I dont know if this question is answerable or not, but I continue to suffer from extreme slowness. It seems like it takes me forever to get projects finished.

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced this and have been able to improve on their speed of production. Im not new at this, I know my way around the programs pretty well.

I know its an unusual topic here, but surely others have been frustrated by this as well!

Poser 2012sr3, Zbrush 4r4, Photoshop cs5 ext, Carrara 8 pro

Slow?  I have almost stopped for lack of ideas...Yes I am one of the slow people..

Trust me you are not alone.

Depends with me. Some things I have almost an obsession about finishing. Some things I get half finished and then walk away from them for months. Depends what it is...lol.

Laurie

I alway use the terms "old and slow". I use the first one as an excuse for the second one.

Yeah, I use that one too TW...lolol. We've earned it ;)

Laurie

I find a deadline with money involved increases my speed a lot.  

If I am doing a pic for my own amusement it becomes an ordeal with many many changes. (try every one of 14 chairs that I have to see what looks best, then use a sofa instead :(   )

If you will get paid for something delivered on time it all seems much easier.

I've found getting paid is usually a good insentive to finishing a project especially if there is a dead line and it could mean being fired. If you work as a consultant like me it me against the next guy the one that does a more professional job usually gets the next job.

I always list all my projects on a white board in front of me everyday and prioritize them daily as things change making one more valuable than another.

 I also always outline steps I need to create and finish the project print them out and check them off as I complete them. this helps with that old memory problem and I add to the outline as i think of things while working on it. I've worked as an engineer and IT programmer and this always helps in the most complicated of projects

With me, it is the difference between "lazy," "slow," and "overloaded."  I want to make my own game, from art to program to marketing . . . too much to teach myself to get any of it done, so I just work on the part that intrests me at the moment and accept that I am slowly getting something accomplished, just never really done.  Unless I get lazy. :(

I speed up my production time by working on 2 or 3 things at once, believe it or not. I notice that I slow down when I start to get bored with mundane things like post working 400+ frames of an animation. So I open Wings and model something. When I get that done, I will work on something in Sculptris or start a new scene in Poser. Then go back to the mundane post work. Things get done. And I don't get lethargic and stop all together for any length of time.

Try something you haven't done before. The challenge of learning sparks the creative juices in me and usually prompts me to finish something. And I move quickly because I am excited for the results. Just don't let this cause you to cut corners...

slow.  yes. :) 

and short, too, lol,  only 5' in my socks.

Like rokket, I try and work on a few things at once.

This helps to some extent... course it doesn't help that the only real quality time I get to play around with Poser etc. is the time I should really be catching up on some sleep... i.e. I'm fighting braindeadness / lack of concentration through fatigue probably half the time. But when something starts to come together, the buzz definitely fuels more activity.

I try and write down or sketch out ideas when I have them, put that in a kind of to do pile and then pick stuff from that when I find I'm idling... or when I catch myself just sitting, drooling at the screen watching buckets render out :lol:

The word "procrastination" comes to mind.  I'm sure everyone experiences it at some point.  Sometimes you lose interest in what you are working on and your brain gets numb from focusing on the same thing for too long and you want to do something different.  I think that most of the time when I am slow at doing something, it is because it is difficult to do. Once I have developed the skills to do something, I can do it quickly and finish in no time at all.  For example, now that I am finally familiar with using Pose2Lux, I can set up a Poser scene and export it and start rendering it in LuxRender within 10 minutes or less whereas before, it took me a long time to apply the Lux materials to each material zone and set up the lights, etc.

procrastination... yep thats where my slow comes in... that and a fair bit of 3d ADD... I cant seem to force myself to focus on the less 'fun' part of the projects and keep moving on to start new ones.  Leaving me with a good sized collection of mostly finished projects.  Perhaps, at heart I'm more a modeler than a content creator.

I always procrastinate when I have to do uv maps....lol. The most miserable job in the universe ;).

Laurie

"I always procrastinate when I have to do uv maps....lol. The most miserable job in the universe ;)."

I actually enjoy it! Have you ever tried Lithunwrap?

Nope, tend to use Wings (not very much - only for easy maps) and Roadkill (most of the time since I like it's LSCM mapping). Even so, I find it to be a real drag ;). You're not the first person I've heard say they like uv mapping. I can't imagine...lol.

Never used Lithunwrap.

Laurie

If we were all just alike it would be a boring world !

I spent the better part of the last year (granted, I was also teaching myself a number of programs) spinning my wheels and not accomplishing much.  I was always working, but rarely finishing before I got bored and something else sparked in my brain and I moved on to another project - which I also rarely finished. lol

Its still something I have to fight, but I feel like I overcame this really rather recently.  The key for me was to show someone the work after I completed it.  Its sometimes people on a forum or gallery, sometimes a closer friend or my husband (though I have to watch that because its easy to get him to accept my excuses) - someone that cares about seeing the completed work and is waiting to see it and appreciates it.  Then I make a committment to having the next project done at a certain time, and I make as early of a deadline as I think I can possibly complete it by.  If I have too much allotted time I will waste it, its a proven pattern of mine.

The accountability of someone waiting to see my work, that I know enjoys it, is what has kept me pushing forward.  Open ended deadlines or work no one knows about gives me way too much freedom to procrastinate or get distracted by something else to do.

Interesting input!

Funny, my husband couldn't care less about my Poser addiction or images...lmao. He figured I spend so much time on it, I should be making money from it...lol. My youngest son however shares my affinity for 3D and will probably be helping ME to get better ;).

Laurie

I'm a deadline kind of guy, so I make them up.

Like professional book writers who set themselves to "500 words a day" or so.

So I do a "plan for this month" a "plan for this week" and I start each morning with a "plan for this day". Just being realistic, I realize about half of the plan. Which is better than nothing. But for me, planning is part of the design, so it's sort of fun thinking ahead of nice things to come, and how to avoid the nasty parts.

Sometimes I think that I'm not making my deadlines because I spend too much time planning :).

So - you're not too slow, you're expectations are too high. Lower them, and you find yourself speeding up. Wild guess, that is.

I have the same issue with being too slow.  I too need to find a way to speed up my processes.  Also need a way to stay focused.  It is hard when nobody is standing near by cracking the whip.  I will never understand how some people churn things out every other day.  

"I have the same issue with being too slow.  I too need to find a way to speed up my processes.  Also need a way to stay focused.  It is hard when nobody is standing near by cracking the whip.  I will never understand how some people churn things out every other day."

I know what you mean, I try and put up "works in progress images" and peoples comments gives me some encouragement to forge ahead!