I will spend a week maybe more on a scene, then just as I am nearing completion I will suddenly become dissatisfied with the peice even if it is fairly good, sometimes I will simply grow tired of working on the peice and not pick it up again. Any reccomendations in sticking with peices that take some time to complete?
I find myself in the same situation all the time, sometimes posting to the WIP forum helps because people keep nagging you to finish the piece.
I can think of a couple of possibilities. If you’re working on a piece to learn Blender, you may get to the point that you’ve learned all you can working on that particular piece, and to get any further you’ve got to take some new ground. So you drop that piece and go on to something else that will teach you what you need to know.
If it’s a really set pattern, though, then there may be something else at work in the background. If you can figure out what that is, and bring it to the surface, then you’ve got a pretty good shot at overcoming it. So, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you finish a piece? What will that finished product say about you? What do you win, and what do you lose, when you finish a piece?
Orinoco’s right, you may have been challenged and overcome the learning hurdle, making the process of continuing that project useless (although there is a lot to be said for practice).
Here’s the trick I taught myself: If you are using projects to learn & experiment, admit it right up-front to yourself. I do all sorts of tests and experiments that never even get saved. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that it won’t ever be a finished piece, that’s not the point!
Now, my trick for combatting the “hard to complete a project” psychological trip (it used to plague me, too) is to draft out rough versions of the entire project in advance before I ever open Blender. If you know exactly what you need to accomplish and in what timeframe, it is far easier to pace yourself and reach the finish line…it also hypes you up and let’s you plan your time better…case in point, when I am working for clients, everything must be planned in advance, deadlines are set, and (usually) the animation process goes quite smoothly. Then I decide to do something animated for a friend’s wedding DVD, with no planning, and many weeks later I still haven’t finished it! Time to follow my own advice, I guess!
Hope it helps, it takes a little time, but you can train your mind to overcome it…