Today was an interesting testing experience…I tried to draw a head with it’s regular features – eyes, mouth, face, hair….turns out that it is way harder then it might seem and a completely different experience then drawing on paper. It was a cross between drawing and sculpting and it took a while to wrap my head around it. Ultimately, although each feature looked ok, the scale and positioning on the head was just off. I tried building up in places to expand the surfaces and the more I ‘sculpted’, the more it resembled a decently looking 3D head. I think if I got a chance to play with it a little more, it would turn out to be a cool piece but I made a rookie mistake and paid for it.
When the headset showed me the warning of a low battery I was so focused on what I was doing that I just ignored it. You can probably guess what followed and I did not save my sketch. I was hoping that once the battery charges it would start back up in TiltBrush but unfortunately, it was gone. It felt kind of devastating because I spent a considerable amount of time on it and was excited to see if I can ‘bring it life’. Lesson learnt.
I felt pretty demotivated so I ended up just sitting on the floor, having the mirror tool turned on and playing with the fire brush. The sound it makes when you do brush strokes is strangely satisfying, almost therapeutic…so I doodled for a bit and then did a few brush strokes that resembled antlers. That was it. I felt inspired again. I didn’t know where it would take me but I just kept going until a bear head was suddenly looking down at me. Don’t ask me how I went from antlers to a bear….that’s improv for you 🙂 Then I added the little teddy bear behind the head – kind of a symbol of being an adult while still a kid inside…or the parallel of putting on a front…I could go on but let’s not get too philosophical…for now.
In the end, I’d say the night was a success. I loved playing with the size, expanding it so I could focus on the details, making it tiny or repositioning it in the environment. It does it so smoothly that it’s such a joy just to be able to interact with your creation and see it from all angels. That is truly one of the great joys of creating in VR.
So don’t write off your failures. You were just probably meant to do something different.
“Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”
Arianna Huffington