My Future Goals

After the Twitter poll tied last week, I decided to do one of the options last week which was a new personal character reveal and save the other tied option for this week which is a few of my future goals. I decided to split the goals into my top 3 goals for this year and then my top 3 lifetime goals. These obviously aren't all of my goals, and I probably have way too many, but there's no point in thinking small! Some of them include dreams like being able to create work for top games studios such as Blizzard Ent, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog, but I also have goals such as visiting certain countries and getting a puppy. So I thought I'd use this post to write about ambitions related to what I'm working on now.

My top goals for 2017.

        1. Launch my first Skillshare class.

I currently have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do for this, but I do know that I love sharing what I know with others and while I might not be as experienced as the next person, I am have been doing this professionally for 3 years now, so I do know that I have more experience than someone who is just starting out. 

I'm thinking that I'll probably either direct the class towards character design or my digital process, if you have any other suggestions of course then feel free to let me know! I think the next focus for this goal is analysing my own work, figuring out what I'm good at and then working out what I want to put into a class before I take it to the next stages.

       2. Get my portfolio games studio ready.

Anyone who knows me will know how much I love games, however, it's taken me a good few years to realise that creating character designs and concept art for games is the direction that I would like to take my work. It took me a quite a while before I realised that I wanted to focus more on characters and monsters, and both of these realisations have both been something I should've picked up on earlier. But that's just one of those things, sometimes you focus so much on creating what you think you should be creating, rather than gravitating to what you've always enjoyed working on, usually the thing you love but think that no one else will be interested in!

If you're a regular reader of my blog or follow me on social media, you might have seen some of the personal work I've been creating over the last few months. I knew that I wanted to create various character designs and environments for this project, but I have now decided to direct this more towards developing the art for it as if I'm designing it for a game. This will result in me having a project on my website that can show what I can do for a games studio and allow me to challenge myself at the same time. 

One of the characters I designed for my recent personal project.

I do already work for games studios on a freelance basis and would love to continue to do so, but in all honesty, I think that I've only just taken my first few steps in this area and the work that I've created recently, which makes me so excited to do more. I'm also looking into applying for in house positions to get that face to face advice and experience.

A monster I designed for my recent personal project.

       3. Bullet Journal for the rest of 2017.

I am constantly trying to improve my organisation, productivity and ideas, I find new ways to do this, and although they seem to work for a while, I usually get bored of using that technique and need to find something new, which I think goes for a lot of things in life, we need change. I saw the term bullet journal (if you aren't sure what is is just google bullet journal as it has an official website) getting thrown around a lot in 2016 and just thought it was another trendy thing to do, after looking it up I still didn't get it and just forgot about it. However at the start of 2017, I needed to explore a new way to keep organised so I watched the bullet journal video and gave it a try. It was working OK, but I was going through a really, really rough time at the start of the year, and I just completely forgot about it.

Recently though, I have gotten back on track with trying to organise all of my tasks and projects and the way I did it before just wasn't working. So I found my old bullet journal and carried it on. I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and it's been really effective for me personally, allowing me to see what is working and what isn't, what sort of tasks I am capable of getting done in a day and what tasks aren't as important as I thought. This is something I would like to keep in motion for the rest of the year and see how it works out for me.

My top 3 life goals.

       1. Build my own house.

Most people will probably read that and be like 'Pffft, no way will that happen' but I am a firm backer of believing in yourself and working hard to achieve what you want. It's not going to happen now, but one day, I will build my own custom house with an indoor pool, home cinema, games room and a bright and inspiring studio. I'm not looking to build a mansion, but I want to live in a home that fits my needs and that will do so for a long time. 

At the moment I've not really set anything into action, I have looked into a few things and some big things are happening in my life soon which will hopefully allow me to plan this goal in more depth and figure out the exact steps to achieve it.

       2. Have a full time freelance creative career that provides me with an income to support my lifestyle.

This might sound really obnoxious from the way that it's written, I feel like it comes across that I'm making out like I want to be some top dog that earns a ton of money to support my lavish spending. However, all I want is to build a great reputation, doing what I love, earning a good income from that and being able to live happily. I want to have enough money to not have to worry about paying bills or buying food, I want to have plenty of money spare to invest into areas/projects that I believe will make a difference and to be able to pay for treats such as a couple of holidays a year, a nice car and maybe a hot tub in my custom back garden haha!

You only live once, and I don't want to live this life scraping by, and I certainly don't want to be selfish with what I do earn. Two things I value extremely highly in my life is happiness and investing in others whether that's teaching, the investment of money or even just giving someone an hour of your time. 

       3. Be creatively fulfilled.

You could say that this is too closely related to the previous goal to be a goal of it's own but I don't agree with that. You can make all sorts of money, work for the biggest clients and have a huge social following, but literally none of that will leave you creatively fulfilled if you're not passionate about what you are actually working on. I've mentioned it before but I spent my first year out of University working on quite a few client projects and making decent money, but eventually I came to the realisation that I'd gotten miserable because I was working to make money, not because I loved what I was doing. So I took a good few months out to purely work on personal projects, I've never felt better for it and it led me on a journey to self discovery of what I do love to work on. 

Escape From Fusion Earth is a client project that has left me feeling creatively fulfilled. 

The work I did for X-Gamer last year is another example of a client project that left me feeling creatively fulfilled.

If I can work on projects/ideas, whether they're my own or clients, that leave me feeling creatively fulfilled, AND earn a good living from them at the same time, then I know I'm well on my way to living a happy life.

Time is the most valuable commodity we have in life and I certainly don't want to grow old full of regrets!

I hope you guys liked this post, it's a little different and a little scary in all honesty to put my goals out there, but great at the same time because now I feel responsible to you guys to reach them! I don't post as much on social media any more about my goals/ideas etc. because when people reply to that sort of thing and praise you, it gives the false effect that you've already gotten the results of achieving that goal so you don't feel like you need to go for it anymore. So I'm choosing to keep to myself a bit more and focus on my work, but I'm really hoping that sharing these goals with you guys will really encourage me to work hard towards them, and hopefully you guys too!

Thanks for reading!