My specific situation is that I've been teaching myself 3D modeling and I've run into a wall where after doing large amounts of research (10 hours+), lots of googling, finding appropriate discords, etc I realize I need to talk to a pro and pay for their time.
Time is money, and I've passed the midpoint on time spent vs project interest. I want to finish the project, but can't spend more independent time (2 days now) trying to figure something out.
So going forward, what are HN's recommendations for finding professionals for highly specific questions where you can pay them a reasonable fee for their time?
...but, small engagements are usually swamped by overhead for any busy consultant.
Also, 10 hours isn't very much time in a discipline that takes decades to master and time spent on google might have been better spent doing it wrong hands on because there is no substitute for hands-on when it comes to learning a craft.
Hands-on is the only way to get intuition about materiality and there's materiality like qualities involved in 3d design on a computer...maybe you are skipping important lessons that come from physical making 3d objects?
Good luck.