Blocked/stopped

General Discussion
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I’m in a period where I’m completely devoid of inspiration and I have this mental block that’s stopping me from doing VFX. Between work and everything else, when I get home I really lack the desire to start/continue the project, perhaps because of the fear of failure? Of not doing enough?
The fact is, I talked about it with a friend and he said he’d had this block too, and the desire returned when he started writing to/joining a community with the same passion. I just wanted to ask if you’ve ever had a block like this and how you overcame it, if there’s a way to get this stuff out of my head :smiling_face_with_tear:.

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Hey SkyLabs,

yeah I definitely also had that at some point. I guess it can be quite individual why it happens, doing some soul searching def can’t hurt.
For me a couple of things helped with this:

  • Allowing rest periods without thinking you have to do more or “I am not doing enough”. Inspiration is fueld by curiosity and play and putting you under pressure / forcing yourself doesn’t help with curiousity or play. Just be okay with chilling for a bit.

  • For me it came from only connecting VFX with “work” and never “play” because I mostly did it at my job. So just opening Unreal every once in a while for 30 mins on the weekend, playing with something I always was curious about and then closing Unreal again without the expectation of needing to create something perfect helped with decoupling Unreal from an only work-mindset

  • But it also came a bit from the feeling that I didn’t know enough about tech to make VFX as cool as I wanted them to be, which let me freeze a bit. Which meant at some point I sat down to fill some of the knowledge gaps I felt I had. So Unreal felt more exciting again.
    So maybe pick a topic you’re curious about and see what you can do with it, play.

  • But also general inspiration for me comes from doing a bunch of different things and not only one creative outlet. Drawing, writing, just going outside to fill the batteries. Quite helpful.

As said, it’s possibly a very individual issue, but maybe seeing some steps how I’ve overcome it might be helpful :slight_smile: Good luck!

2 Likes
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Thanks a lot for the advice :heart:, I will try to apply this and other methods that I am finding online and see if i unblock myself