Posts from ‘January, 2011’

If you find issues with your renders, and then go and fix them right away – then its not as bigger deal. Producer asks why your stuff isn’t there yet you can say “I noticed a is take in the renders, I’ve fixed the is take it is now re-rendering it will be done soon” this shows initiative, you’ve gone and fixed the issue without anyone else needing to detect it. This is better than them coming back and saying your renders are wrong. Or like I mentioned, finding out after it is too late.

Usually I will submit a render, and then go and do a test render of a single frame, at least now my render is on the farm so it’s doing it’s thing, but then I can basically render a single frame that might take a few minutes to render, but at least then it will tell me whether I might have rendered with the wrong render layers, or there’s issues with the alphas, or other things that I mightn’t have picked up. If your renders are pretty intense, you can always turn off GI and motion blur, reflections and other things that are likely not going to stop you from viewing noticeable errors in your render.

If I do in fact find a problem, then I can simply kill my render and re-submit it. This is important as it saves time, and also if you are rendering something that is incorrect, it’s better to kill it sooner so the farm isn’t wasting precious cycles that another artist could be using.

I will usually keep an eye on my renders too, that way if they are erroring out, then I can notice ahead of time, rather than waiting for someone to tell me after it has been crashing the farm for a good hour by starting and quiting my jobs. Also when 10-20 frames are rendered, I will try to check those rendered frames as a way to check whether my renders do in fact look correct.

These all might seem like a lot of work, but honestly they’re all background tasks that you can do while you are working just to keep an eye on things and make sure your work is in fact rendering correctly.

It also helps you work with estimating how long your tasks take to do, if you are finding you think a shot is going to take 3 hours to do and it takes 6, then it will help you realize this and better gauge your estimates better, which helps when you agree to do something, how long it actually will take you to do.

It’s been something I’ve done for probably two years now, and it’s changed my life. I’ve been hesitant to really mention it to people as it seems a little odd, however now a lot of colleagues of mine are doing exactly the same thing, and getting more work done.

I’ve also found this works with almost anything, there’s times where I might think I do not have time to write an email, or clean my apartment, because I’m far too busy, but by setting a stop watch to 20 minutes, I know I consciously have 20 minutes to do this task, so I’m more willing to donate time to doing this if I know there’s a set amount of time I’m willing to spend. And surprisingly all of these tasks I put off, usually take a 5th the amount of time I expect when I stop procrastinating about them and actually do them.

The idea here is not to block you from having fun and literally being tied to a ball and chain. But it is ways to make you more aware of working faster and more efficiently. This way rather than doing OT you can potentially go home early!

The reason this is suggested, is that notice how when you come into work on a weekend, or stay back at night, you seem to get more done? Because work is less busy, there’s less distractions and less chaos in general. So what if you came in at 8am instead of 10am? Now, when you get in, rather than almost instantly having to check your renders and being whipped off to dailies, followed by chasing up shots and fixes before then lunch, and dozens of other distractions, you actually get to come in early, no one else is there, and sit and review your renders. And if there are errors, then you have time to actually fix those renders and resubmit to the farm before dailies, better yet, in most cases the farm is free at this hour because no one else is using it, so you have the entire farm to yourself to fix these things. And that way you’re able to tweak your work further before the review. But more importantly there are far less distractions, no one is buzzing around or stressing you out, you have time to focus and get things done without the chaos that usually pursues in the mornings. Better yet, traffic is usually much lighter earlier in the day and potentially if you are leaving 2 hours earlier, then traffic is lighter on the way home. Leaving early usually isn’t going to be a problem, as most reviews and meetings are done by 3 or 4 that day, and it’s usually the time of day that peoples energy and productivity begin to sink anyway.

However most producers and managers are not going to like this idea, just because there is potential for something to be overlooked if they agree to it. But just sell it to them as something to trial out for 2 weeks and see if you are in fact more productive during that time, and when they see that you are being more productive, push to make it a permanent change.

On Superman Returns, myself and another colleague used to try to beach each other to work each morning, at a fairly insane time of 5 or 6 am, because it meant we were in sync with the other studios in LA and Canada, as well as giving us time to get stuff done before meetings and shooting sessions us away. Plus it meant I would feel less guilty about having extended lunches if I wanted to watch a movie at the theater in the public area of the studio…

This is a huge thing I learned when I was young, was to begin to look at your work from the perspective of the client or producer, rather than as yourself. The more you put yourself in the position of the people who review the final output, and from their perspective whether this is what they would want, rather than what you think is good, the more likely you are able to get an idea as to how it should look.

I’ve witnessed artists get emotional and refuse to change their work after there’s been a rather crazy design change to what they’re doing, because they think it will ruin the shot. The truth is, that you’re hired to deliver a shot specifically to what the client requested. So if they want to make this change that you feel isn’t really suitable, then sadly this should be something you need to do without argument. After all you’re being hired to supply a service, the same reason if you were asked to paint a house pink, you’re not going to refuse because you disapprove of the color choice. It’s better to realize this now, a wise bit of advice I was given 20 years ago was “if they have the money, then I sure as hell have the time!”

Now keep in mind, if you disagree with the direction they’re going, once the shows over you can always re-render out your work how you like it and throw that through the comp, so you have the look you’re after for your reel.

One really interesting thing I noticed when I’m reviewing animation or most peoples work and I want to make sure the motion is correct, is I will tend to review the work either at 6 fps or 60fps. Your eye tends to pick up whether the motion is really real at extremely slow or fast speeds. More so for the higher frame rate, as looking at it too many times at the normal frame rate after a while it becomes impossible to tell the difference, but watching at higher frame rates you tend to pick  up whether the motion is really correct or not.

I pretty much carry my Bose QC15 headphones with me everywhere I go. I sometimes go as far as to sleep with them on, especially on flights. They’re comfortable and noise canceling, the sound quality is great and they’re easily portable and very durable. I find now that I concentrate far better with these on, even if I’m just not listening to anything I can have them on to block out 90% of the sound around me, peoples voices disappear and if you’re in a city like New York or Chicago with heavy traffic and constant road work outside your window, then these puppies really help you focus. In addition to this, I wear them a lot when I don’t want to be disturbed as people are less likely to bother you about minute non work related things when you have your headphones on, so there are times of the day I will put these on as a way to prevent people from interrupting me. Much easier than having a do not disturb sign on the back of your head! Other times I’ll shoot those links and other things I need to follow up to my email, and then I can review them on my laptop or phone on my way home.

There are times that I need to think about how I’m going to approach a shot, or tackle a lot of stuff, or just plain blow off some steam, and depending on your personality type, some people find it easier to think on their feet, others with their eyes closed etc. I’m lucky that most of the time when I’m working with others I’m able to go lie down on a couch or even the floor without anyone getting upset that I’m not working. Most people are aware that you’re obviously lying down because you’re exhausted or you’re thinking about something, or both. On Priest this would be something I would do a lot, with a pretty loud work environment, I would sometimes go lie down on a couch in another room for 5-6 minutes and think about how I’m going to do a shot, and then come back to my desk with a clear plan, which otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to concentrate enough at my desk to do. Other people tend to want to go on a walk, or talk to themselves to help this process, or go into a confined space such as a bathroom stall to think (hey, when you’re under stress we all have our quirky ways of dealing with stress and thought processes!) I’ve spoken to a lot of people about how they tend to concentrate and deal with stress, and these are the most common. Others are listening to classic music and similarly, metal. Talking to yourself oddly can work very positively as you’re able to basically have a discussion about how you want to do something, and essentially trick your brain into giving you some sort of solution. You’re just going to look really weird while you do this of course!

The element, is a great book written by Ken Robinson, Ph.D. which describes a lot of really successful artists and individuals and their paths to success, but more importantly the different ways to which we think and learn and apply our individual skill sets.

The Element by Ken Robinson, Ph.D.

This is one of my favorites, because everyone else seems to adapt to this approach almost instantly after they see it. I tend not to work with high contrast colors. Initially this came from years ago reading that green tends to help you concentrate more, same as with most libraries lamps are green as it’s easier on the eyes and causes less strain. Cooler colors tend to be easier to read and focus with. So whether I’m working on writing a book, or working in 3D, I always change my colors to be easier to work with. So as I previously mentioned, it seems almost viral, people comment my colors are weird, and then I explain to them why, and then within a day most peoples color schemes seem to change as well.

Because it makes so much sense, reading black and white just plain hurts the eyes, high contrast colors tend to make it harder to read, which is why people prefer a book lover reading their monitor (I conformed to black and white for this article against my better judgement).

One of the key things that can get in the way at times is too many reviews. If every day you’re trying to get stuff out for a review, it’s harder to really make much progress. And it’s up to you to politely approach your producer and supervisor and let them know that you are busy trying to get everything done and lets organize an official review later in the week at X time. Until then I want to keep my head down and get everything done. This way you’ve basically freed yourself up to work focused without any distraction however you’ve locked yourself into delivering stuff for that day. By showing people schedules and what you plan to have done by certain dates it will give the more comfort as they know what to expect. At the same time talking in the same language as producers and supervisors is good too – spreadsheets, schedules and shared documents they can keep track of makes you favorable over other artists and shows you can work the same way they are used to. “Speak the producer language”

What if you are given requests that you think are a little silly, and from your experience on that project you are pretty confident that they aren’t necessary. Speaking your mind about this is not going to do you any good, however the best way to approach requests that aren’t high priority or are just outright insane, is to just agree to them, but say that you have a lot on your plate to get done first, however once all of these other tasks are done, you’ll look at what is left for the bonus round, and start focusing on getting these additional changes done if time permits. It makes sense to deliver what you’ve originally been asked to do, before you go and spend all this extra time on something that probably isn’t going to be too important, rather than spend all the time on that one task and then not deliver anything at all.

Set a cap on peoples changes : When you initially submit something for review, I always urge artists to show variations rather than just one example. This way we can pin point which one might be too much or too little. I always tend to apply the formula of <what they asked for, what you think looks best, and then absolutely too much>. This is a good formula, because if someone says “I want that explosion 10% bigger” and you go and make it 10% bigger, they might say I want it another 10% bigger, and then another, and then another, and then later they realize it’s far too big when they see what originally was. So usually it’s better to show what they asked for, then what you think is good, then one absolutely insanely wrong. So they can see how much is too much, and then you have a set limit of how far you can go with this. Rather than infinitely changing it. Plus the one you show them and the one they designed, they’re most likely going to like one or the other more. So it’s the fastest formula for getting work approved on the first or second take.

At the same time, check your renders before you submit them to your compositor. As I just mentioned, in some situations your compositor might be too busy or just not get around to comping your stuff. So if you assume that you’ve sent your renders to them and your job is done, think again. It takes 5 minutes to check your renders to make sure they work, but if you don’t, and they assume your passes are fine, and then when they go to comp them on the last day of a job, and your alphas are all wrong, or you just plain rendered your shot from the wrong camera, then you’re to blame for this and you’ll have no time to fix it. So check your renders before sending them to the compositor. And then you have time to fix these errors before anyone else gets to see them!

Part of my process is usually I try to finish my day at 5:30 instead of 6, and I spend the last 30 minutes writing emails I need to, to producers and others. I also plan my day for tomorrow while it’s all fresh in my head. And I also send an email to the compositor, producer, supervisor about where my passes are, and the status of my work. This is good because it covers your ass by showing people what you’ve done that day, and also might save you getting called into work at 3 in the morning because they can’t find your render passes. The better you communicate with everyone the easier life will be. I also will usually mention what I’m planning to do the next day. This way if there are some higher priorities, they can let me know before I start in the morning. It also shows initiative, so again people will appreciate how you work. No one is ever going to complain about getting an email from you with important information like this, if they don’t want to read it, they can delete it, but they’ll definitely appreciate it!

All of this will be appreciated and show a lot of incentive, it also means that in the rare situations that you do work with people who aren’t doing their job, and want to lay the blame on you then your ass is covered. There’s nothing negative that comes out of this, and usually takes up just a few extra minutes of your time.

During rounds, or dailies, if you get feedback on something, usually there’s a production assistant or vfx coordinator around taking notes, otherwise ask the vfx sup or whoever is giving these changes to email you directly with what they just said. “Cool, can you email me what you just said?” It’s important to do this, as then if they tell you to make drastic changes to your work, if they then have to email you – it will give them a second chance to really think about what they’re saying while translating it into an email, because sometimes comments are made on the fly and later they just plain don’t make sense. But also it gives you a second chance to interpret what they are saying, in case you actually had a completely different idea in your head of what they wanted based on your discussion. So this is a good chance to double check that you are both on the same page. Lastly it covers your ass if you are going to go make drastic changes and they say it’s not what they actually asked for, then you can refer to the email as to what you were asked to do.

Some of these things might seem like a lot of extra work, but try them out, honestly they will take a few extra minutes of your time and become second nature after a while, however they will help you to incorporate them into your process without thinking, so you become more and more responsible, organized and productive without much thought or effort.

I’ve gone as far as to say I do not have time to do my time sheets or go to the post office or to lunch etc. and had other people take care of these tasks for me, because in the greater picture, those small distractions are less important than me delivering a shot. Now of course I’ve approached these issues in the correct way, but if you are doing a high priority task, it isn’t necessarily a bad idea to see whether other things that might get in the way can be handled by someone else so you can keep productivity up.

Same goes if you are under resourced, you might need more computers to deliver your work – it’s better to let people know this so they can accommodate it. Or if you have minor tasks that other artists can take on, such as exporting your stuff to FBX for the compositor, and converting your passes or transferring files etc. If you have more important things to do, evaluate whether you’re the best person to be taking on the smaller tasks, it’s not being lazy it’s being efficient. And as I mentioned before, communication is key here, keep everyone in the loop.