Pricing, Career Paths, Finding Work | Interview | Professional 3D artist DEREK ELLIOTT

hello and welcome to Cabot medium I'm grant Abbott and today I was lucky enough to get an interview with Derek Eliot now you may have come across his channel it's got some excellent content on there and if you haven't already then check the link in the description which will take you there he's also got a fantastic Instagram and B Hans page and he's a very skilled blender artist particularly when it comes to things like product design within the interview I'm asking Derek questions like how did he get into 3d modeling what was his career path how much does he charge where does he look for work and lots of other questions and Derek gives some really insightful answers so do watch the whole thing I promise you you won't be disappointed so hello Derek thank you for joining me and appreciate are you spending your time doing an interview with me if you just like to start off and tell us a bit about yourself and your channel sure so yeah my name is Derek Elliot my background is in industrial design and graduated from Appalachian State University in about 2013 and but I've been using blender for about thirteen years now since around 2007 and I started doing that in high school mostly for fun just I can I'm making my friends band logos and stuff to need blender to do a lot for me back then and it definitely wasn't as a full-featured as it is now but over time I got more and more interested in 3d and and I pretty much learned blender from YouTube tutorials so it's kind of always my goal that I would eventually be able to kind of give back to the communities - yeah about I think two years ago now I still didn't check that tape I it was a January maybe two years ago I started my YouTube channel and yeah it was finally you know able to kind of make some tutorials and it was way more rewarding than I thought it would be I really enjoyed interacting with people and being able to share my knowledge that I had built up over the years but um so that's part of what I do now not I wouldn't say that's most of what I do but most what I do is freelance 3d animation work and I've been doing that for coming up on a year now maybe like eight months or so so it's going well having fun and yeah happy to be here awesome stuff thank you so is it being blender all the way or have you looked other software tool as well so my introduction like in high school was with more CAD type software so and that's actually where I first used 3d was with SolidWorks and then I used AutoCAD and stuff as well but you know shortly after that I was introduced to Maya and I used that there was a personal learning addition at the time it was like a free for students type of thing and I played around in that but it was very frustrating I mean blender was frustrating when I started to but I just I never got fully into it and then at some point I realized that there's blender it's free so you know I felt like a little more on ownership over that and kind of dove into it pretty deep and in really since then it's just been it's just been blender so like I said I mean when I started off I was doing a lot of just you know what a high school kid would want to do in 3d software and I didn't need blender to do much and like I said it wasn't very powerful back then but but now you know the software I feel like that's kind of grown with me where now I am doing professional level work with it and I needed to do a lot and and it does that so oh so yeah I haven't really felt a need to switch I'm a little ashamed of how unfamiliar I am with some other software packages but pretty much just blender outside of you know I do some I use you know Adobe Creative Cloud to edit some videos and kind of like After Effects and they use Premiere to edit my YouTube videos but not really an expert in that but yeah pretty much pretty much all blender superb so do you feel like blender has held you back at any point to you with the some job roles that you thought oh I can't really do that because I'm only using blender not really like I said pardon me so no I don't think blender has really held me back there's been in kind of you know what people would call my style and kind of what I've developed is is kind of been around the tools that I'm able to use so I'm really you know you know some of my earlier work was kind of this simplistic style and people are asking like how do you how did you develop that style and say well it's because I didn't know how to do anything I saw I was just I was taking the tools I I knew and making work that they utilized those tools which is you know something I encourage people to do is not necessary to look at some amazing piece of work and try to you know you get stressed about why you can't do that but instead you know take the tools that you are familiar with and use those so outside of maybe just a couple freelance situations where I would have been on more of a team setting and maybe they were using another software you know that that is maybe a holding me back a little bit but but now I mean I haven't I've still not really considered ever needing to learn anything else but I do keep an open mind and I know I should be flexible with that but I feel like that the skills that I have in blender would be easily transferable to other softwares so definitely you know to answer the question no I've never felt like wonders holding me back so can you tell us a bit more about you all sort of career paths you said about college earlier what was your sort of transition into the 3d world as well yeah so so in college I studied industrial design at the recommendation of my mother thank you thank you mom she you know I was interested in the CAD stuff obviously was kind of the first big signal from high school I I just really you know I remember the first day I saw someone like an older student rotating a a cube in SolidWorks and like my mind was absolutely blown I thought that was so cool so that kind of CAD route and just interested in art as well led me to industrial design and and I was able to utilize you know I was able to use blender a little bit with that but we still worked in more traditional CAD software so in college you know in the class as we're mostly using SolidWorks or rhino3d and rendering a lot with keyshot but I was so using blender for a lot of personal projects and then occasionally would use it to kind of help me with my my school projects as well but but yeah so so that the degree in industrial design is kind of what just got me moving and I know we'll talk maybe a little bit about you know the whole idea about college later but yeah that industrial design background you know I took that into a job out of college and I was working kind of in a furniture design field and but eventually that just you know I was taking on small freelance projects here and there and then sometime like I said maybe a little less than a year ago I just decided that the the 3d was really what I was most interested in it wasn't so much the industrial design or the furniture design but really what I was getting the most enjoyment out of was the actual um 3d modeling animation rendering and I mean there's a lot of design that goes into that as well so that's kind of the progression that it took hmm so if you don't mind me asking I get this question a lot is how much do you earn doing your sort of freelance work yeah so you know it all it starts off for everyone real real small like I think you know some of the first freelance projects I did in in college where you know the the old $50 logo if that's okay with them I actually sent that in an email one time I was like hey we're about $50 if that's okay like as if they could of course that didn't that didn't turn into any major brand logo or anything no spoiler alerts there but um so yeah it's kind of progressed over the years I you know basically the the general idea for me is and I think for most people should be that you know just to continue raising your prices so I'm over time I've been able to charge more and more just depending on kind of how busy I am you noticing that you know if I have a lot of enquiries coming in then you know maybe I realized if I can you know bring the prices up a little bit but right now I would say I'm kind of operating in to sort of price brackets if you will in in just quickly on pricing the way I'm present my party's now is pretty much all just fixed fixed price so I just you know there's a fixed scope fixed timeline kind of a we know what the result is supposed to be and that's not necessarily always a deliverable more like what the project needs to do and so so yeah the two brackets are kind of you know I've done some television like 30-second broadcasting work and you know for a project like that I'm usually looking to get between you know 10 to even $50,000 would be pretty good for me right now and that of course depends on the client the budget you know what they're really looking for but that's kind of the upper end and I haven't done much work in that area yet but if you're watching this video thinking you're hiring me you know contact me sooner than later because it's going to be more expensive but then the other price packet I'm so really interested in working with smaller companies and kind of one-man gigs like where they're just you know Kickstarter stuff like that so for those projects or or also for larger brands but for more like social media oriented projects but they just need a little bit you know they need some content most of that work is more in like a like a 2 to 10,000 dollar range and so you know I I talk in these big ranges because that's usually actually how I end up presenting it to a client is that you know hey you know you you tell me what you are looking for what you need to do not not you know don't tell me that you want a 5 second animation where the product you know comes apart and explodes and shows all the parts like tell me that oh you know customers are having trouble understanding how our product fits together so it's like okay well then maybe an exploding animation is the way to go so I usually present a proposal with my three price brackets where it's okay I think I can help move that needle you're trying to move for this much of this much or this much you know the most expensive option I think is going to have the most success the lower option is obviously less investment for both sides but um but can still you know work towards their goal so I would say those are those are kind of its kind of the the charging range if you will but it yep it's very complicated of course yes dad so if you had any advice for newcomers into the freelance world what would you suggest that they maybe avoid if they're pricing well you know so hourly billing is a is a thing that most people should do what they can to get away from it's really hard when you're starting off you know many of my first freelance projects were Harley and some first jobs were hourly of course but there's there's a guy who I follow really closely called Jonathan stark and he he actually has a book called hourly billing his nuts and he talks about all about value pricing which is kind of what I'm trying to get into and how hourly billing is bad for the client but um in terms of you know if you're starting off freelancing I would say things to not do don't you know do a lot of personal projects don't take on work that you don't think is going to really help you either learn a new skill or build your portfolio and especially if it's also not going to get you a lot of money you're just gonna kind of bog yourself down and kind of get caught in the cycle of low-budget projects that you're not having fun with but I think the biggest thing is just to do whatever you can to you know stay passionate do things that you enjoy doing but of course you know you stopped to pay the bills so um you know ideally maybe you're working a full-time job and then you can kind of moonlight doing your freelance work and kind of ease into and understanding that world of freelance and working with clients but it's it's a it's a tricky process and many people approach it different ways but um because those are some of my some of my basic recommendations that's great thank you so how about someone who is completely new and they're thinking whether to go to art school or go down the the self-talk route what would you recommend to them and what would you be you know it you know it really depends on what you what you want I mean you know I went to college and I don't regret it at all I think it was a good decision but you know of course money is the first biggest factor is if you know if you're gonna dream to be going into debt or putting yourself into financial hardship to go to college then I would say don't go that's that's not a good thing you know most of the skills that I use in my everyday now that you know kind of produce the work that I produce that I sell for those prices is all things that I learned on my own through yelling YouTube tutorials watching a great with YouTube channel and so it so you can you can kind of in terms of the hard skills and stuff you can develop that all on your own without college college in some case cases will help but I think for me and maybe for many people the biggest advantage to going to a college would be for one the networking you know the sense of community and just kind of having you know being with people and working with people you know communication and just the ability to work with other people is you know massively important especially if you're going to try to run kind of your own freelance business so you you develop a lot of those kind of social skills and just you know the ability to interact with work with critique other people's work that's something that college I think does really well still that's difficult to get if you're trying to learn on your own and then beyond that would be just the the deadlines the kind of you know you've got professors you know telling you this needs to get done or like you know you just if you you know for me and maybe some people watching I have a really hot I'm a big procrastinator like let's be honest sometimes it's really hard for me to kind of get motivated to to start a project to finish a project to keep going with a project and in college kind of like if you know it has that schedule and you need to stick with it otherwise you know your time is wasted your money is wasted so there's kind of an external incentive to to really you know focus and kind of learn to manage your time and I'm sorry I think that's a big part of it and then and then the other big part is you have the networking meeting people some some schools you know like you know where I went to school at laughs Latin State University I'm really happy with the the student Network I have I try to stay connected with younger students as well as the older ones I'm especially when I was in school and and that's that's really helpful so some schools would have that better than others I would say in the case of some of the top tier design schools that that's almost all I would say you get you're paying for is really that Network I mean you will get a quality education but the the high prices for some of those schools I don't think is I don't think you're necessarily paying really just for the education I think that you know the alumni networks and the the people that you'll be connected with I think I think that's honestly what you're paying for like I know many of the art schools in California you know companies like Disney and Pixar are pulling directly from people at those schools and they have programs to even help them get into jobs like that so I think that's something you're paying for in those cases but back to kind of the main question yeah College it's not right for everyone I think it was right for me and so you just kinda have to decide you know what are you looking to get out of college and then decide is College gonna deliver that to you so would you have any advice for newcomers what what should they be learning if they're sort of self Jonas self taught so tell self taught yourself teacher like learn blender I would say hey you mean in terms of like what would be like where to start like if you don't know 3d at all and you want to just be where someone like you where I am exactly that yep yeah I would you know kind of back to that whole fashion thing I mean you need to you need to be passionate about the work so you know decide you know look at look at work that you like think about you know what it might take for you to get there and you know you're starting off it can be useful to try to duplicate work like that and just you know to learn the technical skills but I would I would say that the most important thing starting out is really just a foster kind of that that passion don't try to make it a job right away I'm like with me when I started blender I would I would start it I would get frustrated I would quit for a couple months of time I'd pick it back up you know I'd quit if I was trying to make my living when I was doing that it would have it would have not been pretty I would have been very frustrated I would give you getting the head client work but you know it was you know I was using blender for ten years before I was really using it to earn a living so you know slowly and slowly over time I was able to you know get comfortable with it learn about what I like what I like to you know do what kind of work I like to do so I think that yeah that would be my biggest suggestion is just to you know stay passionate about it try to work on things that you enjoy do a lot of personal projects and just and just learn it have fun share your work look for feedback on your work and yeah that all kind of just feeds into a general you know kind of a better relationship with with 3d in general you know Mikey splendor specifically but you know I follow artists they use other software as well so just you know trying to immerse yourself in in kind of what 3d is why you like it and decide you know maybe maybe it's not something you want to do so should really think about kind of why what you want to learn what are you doing you know are you enjoying it and I try to maintain that enjoyment Thanks so um would you have any advice for new artists trying to get into the industry as well as just sort of picking up 3d for the first time yeah I mean back to you know again I think you know in terms of getting into industry if if there's a specific company you want to work for then try to do work that is like the work that they do I think that sometimes people just kind of do all sorts of random stuff I mean we all do when we start 3d everyone wants to model a realistic human is like the first thing they ever do or which is extremely difficult or mono like a high-end car oh you know if you want to do something like that then yeah learn that but I would say you know focus on finishing projects and and try to do work in the style of what you would eventually like to be hired for so just yeah I mean just kind of you know think about what you're doing why you're doing it and and decide you know you know if you're really targeting a specific job you know what what does that company gonna want to hire you for like what do they do what would your job there be and kind of what are the skills that you need to to have that and then honestly I'll add to that because I don't think I've mentioned it enough because it's so important but talk to people meet people connect with people like go outside your house you know most you know they there's a it's like it's all about you know and you know it's not all about who you know but it's a lot about like especially in terms of getting a job like you you're gonna have a million times easier time if you if you're connected with someone at a company or or they've seen your work already and then they said hey we have a job open you're gonna get that job you know way easier than somebody who's just you know filling out an online application so so just building a network telling people what you do and having them and being interested in what they do as well so it can't be a one-sided thing you know I'm always reaching out to other artists like and it's not for any particular reason you know just other than sometimes to just appreciate their work like hey this is great and you know some of that can foster a relationship but yeah I just I think a really important thing is just to do what you do obviously work on being good at that and and having people know what you do so I would say if you ask pretty much any of my friends like what does Derek do for a living like I talk about 3d so much and I broadcast that so much I'm pretty sure everybody would say Oh Derek you just 3d stuff you know they might not know deeper than that but but that's enough to to kind of create that little you know thought in people's head where you know maybe you could be a potential freelance client they think who do I know that can do 3d animation because their company is looking for something like that you want to be the person that they think of so you know being connected to as many people as possible and having them know what you do and that you're passionate about it because then they're going to be more likely to to hire you or want to you know give you a job or something like that yeah that makes a lot of sense so until you specifically how do you find the time to learn new things whilst doing all these sort of freelance jobs and so forth how do you what or where do you go as well to find sources to learn from yeah I mean really it's still YouTube so I you know in terms of getting new you know learning new things about blender or just really anything it's unlike I'm living on YouTube these days there's just so much good information and in it and it's just it's a really for me at least it's a really digestible format to be able to just kind of find a video and in some times I'm I'm searching for a specific thing and in that case you know a lot of times I'll have to be diving really deep on forums or something like that for something really specific or technical but in for the most cases it's just just kind of watching yeah like your YouTube channel other people under youtubers channels just you know when a new video comes out maybe it's not something that I really want to do but there's always gonna be little tidbits and techniques kind of packed in there and just things that kind of make you think about something a little bit of different ways so that's uh you know it is hard to balance though like you know on my own channel if you see there's I'm not the most regular uploader if you know when there's a big gap it's usually because I'm working on a freelance project and and that does become you know to be able to partition of those prices I'm charging I really do have to pour myself into those projects to be able to deliver something that I'm proud of and that's gonna work for them so so you know it is a balance it's a juggle but um yeah I would say just in general just you know the passion will just kind of cause you to learn whether or not it's intentional just I'm interested in blender so when I open up YouTube and I see that grant Abbott has a new YouTube tutorial like it's just I'm gonna click on that like over you know something else that's not related to 3d and blender so you know that that passion just kind of drives continuous learning mmm so have you got a favorite piece of work that you've done I you know it's it's mostly mostly personal projects are the things that I really had the most fun with and most of that appears on Instagram so you know I did a I did there's this challenge called 36 days of type that happens every year we're kind of artists from all different fields create letters and numbers of the alphabet and can interpret them as yeah as whatever they want so I did kind of I did that last year I did architecture so I did all these little tiny little houses and stuff that was a ton of fun I'm actually doing the project again this year I'm only a few days in so I keep your wish me luck basically but um but I also I would say the coolest like singular piece of work that I did recently was this little shape-shifting pots animation it was for this weekly challenge called render weekly where it's mostly industrial designers but you know if your blender user check it out the challenge is usually to the design and render something a lot of people using like key shot and stuff in there because it's so industrial design focus but a couple weeks ago they had a challenge that was to design and render cookware so as I go that's that's no fun that's boring and so I googled cookware and and then yeah sure enough it's it's boring it gets a lot of this you know you see the same little objects like similarly shaped and colored packed into this like image awkwardly and I was like ah there's got to be a better way and so I fired up blender and I had this idea to kind of have the since the pots all look pretty much the same but they're just like different shapes I was like oh what if we what if it just like morphed between the shapes so so yeah that that project ended up being very cool I was really proud of it I even I think I even posted that like this is the coolest thing I've done it was yeah just you know just was really psyched on it was fun and and I finally just yesterday released released the tutorial covering that so if you're interested in making your own shape-shifting pot animations thing lots of lots of clients in the shape-shifting pot world and it's a you learn some good techniques and and yeah that was a that was a really fun recent piece of work so have you got a special ism in the 3d world at all you know a particular specialty I wouldn't say so I mean again a lot of my work is kind of driven by the tools I know how to use so my specialty at first was making very simple things because of that but I would say I try to really bring in the industrial design background as much as possible and it's not necessarily that it's intentional to try to it's just that that's kind of the way I learned in the design process and then and then it's just also something I'm still interested in like product design product animation and just like you know nice realistic lighting and stuff like that I would say is something I'm really interested in but that kind of manifests itself in different ways you know obviously I like to do things that are very like unrealistic and kind of almost cartoonish but you know still really nice materials or lighting so I'm still kind of deciding exactly what my specific niches or what I would ideally have clients hire me for but um B I would say you know more design focus I definitely don't do a lot of character animation so anything that's just crisp clean and then also just you know I you know kind of back to the design thing I do like to imagine my work as having you know purpose beyond just being art so you know whether it's to show a product or I'm to kind of explain something you know I do still do a lot of product visualization so you could say that's maybe a specialty but but yeah it's a it's kind of it's kind of all over the place but I'm slowly kind of narrowing that down but a lot of it does tie to that design background and just a general interest in kind of you know basic design principles of you know balance and composition and things like that mm-hmm do you have any way where you particularly go for inspiration at all nature that's the that's the cliche answer um you know not really a lot of people would tell you you know if you if you're a 3d artist then don't look at other 3d artists or you know if you're a painter don't look at other painters you know so there's a lot of people encouraging each other to look at fields outside their own which I do I include some one things what you do you know most of the people who I follow on Instagram or other 3d artists and because what we do is so technical a lot of times you know sometimes seeing those techniques can be really inspirational so not necessarily you know seeing their whole piece but like oh how did they how did they get that to do this and and can kind of spark of an idea of you know how else that technique could be used so honestly I mean I really do I look at a lot of other 3d artists but beyond that just you know taking a break sometimes and just kind of you know trying to just avoid looking at a screen you know go back go out in nature uh-huh but just just anything that I'll anything that will just give your mind a break and kind of let it process I think a lot of you know my good ideas come from you know just just walking around taking a shower and like it just it just kind of pops into your head and you push it away but then it comes back and then you push it away and it comes back and then and then those are the ideas that you kind of want to develop a little bit more mmm so when you're marketing yourself what have you found the most successful tactic or have you got any tactics as it were I didn't think I had tactics but I started getting clients so I start to think what were my tactics um so if I was gonna look back on kind of some of the things that have worked well for me so far I would definitely say social media is massive I am I didn't have an Instagram page for a long time because I didn't want to share pictures of my cat or friends and I didn't want to see pictures of other people's cats or friends and I was like I don't what's that for but you know eventually as like a wait I'm doing all this 3d stuff maybe maybe I could put that up there and you know just slowly doing that and and I mean it that did slowly kind of generate a following and it's not it's not all about the followers but it definitely like if people are interested in your work you know sometimes they'll follow you and they'll see more of your work and and that and that all kind of plays into like you know the algorithm and and so that honestly Instagram has been pretty instrumental in being able to to talk to people and bring on clients and kind of back to a point I made earlier you know just you know your ability to network and work with other people I think one of the most powerful things about Instagram is its messaging platform so just the fact that you know I can see some artists that I really appreciate you just send a message to says hey I love your work they might not respond you know nowadays I have you know coming up on 10,000 followers which isn't like a ton but it's nice and a lot of people see that and they think like this guy like a lot of times people message me and then I respond and they say oh my god I can't believe you responded and it's like well yeah like I don't I mean I could still manageable for me you know I'm getting more and more messages so it's getting more difficult but but you know just that you know being able to connect with people so a lot of times it's just you know people who are doing what I used to do you know just appreciating the work but then also occasionally that would be a potential client they're like hey like you know I saw you do this could you do that with our product and and a lot of times that you know those conversations can turn into freelance projects and then also I use a Behance so that you know I've had that for a long time that's kind of another slowly building platform or it takes a long time to build it it's a very popular platform if you haven't heard it heard of it I would check it out and get on there but Behance also has a messaging system but that does another good way for your work to kind of get exposed to other people I mean just anything that can get your work in front of people and like I said having people know what you do I think it's all gonna feed into kind of you know your marketing strategy and then I'll also mention LinkedIn so LinkedIn I didn't use much for you know that type of thing until recently but there's a really organic kind of growth on Lincoln where people like your work then it will go out to their network and and that that lately has been really powerful and just because of the conversations happening on LinkedIn a lot of times that brings in some more qualified leads bigger budgets so that it's really worth checking out but yeah I mean so all three of those are social media so I would say in terms of you know marketing like just ve be online be as many places as possible you know you might think that you're if you search on your name you know you see all the stuff but people you know there's information overload so if you if you're only doing something every once in a while it's just not gonna people aren't going to see you they're not going to know it and you know you don't have to over floo like you can look at how frequently I post on YouTube and Instagram and stuff and it's not it's not super frequently I mean with this 36 days at I project it hopefully will be every day for 36 days but but it you know you don't overthink it but just just be there be out there connect with people now that I would say that's the the number one strategy is just be visible hmm so you've got Instagram parents YouTube and and others probably what what would you say is the key for gaining followers then and do you think gaining followers is important so that that's definitely like a hot hot topic it's like there's no denying that the more followers you have the more engagement you're going to get and the more eyes will be directed to your profile and maybe 1% of those eyes are clients so if you have a thousand followers then 10 is that one your potential clients so if you have a hundred thousand then it's gonna be way more I won't try to do Matt even though people Matt so yes I mean having more followers definitely can help but they have to be the right followers and that kind of answers or starts to answer the second part of the question which is you know how to get those followers and I would say that you know consistency not necessarily in how often you're posting but what you're posting so if you're like a lot of people you know know how to come to your channel because you're very good at you know some game art and things like that and you know so so being consistent in the type of work that you're putting out there I think is is really valuable and and you know if you post a picture your cat one day and then you're posting the 3d animation the next day if I go to your profile and I see the 3d animation love that but oh you've got can't here - I don't I'm not in that and for all I know if that's all I'm seeing like there's gonna be more pictures of your cats and I've said a couple times in this discussion I don't want to think that we can so just you know because it's in a type of work you're doing I'm I think is really valuable and um yeah if you're continuously putting out the same thing then people will follow it like imagine a TV series if it was a completely different topic like like what if you know stranger things really popular TV series what if you know one week that was stranger things in the next week it was the bachelor it's like people are gonna be like I have no idea what I'm what I'm what I'm here for so so consistency will keep people coming back will encourage them to follow you and then those followers the right followers will undoubtedly lead to you know more freelance work and just yeah having having a bigger following a bigger audience more people that you can tell about your work what you do and as I've said that's what kind of flows into the whole um kind of funnel of marketing and just I'm becoming you know known about what you do mmm yes so with all this have you got any aspirations for the future and are you maybe one day going to move away from freelance and into sort of a company or anything like that what are your thoughts yeah so I enjoy freelancing I will probably do it for the foreseeable future but you know I think some people and I work from home this is a you know some people I think they really like their dream would be to work by themselves from home other people hate that where they you know they have to be around people they have to be in office they have to you know have just things happening I would say I'm kind of more in the middle where you know I do enjoy being able to kind of control my own schedule but you know again I am a little bit of procrastinating so that could be a problem at times but um yeah so I am interested in joining up with you know a company or a team or just you know being part of a larger project that's another thing is you know if you're really just gonna work by yourself there is a limit to what you can do because I mean once you cross kind of a certain threshold in your budget or what a client is asking you you just can't you can't do massive projects by yourself it's just you have to work with people so you know I am interest working on bigger cooler better things and I know a lot of that would have to happen with other people and it's not just that but you know I do in part of what has made my you know I keep air quoting marketing part of what's made my marketing successful is my ability to connect with people and in that you know that same ability and interest in connecting with people works really well in like an office environment or on a team so the in the other part of that would be that to learn so you if you're if you're just at home by yourself you know you can watch YouTube tutorials and learn but I think I think that there really is a lot of value in like sitting next to someone or just you know having a conversation with someone about something that you can't necessarily have as easily or as you know fluidly online so that would be the other big thing or the big draw for me to work on a team would be to work with people who are more experienced with me than know more and and I just you know I know I know that if I was working with you know more experienced people that I'll be learning things and learning things is a good thing so so yes I would say in the future you know I would like to be you know not just freelancing I'll probably always do a little freelance work but it would be cool to be on a bigger team but then beyond that I mean like I mentioned earlier in our conversation the YouTube channel has been really really rewarding I didn't kind of expect that when I got into it I thought I'll just make these tutorials people will like them but I didn't realize how much you know not just people would like them not I'm not trying to brag there but like it's really rewarding to you know for me to kind of take my knowledge package it up it you know it only takes me a few hours to record it tutorial and put it together and then you know the fact that you know people can spend hundreds of thousands of hours watching that and kind of receiving that information like it's like that's almost like I should as you go to jail for for not doing that it's such a good you know value transfer you know for the work I put in in the end the value that comes out being able to share that knowledge so I would like to put a little more attention into the YouTube channel so yeah YouTube freelancing getting married soon so that's not I guess not an aspiration anymore but it's on the agenda so yeah trying to try to step back a little bit I think is another aspiration I I kind of realized at some point in recent years that you know a lot of people say like oh you know how are things going so I go really busy and that's usually like people see that is a good thing but I'm trying to more and more realize that that's not a good thing like you know you want to be busy in the sense that you have work and you can make a living but I think many people will become overwhelmed with how much they can be doing and you know I'm I'm guilty of that as well so you know learning to kind of step back a little bit relax you know take a little siesta from time to time I think is important so I'm trying to get better at that as well thank you ever so much that's just brilliant and congratulations on the marriage I hope all goes well with that and of course wish you the best of success with your YouTube channel and all the work they do thank you very much for joining us here yeah well thanks for having me it's really fun talking to you I definitely it's it's fun to uh yeah the communication thing it's fun too you know can I have that one-to-one chat so yeah really appreciate you having me and thanks everyone who's watching this for watching and yeah I'll uh I'll be in touch I'll be here I'll be online so once again you can find Derek Elliot's YouTube channel in the description do make sure you check it out there's so much good stuff on there I'd like to say thank you once again to Derek and please let me know if this is something that you'd like to see more of by commenting below so until next time thanks for watching

Channel: Grant Abbitt

Views: 19,200

Rating: 4.9773159 out of 5

Keywords: understand, texture, paint, learn, blender, tutorials, 3d, art, graphics, game, material, guide, easy, painting, how to

Id: g2n_Oanlhmw

Length: 41min 31sec (2491 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020