When you’re young, you roll your eyes when someone says that learning is a lifelong process, but after a decade outside the classroom, you can become desperate for the time and money to learn new skills. So instead of throwing money and time at night classes, the alternative route, one that might even pay you to learn the skills you want, is to build your own classroom through the work you take. For me, Tongal has been a perfect platform to achieve this.
Still from my first SYFY ident project and first C4D project
Identify What You Want to Learn
Sounds stupid, but it’s important to go into this process with a goal in mind. For me it was to learn CG, specifically Cinema 4D, with an ultimate goal of doing full CG narrative shorts and possibly features in-house. That particular dream is still a ways off but not nearly as far away as it was eight months back. With that in mind, and knowing of course that the start-up cost of materials and tools was pretty hefty, I went to Tongal and scanned the briefs to find something I could use to build this skill. What I found was the ever-present SYFY logo ident projects.
Still from Alien Alone title sequence, learning liquid simulations
Use Passion to Create Opportunity
To get the job, you have to pitch for the job. This is where your desire to learn is a benefit. If this skill is something you really want, you’re going to be passionate about explaining how you will implement this new shiny thing you’re obsessed with. Passion is one of those things that’s hard to fake and it comes bursting through when you craft your pitch. A passionate pitch is more likely to be taken seriously.
Still from rejected TZGZ pitch
Budgeting Your Budget
Ok so you craft a pitch, and somehow you got the gig. You suddenly have two projects to fund: your education and the job at hand. I’ll use the first SYFY ident I worked on to provide an example.
$1500 : Initial budget
$700 : C4D 3-month subscription
$500 : 3D models
$200 : Actor’s Fee
$1400 : Final Cost
Now normally that would be a terrible profit margin on a project, but remember the goal here is that you’re getting paid to develop a new skill. In this case, I already had a 2015 iMac; not the most powerful thing but it could run C4D. Additionally, I went ahead and downloaded Corona Renderer. It’s a pretty useful CPU renderer that most importantly provided true-to-light lighting results. Free at the time, approximately $30 a month now.
Still from Whisper, NASA Cinespace Competition
Use Your Fear
Ok so you’ve got the job, you’ve got your budget and used it to buy your tools. Incidentally those models? You now own them forever. And, you now have three months to mess around on C4D, for personal projects and other paying jobs.
Now you’re staring down a deadline with tools you’ve only studied, you’ve barely touched; you’re thinking maybe… maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. Well that’s good, it’s amazing! That’s the fear talking, peppered with a little self-doubt. Fear is your best motivator. Now there’s something at stake, you might fail. Now’s the time to put in the work.
More than a few late nights are to be expected. You’ll get very sick of hearing the telltale “Hey guys, what’s up?” intro of 1,000 YouTube tutorials. And you’re going to mess up, more than once. It’s not going to work outright. Those failures will feed into your fear, but your fear feeds back into your motivation. Fear’s a tool you have that’s going to go away as you become more skilled, so hang onto it as long as you can. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Still from ANGELS, short experiment
Make It a Cycle
I told you about that 2015 iMac; a good machine but not what I wanted or needed. During those first three months, I hit the ground running — pitching as many jobs as I could with as many clients as I could find. The goal being to grow my knowledge and to grow the toolbox right along with it. By the end of that first period, I had enough to purchase C4D perpetually and build a new PC that could handle the more demanding work I really wanted to be doing.
Soon I wasn’t pitching the use of CG animation, but using CG animations in my pitches. I’m not by any means a great animator, nor is that ever going to be my sole focus. However, in eight months I developed a new skill set, and that skill set paid for its own creation.
Quick shots of my baby
Try It For Yourself
Now it's your turn. What new skill are you currently developing (or hoping to develop)? Head to Tongal's Open Projects to find your next opportunity to learn while doing (and earning).
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Note From Tongal: “Learning By Doing (on Tongal)" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
