It’s a pretty regular thing where you run into people online who want advice on how to do something. How to model a specific shape, or how to use a certain feature in an application, or advice on this or that. I’ve come to realize over time that this is often a form of procrastination. Or, as Steven Pressfield called it in the book “The War of Art”, resistance.

BTW, if you haven’t read “The War of Art”, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It’s opened my eyes to the many ways that I delay or stall myself out when trying to attack something new. Resistance is real and it’s not to be trifled with.

My wife and I have even taken to saying to each other when the other is complaining about something they have to do .. the phrase, “That sounds like resistance”. Often enough, that’s the wake up call the other person needs to realize they’ve been procrastinating for no good reason and to get on with whatever it is.

It’s not that people aren’t legitimately asking for help or advice … I’m sure that they are … but what they don’t realize they’re doing is delaying themselves from just getting stuck in an trying it.

You don’t need a tutorial. You don’t need a new version of the app you’re using. You don’t need a new computer or a video card upgrade.

You don’t need anything beyond what you already have. You have everything you need.

Just. Get. Started.

For me, this is 99% of the struggle. I worry about tasks, I put them off, I overthink them, etc. We all do it, we’re only human after all.

I can let my anxiety over something grow to a point where I’m almost unable to actually start the damned task. But the delicious irony is that the way to reduce that anxiety and worry is to START THE TASK. Once I’m working on it, I feel 100% better and usually realize that it wasn’t so complicated, and it wasn’t so hard.

If it helps, break it down into a list of smaller steps and start walking through those. Chip away at the mountain until you look up and realize that the mountain is gone, and you’re finished, and it really wasn’t that hard. You just thought it was and paralyzed with resistance.

Just. Get. Started.

Thanks for listening!

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Hi! I’m Warren Marshall!

I’m a freelance, hard surface 3D artist living in North Carolina. I specialize in hard surface work but I can do pretty much anything from environments to props.

I worked at Epic Games for over 15 years and started freelancing after that. Since then I’ve done prop and environment work for some fun projects, including We Happy Few from Compulsion Games and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. I’ve also done a bunch of asset packs for the various marketplaces.

I have experience with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity and know how to put assets together quickly that look good in those engines.

Here’s a link to my Art Station page where you can see a bunch of my latest work:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/warrenm

Visit my main web site here :
http://www.warrenmarshall.biz

You can email me directly if you’d like :
warren@warrenmarshall.biz

Questions, business inquiries, support – or just to say hi!

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Human Head Model : William Vaughan