no foreigner to tech though, in-fact that was my first calling and have always kept it on the side (even had a small startup and a successful exit). Now, art is my on the side thing and tech main. I agree with OP you cannot make a career without going all in. I felt, for a time being, I made a career as far as I could in art without making sacrifices further which I didn't want to compromise on. There's art and then there's commercial art. I was in the latter.

I did something similar though I never made it into tech, I dropped out of a bachelor's in math to pursue art, this was roughly 5 years ago and it's been a tough journey, I wish you the best of luck.

Some resources that will help you a long the way:

youtube: proko steve huston steven zapata ahmed aldoori sinix

nma.art watts atelier schoolism

Try to find a local life drawing class and go every single week.

Animation specific check out Toniko Pantoja, ModerndayJames.

I'm currently trying to change my relationship to art from something I pursue to make money, to something I enjoy doing to fuel my soul. I haven't drawn in a couple months, but I've come to terms that it's something I'll always be pursuing, in what capacity I'm not sure, but art, is the coolest thing that's ever come into my life.

> I'm currently trying to change my relationship to art from something I pursue to make money, to something I enjoy doing to fuel my soul.

This may not be a useful anecdote for those who want to thread the needle between passion and profession, but I'll never forget the day that I decided, really decided, to switch from a piano performance degree to a CS degree. My playing immediately improved - I was relaxed, and things just flowed. The minute I stopped pinning my hopes and worries for the future on my art, the minute I stopped trying to force perfection, it blossomed on its own.

I don't know what lesson, if any, to draw from that experience, but there it is. I tend to think that shedding the egotistical attachment to professional success was the key. (it just transferred over to programming, but hey, turns out there are lots of people who will pay for that).

Lots of cynicism here, typical whenever art is compared to tech, but I wish him the best. Might as well give it a shot and see how it goes, you can always fall back into tech if needed later on.

Hell, I welded in a shipyard for a while after the first .com crash. Fallback skills of all flavors are useful!

Plus a break from the industry is healthy anyway even if one needs to reskill a bit upon reentry.

I had a tiny dream the other day, to leave for a silent retreat in a monastery and study cosmology.. something about the scale and timelessness of it was appealing to my soul

You could ask here:

https://www.pas.va/en/taglist.disciplines.astronomy.html

Compared to the universe, their monastery is tiny. And as time goes by, it gets tinier and tinier.

If you don't like tech then there's no reason to force it but a lot of this is fairly naive.

>churning out code to solve problems I don't care about?

Career artists often churn out art they don't care about. Pick a job that solves problems you do care about! The trade is a separate choice.

As someone who works in games, I can assure you there are tech people that think about kindness, creativity, history, culture, art, emotions and aesthetics.

Ending with a quote from a Pixar movie is especially ironic considering they work on the cutting edge of art and technology.

I wish this young man the best of luck.

My totally unscientific hypothesis is: "solving problems you do care about" is usually the easiest way to make money, e.g CRUD and web API.

Once your skill is more polished and your experience is wider, then try to look for jobs where their goals aligns with your interests.

I’ve been a visual effects artist for more than a decade (Nuke Compositor), last year I did the inverse move to tech, already predicting that AI would make my life a bit harder.

All the articles you see about the state of the industry are no hyperboles, my life as developer is a walk in the park compared to what I had to go through as an artist. But as your intuition already told you, not going all-in is a mistake. Ignore people saying to do this as a hobby.

It is not remotely the same thing, especially if you are ambitious and not taking this path because you had no better option.

> Beyond paying for rent and groceries I don’t have many material desires.

Something about this mindset never ads up for me. Sure, this sounds cool in your 20s or early 30s. (although does it? you don't want to eat out with your friends? go to the bar? live in something better than crappy apartments. things are expensive these days)

But what about when you are 60? When you are on this path you certainly aren't saving for a house. I mean art is better than manual labor or something in the sense that you are physically capable of going until much later in your life. But do you want to be grinding out cartoons to buy food when you are that age?

My gut is that:

1) a small number of people make these romantic visions work

2) A large number end up in difficult situations they regret. Some just a bit of regret but some in really bad situations.

3) They have money coming from the family or something like that in a way they aren't being transparent about that means there is really no choice to make at all and they are going to be fine no matter what

And nothing against people in group 3 either as long as they are honest about their situation.

Take a few hours to mess around with Stable Diffusion before you do this. It is a really bad time to become a concept artist.

I worked on early versions of Midjourney

Nice. In that case welcome to the machine.

It's a tool, come on. It'll do no more 'damage' than template sites did for good designers.

It's an illustrator apocalypse.

I believe the rise of AI art has shown, more than anything, that many of us here in our tech bubble have no idea what professional artists actually do.

I don't doubt that ai art will have a significant impact but come on....the job involves way more. And ai is not as close to this job as the ads suggest. You only have to take a minute to learn about the average workday of a professional artist.

Surely the industry will find more ways to make the life of artists more miserable with this.

"The most important thing when creating art is that you know what you want to say with it."

When I make art I do so only to please myself and without any preconceived notions or intentions as to what it should be or what messages it's to convey.

It completely does not matter to me what, if anything, anyone else gets out of it.

Probably because the OP's intention is to "...inspire people to change their life for the better". Put emphasis on "inspiring people".

But nevertheless I'm agree what that. Whenever I take a look at my photos, I found most of them are boring, even though I tried to be intentional (not taking random snapshots). Beyond visual beauty or adhesion to composition guidelines, I rarely find them tickling my brain.

Guess reading aesthetics can made you too self-critical :p

I am an "artsy" person myself, both digital (3D, photography, vfx, animation, manipulation, digital drawing, infographics, etc.) and traditional (drawing, craft, sculpting, etc.), However, it's just as a hobby as others mentioned here, it will be a struggle when it comes to financial support even if you are top of the line. What I did instead is going into engineering (electrical one, yeah sounds far even with software devs), but you would be surprised how your artsy skills play a big factor in your work, because at the end of the day, your data/info/ideas/etc. needs to be presented and communicated, either internally or with clients, and it actually most of the time put me ahead of my colleagues/competitors.

There are some GDC talks that give insight into the concept art industry, e.g. https://youtu.be/CYbYvImd7Bw

The general sense that I get from that talk about what it’s like to work in concept art is not sunshine and rainbows.

I'm sure you'll do some thinking on the philosophy of art front. To name a few recommendations: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1970) and Dewey's Art as Experience (1934).

> Art [as a creation] does not imitate nature, it imitates a creation [or nature, in a Spinozian meaning, which is but an eternal activity of creation], sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify, to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature. (John Berger, "The White Bird")

I like the author's website. It's an interesting idea to be able to list bullet points of what you did in a month (not too granular), add recipes etc. Really becomes your own space.

Before there was a market for Art, it used to be heavily subsidized by rich people. It was basically contract work. (Medicis etc).

As long as you find that there is a vibrant market, go for it. But otherwise I would keep it a hobby and try to get wealthy enough to retire and only then, do it full time.

The best would be to be able to associate your hobby and your jobs so that your jobs feels like a hobby but also pays the bills.

The obvious intersection between visual arts and programming is video game making for instance.

to echo other replies here, OP might be idealizing the artistic field. why not do both, until you can only do one?

that's my own plan.

by the way, concept art is one of the hardest, if not the hardest field in art. these people crank out designs upon designs. and if Feng Zhu didn't make an entire YouTube channel showing what they do, i would have never known they existed.

edit: well, other pages on his website suggest that OP already did what he said. good luck, pal!

More power to you, and you always have software as a backup plan if things don't work out.

One of my close friends went through a similar change from software to art. It took 4 years until she found her way and her audience. She's still not making much but she is much happier than when programming.

It's still going to be a hustle for you, but it's a different kind of hustle. And that's ok. Enjoy the journey!

I like the idea of leaving art uncompromised, independent of earning money. I can count very few people that can involved money and get away with it. The problem with this is that you have to have a job to support your art, and that reduces the amount of time you can spend with art. They key is and i believe what is comming, work for a company that actually makes the world Better place

I'd recommend checking out books on career transitions before pulling the trigger, for example The Squiggly Career and Refuse to Choose. Also try reaching out to working artists and ask them to a coffee to discuss what the life is like: many people actually welcome the opportunity to give a stranger the advice they wish they had known when they were younger.

Kid, you're not leaving anything.

No, let me back up a bit. Go for it! Live your best life.

Signed, -About One Career Every Five Years

Good on you! I did something similar (tech to music), the irony is now I am drawn to programming as a hobby as there are some bits of the brain music just doesn’t exercise. On the whole a happier person.

Good on you, Liam! Tech will always be there and relatively easy for you to come back to. Take your chances now while you're young and don't fret about the money while you don't need to.

Best of luck

I did this, and I'm happy. Caveat is that my medium is code.

There’s a wealth of expression to be explored in art as code. Don’t be too hasty calling it a caveat! And I’m glad you’re happy!

Tech people are delusional, i always said it, this confirms it, specially the ones who earn a lot of money during this bubble

All power to you, OP! Art and self within changes a lot when its also your job; Here be dragons.

Smart, made bank FIRST then going to do something else.

Instead of being dirt poor and trying something creative.

Only 20 years old? Wow, some people are just born next level I guess.

Silver spoon?

Good for you. Thanks for making the world more beautiful. Good luck!

Good for the OP! I’m making a similar switch soon as well.

"Yeah, there's a good buck in that racket"

Learning blender myself and this character modeling looks unique ;)

I know people always say "we should start splinter group X". But a gallery for hackers to show off serious art is always welcome. Like Postmasters in NYC!

That's what DALL-E said /s.

I want to do digital art...

python is used widely in animation and vfx. why not both?

money solves money problems.

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