Investing in Tech Art

In the duration of your career, you’ll invest heavily in tools, skills and technologies. Mastering a new tool takes 0.5 - 5 years. Subscriptions can eat up even ten thousand dollars over a decade.

Your motivations to learn a new thing will vary - career goals, FOMO, self-expression, boredom. These will also fluctuate over time. That’s why I don’t believe anyone claiming they know the “Top 5 tools you need to know!!”. Still, some must be better choices than others, right?

The word “investment” comes to my mind again. Let’s treat yourself like a company for a moment, in order to gain a wider view. Let’s split the problem into a few categories: goals, short vs long term, buyer beware and aggressive investing.

Can you share an example of a good investment in your case? What tool has transformed how you look at graphics, your process? What was a good bet? And what funny story can you share about (mis)predictions? See you later in the comments.

Goals

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What do you plan to achieve with your investment?

Surely you need to earn a living. Run your business. Create. A decent skill in popular tools is a must, as well as a continuous access to them. That’s a good motivation in itself, and that simple thing usually imo leads to best, most grounded choices.

Is there something though that lies beyond these fundamental needs? Something that’s impossible now, but which you wish to unlock by learning the new tool? Is it somehow related to your changes in personality, (im)patience, hobbies, circles that you like to work with?

Does it feel like discovery, solving a tricky puzzle, growth? Or do you hate to work with it on a daily basis, but you imagine some magical future gains, like a huge salary? Well… at this point I’d reconsider. Align your path with the things that bring satisfaction. You’ll need that fuel in the long run 🙂

Time Horizon

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Speaking of the long run - hey, FOMO will always be around. Kids will grow and join the market. Stop panicking. Think in your unique capabilities, the human factor, your reliability. These outgrow any tools. And you’re smart - you’ll adapt.

Do you prefer a stable, long-term employment? Then let’s take a look at the most common and seeked-for tools in the industry - how long they’ve been around?

• Adobe Photoshop: 34 years as of now (first release 1990)
• Blender and Houdini, the “hot new things”: both have been around for 30 years (the latter as Prisms)
• Substance Painter: I remember being a beta tester - now it’s a 10th anniversary

I beta tested Painter to not fall behind the revolution, PBR etc. In reality though, people who joined way later than I have became absolute Substance masters and even teachers since (see Magdalena Dadela). Meanwhile, I ended up writing tools for it. I can barely name the new user-side features after 2017 (because: no artistic practice).

Okay, the global behemoth Flash died, to my then-sad-surprise. But how many Flash replacements, created after its demise, have been forgotten since? Let’s judge by the time something lived (a good life) in total, not by the mere fact of its end. Flash was a good investment. By the way, the best creators simply ported their games to Steam later and seen even bigger success. Do you know why? Because they have something to port 😛 Meanwhile the cool kids (re)started their dream projects on ever newer frameworks, skipping the opportunity to battle-test the game mechanics.

Lastly - are the things they claim “groundbreaking” were really impossible to do in the already established software?

Lifetime Costs

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You need to be able to afford the tools you choose. Houdini is awesome but it’s still a choice - you can skip it entirely and work in great places too. Or you can jump into it head-first and have a profitable Houdini-oriented job path. Just factor in the money you need to sustain your Indie license, high-priced courses. And remember it may not pay off in the end, if you (or the market) decide it’s not for you.

What I’m saying is: calculate for a far horizon and plan ahead. Don’t say “I need it” to justify a fancy expense. Buying won’t replace sitting on your… chair, putting in the work, creating 😌

Buyers Beware

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Startups aim for a good IPO or acquisition. Be cautious when the software’s authors describe it as “disruptive” (investor hype), “revolutionary” (fear of missing out) or “intelligent” (AI hype). Their first goal, as a company, is not to provide you with stability and support. It’s to prove to investors that there’s a crowd of potential clients waiting. Things may be different with cool one-person projects but even there, keep in mind that stability is the last thing (boring, with low returns on the effort).

The prime example of unashamed hype is the Unlimited Detail engine from 2000s-2010s by an previously-unknown company called Euclideon. When the original video was released, I’ve argued in a lot of forum discussion with people saying “But they have clearly beaten the industry!!111 The voxels are the future, so you whining artists have to adapt!”. Like if the 10-year development history with core issues unexplained wasn’t enough of a red flag? See one critique video for a leveled analysis.

Don’t be too eager to extrapolate the examples they provide too. Assume that the capabilities and scale that’s shown now can as well turn out to be the ultimate, ingrained limit of the tech.

Questions to Ask

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• How long has the company been around?
• What’s their track record in dealing with maintenance - the unsexy stuff?
• Building something cool is (laughably) easy, compared to sustaining the product and ironing out difficult corner cases
• Most software follows a curve of diminishing returns when it comes to development speed
• What’s their method of gathering user feedback? Do the users feel listened to?
• Even in open-source projects, how many bugs in “Issues” section on Github are kept hanging unresolved?

Keep It Fun

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Most important of all - don’t overinvest. One way to keep experimentation on a sane level is to treat it as a fun exercise only. Meanwhile, keep working on a standard portfolio. Steadily strengthen your existing skills in the established tools. You can even try remaking some of your artworks or games later in the new tech. That will give you an invaluable insight into how does the new thing work for you really.

That said, there’s often a lot joy in participating in the emerging communities of a new tool! Use this opportunity to meet people. Create. Exchange ideas. Even take what you learned back to your original core software or community.

Your Voice

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I asked you: Can you share an example of a good investment in your case? What tool has transformed how you look at graphics, your process?

Your activity on Discord blew my mind. So. Many. Heartwarming. Discussions. Mostly about high-level role of tech art in your lives, in your internal motivation engines.

Derek

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Honestly the greatest investment has just been in myself.

I’ve gained a lot of confidence and learned a lot about myself through this job. I used to work in the music industry and was really lost as to what I wanted to do as a career, I bounced around a ton of things, especially after covid hit. I was working a lot of random jobs before I got the job I have now.

I was really lucky and a lot of stars aligned to be in the position I’m in now. It’s been the first job that I was able to do well in, I enjoyed and I could see myself working in long term.

Alessa

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A fast-forward summary of their journey, from Unreal Engine 2.0 at the age of 16:

At the time, 3D Buzz had a young developer named Zak Parrish, who then moved onto Epic, and 3D Buzz was one of the first platforms to ever do livestreams - this was before YouTube, so the tech was already spectacular.

They had made the decision to give up Source SDK - I was an avid fan of the Source Engine, and wanted to continue learning the tools, they had made the move already to UDK. I then persisted in chat, almost antagonizingly, that giving up Source SDK was a big mistake. I was maybe 16 years old at the time, but my god was I wrong. Moving to Unreal Engine was the best thing I did for my career.

(…) Keep trying new software, learning new tools - get excited by it, it will always be the best thing you can do for your career. Remember that your goal as a TA is to assist others and keep things smooth, anything you learn along the way will help. ❤️

Final Thoughts

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When making technology investments in your tech art career:

1. Align with your goals - both practical (earning a living) and personal (satisfaction, growth)
2. Think long-term - reflect on which tools from a decade ago haven’t made it to our times, and why
3. Calculate lifetime costs - subscriptions, courses, and opportunity costs add up
4. Watch for hype - revolutionary claims often hide fundamental limitations
5. Keep it fun - experimental tech as satellites around a solid core
6. Invest in yourself - confidence, skills, and relationships outlast any tool

See you around and rest well!

Oskar