Ow my. The amount of topics they mentioned is large. It's hard to figure out where to start on commenting this talk. It turned into huge depressing rant so I can join too :D.
First of all as I mentioned in other thread (where was also this talk linked), I'm in very different situation to Dan Warren and Dave Rapoza. I work in full time job where I start at 8AM and go out at 4PM and I don't have to worry about job till the next day. This is blessing and a curse at the same time as I can have some social life but I can become artistically lazy if I don't watch out. Unfortunately I see it happen so it's my mission to keep myself disciplined and motivated.
What's frustrating for me the most though is how especially my family doesn't really see how being an artist is an lifestyle and how humongous effort you have to put every day to stay on your artistic path. To them it's like I can doodle something once a month and for sure it's going to be perfect. There's no need for gaining momentum. No need for warmup. No need for practice. I should go out every day or do something else and somehow my art side will take care for itself.
Now when it comes to that topic of doing that one dream job like they mentioned Magic: the Gathering. I never really had that. To me it has been completely alien mindset. I could for example set myself on an mission to get hired by Valve so I can do concept art for Half-Life 3. Yes. It could be exciting but I would already know that I will have to copy to some extent the design from previous games. When I think about that it just kills the initial excitement. What doesn't have that drawback is making images based on text beacause you can establish your own visual language.
At some point I think Dave mentioned that he doesn't like that art much to just do work for one intelectual property and I'm like that too. Some people can do one type of image in slightly different configurations almost all their lives and never get bored. It's like falling in love with just beauty of the craft. With how aesthetically pleasing the brush marks or the colors are in the image and there is nothing beyond that. It can be great but I see concept art/illustration more as an excuse for worldbuilding and storytelling. That's probably why while one person can polish image for month to get it perfect, I prefer to fill that time with hundrets of ideas going in different directions. Worst thing I can do is repeat myself.
If I'd have to say what my dream job would look like it wouldn't be exactly be specific title or IP but rather it would a job that allows for specific way of working. Unfortunately I look around a lot what's happening in the industry and what the standards are and it seems what I set out to do in the beginning doesn't exist anymore. I had that "I'd love to do that type of stuff" moment once when I saw Ryan Church early work. The one he did for the Star Wars episodes II and III. You can see it here
http://ryanchurch.com. It's cinematic, atmospheric, dynamic but simple at the same time. He managed to communicate enough for those frames but not more.
There are different standards now for the key scenes. It's all squeezing as much detail as possible from a scene thus there's so much focus on photo collages or 3d renders. Being obsessed with precision and accuracy can give great results but it breaks the workflow, makes things completely technical and makes you stay longer in google image search than in painting application. So I'm taking some compromises here and there but it's still never ending path to find that enjoyable workflow that could be of use at the same time.
I could bore you like this longer but it's late so that's going to be the end :P.
