Trilobites and newsletters
It looks like I’ve got another big job on – and right up my street too. It’s a trilobite animation for a museum and hopefully it’ll give me the chance to resurrect some critters from the Cambrian period.
Trilobites are complex beasts to build and animate, and they come in a huge variety, but there are some amazing fossils around because they preserve so well (even their eyes were made of stone).
The first few tests look very promising and I’m busily writing a storyboard for the animation which will have to be 10 minutes long and be scientifically as accurate as possible.
A quick calculation tells me that if I’m to bring this animation in on time, I’m going to need some serious rendering power – 15,000 frames – and let’s say 5 minutes per frame – that means 52 days rendering day and night. The deadline is the end of October, so I don’t have 52 days.
This means I’ll need a render farm – several computers all rendering different scenes. Now, you can buy time on render farms, but it turns out to be more expensive than buying extra PCs (especially as 3ds max allows you to render on multiple machines with one licence).
My solution: buy 2 new PCs, rejuvenate an old one with a copy of windows Vista and if necessary run more rendering on my wife’s laptop… four computers running 24 hours a day and my main machine available for the night shift should mean I can get the renders done in a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I’ve probably got another job doing a web banner, a trademark for one of my previous clients and somebody emailing about another pop video – I’m going to insist on payment up front for pop videos from now on – small bands are flexible and do a lot of good stuff, but you never know when they’re going to disappear.
I’ve also turned off my advertising for a while – I’ve got two big projects on now and that’s enough to keep me going up to the end of October.
I’ve also got the video editing newsletter coming round again. This has now increased to include effectively 3 newsletters a month - and I’ve been trying to do that today.
All in all…. Busy busy busy – and although I keep saying it – I’m really keen to do some documentary work!
Elance
My venture into the world of Elance – farming out some of my animation work to other people seems to be working – although I haven’t seen any results yet. I’ve picked the 2nd cheapest offer and I’m hoping to see at least one of the characters I’ve asked them to produce bones for in the next day or so.
In the meantime, I think I’ve done something dumb – I’ve built all the characters and objects for my current animation separately and they’re all different sizes.
Resizing isn’t a problem usually in 3ds max, but there are some situations where it’s tricky and one of them is characters – re-scaling a character seems to distort its model for some reason and it’s going to be a real problem if I can’t sort that out quickly….
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Outsourcing madness
This week I’ve been working on the new safety video animation I’ve been asked to do. It’s a big project which I can’t say much about because of a confidentiality agreement.
Anyway, there’s a lot to do and I’ve decided to try out the outsourcing thing – that is, contracting out some of the 3d animation work on www.elance.com. Basically, Elance lets you put out an advert for any job, get quotes in (I’ve got 5 in the first day) and have the work done and returned to you online.
It sounds like a great system – we’ll see how it works out, but I’ve put out the rigging of four 3d characters. Character rigging is simply taking a 3d model, giving it bones and making sure the right parts of the model move when you bend the arms and legs.
It’s a straightforward enough job if you’re a character animator, but it’s not much fun for me – and having spent a day on it on Thursday and got some unsatisfactory results (the shoulders don’t look quite right, bits of the body bend out of shape when you move the arms, that sort of thing), I’ve put the task out to tender.
First responses look good, and although all look pretty reputable, there’s one offering a very low quote – maybe I’ll go with them, but I’ll have to check carefully because I know myself how long the job should take and… mind you, different countries, exchange rates, etc… you never know…. I’ll update as it goes along.
prehistory
Somebody who contacted me ages ago expressing an interest in the film I want to make about trilobites has got back to me. He’s working for a museum and might want to create some kind of 3d display. This is something I’d love to work on, but it’s another big project (they want a 10 minute animation featuring all the life from an extinct coral reef!) and I’m not sure they’ve got the budget.
I really want to do it though, so I’m busy thinking up ways they could do the project for less money.
I’ve also got word back about the Trex poster. The company has suddenly seen another poster and wants to change direction. Now, a few months ago, I did another poster for them – on human anatomy and after lots of work went into it and lots of changes were made they finally dropped the idea – so I was left getting nothing for my substantial work on the project.
I suppose I should have insisted on some kind of guarantee this time round. Anyway, I’ve told them if they want this degree of change, I’ll have to charge them more. I’ve also said it’ll take longer. I’ve got enough work on now to get me through till mid September…
Forearmed is half an octopus
I also got a call this week from someone wanting an animation of how to assemble a gun. It’s for a ministry of defence training video. Now, I do think we need an army – even though I disagree with most of the things they’re asked to do right now - and I certainly think that army should be well trained. However, this video isn’t just for training – it’s for sales as well – in other words, it’s an arms dealer and I’ve no idea who their other clients are.
While I’m happy to do work for the British army, I’m not quite so happy about doing an animation that will be used to train random gun buyers all around the globe….
I’ve asked them to send me more info, but if I can’t get more safeguards, I’ll have to turn this one down.
Anyway, there’s a lot to do and I’ve decided to try out the outsourcing thing – that is, contracting out some of the 3d animation work on www.elance.com. Basically, Elance lets you put out an advert for any job, get quotes in (I’ve got 5 in the first day) and have the work done and returned to you online.
It sounds like a great system – we’ll see how it works out, but I’ve put out the rigging of four 3d characters. Character rigging is simply taking a 3d model, giving it bones and making sure the right parts of the model move when you bend the arms and legs.
It’s a straightforward enough job if you’re a character animator, but it’s not much fun for me – and having spent a day on it on Thursday and got some unsatisfactory results (the shoulders don’t look quite right, bits of the body bend out of shape when you move the arms, that sort of thing), I’ve put the task out to tender.
First responses look good, and although all look pretty reputable, there’s one offering a very low quote – maybe I’ll go with them, but I’ll have to check carefully because I know myself how long the job should take and… mind you, different countries, exchange rates, etc… you never know…. I’ll update as it goes along.
prehistory
Somebody who contacted me ages ago expressing an interest in the film I want to make about trilobites has got back to me. He’s working for a museum and might want to create some kind of 3d display. This is something I’d love to work on, but it’s another big project (they want a 10 minute animation featuring all the life from an extinct coral reef!) and I’m not sure they’ve got the budget.
I really want to do it though, so I’m busy thinking up ways they could do the project for less money.
I’ve also got word back about the Trex poster. The company has suddenly seen another poster and wants to change direction. Now, a few months ago, I did another poster for them – on human anatomy and after lots of work went into it and lots of changes were made they finally dropped the idea – so I was left getting nothing for my substantial work on the project.
I suppose I should have insisted on some kind of guarantee this time round. Anyway, I’ve told them if they want this degree of change, I’ll have to charge them more. I’ve also said it’ll take longer. I’ve got enough work on now to get me through till mid September…
Forearmed is half an octopus
I also got a call this week from someone wanting an animation of how to assemble a gun. It’s for a ministry of defence training video. Now, I do think we need an army – even though I disagree with most of the things they’re asked to do right now - and I certainly think that army should be well trained. However, this video isn’t just for training – it’s for sales as well – in other words, it’s an arms dealer and I’ve no idea who their other clients are.
While I’m happy to do work for the British army, I’m not quite so happy about doing an animation that will be used to train random gun buyers all around the globe….
I’ve asked them to send me more info, but if I can’t get more safeguards, I’ll have to turn this one down.
Monday, July 7, 2008
On Friday I finally managed to start going through my documentary, doing the final tiny bits of editing. Balancing the sound, adding the odd bit of colour correction, removing flash frames, and trimming moments when I cut in or out too early. It’s a dirty job and not one you look forward to because what you’re really doing is going through your project with a toothpick looking for problems. You come out of it feeling that:
a) you’re a bit rubbish at editing because you didn’t spot these things before
b) your programme’s a bit of a tatty bodge job because everything you’re now doing is patching up holes and doing dirty fixes.
c) It’s all a waste of time anyway because you’re doing things you hadn’t budgeted time to do because you thought you’d pretty much finished.
d) You just want to get the whole thing out of the way and get on with the next project.
e) Even when you’re done, you don’t feel happy because there’s always the nagging feeling that you’ve missed something and nobody’s now going to check your work before it gets to the distributors.
Added to this, the process always takes longer than you’d anticipated and requires you to make some tough decisions.
Top of the tough decision tree on Friday was the fact that NASA hadn’t come up with the high resolution footage I needed of a solar sail test. I’d been given the footage at 320x240 resolution and used it in the edit where it worked well, so I was looking forward to getting it at HD quality (or even PAL or NTSC)… Unfortunately, nobody at NASA was able to locate it – and even trying to contact the people responsible for the test failed, so I’ve eventually opted to replace the test footage with some general CGI shots of solar sails created by me as a test at the beginning of the project…. It doesn’t really work brilliantly, as the footage isn’t totally relevant to what’s being said.
Still, I’m not going to get the footage I need and the main focus now is to finish the project.
Refusing work
Ok – having said last week that I owe it to myself to refuse work that I know isn’t going to be worthwhile, I’ve actually put it into practice. In fact, I’ve refused two pieces of work in two working days….
The first was a book cover: the guy had a very specific idea of what he wanted to produce, but he only had a budget of $125 – which was fine, but not going to work for me in the UK where the dollar exchange rate isn’t so good. I’d have wanted to spend a couple of days on the project at least and £60 wouldn’t get me minimum wage if I had done.
The second was this morning. A client I’ve done work for before came to me with a photo composite they’d seen before, but couldn’t find anything like in any stock libraries.
It was a fun image and one I could have reproduced and been paid for. They’re a good client and know what they want and have decent budgets, so I’d have been sure of producing some good work.
However, when I started to search for textures to use in the image, I came up with the exact image they wanted on a micro stock library… priced at $2!
Of course, I could have just ignored it and done the job. But I didn’t. I told them where to find the picture they wanted and saved them £400…
‘cos I’m nice like that.
a) you’re a bit rubbish at editing because you didn’t spot these things before
b) your programme’s a bit of a tatty bodge job because everything you’re now doing is patching up holes and doing dirty fixes.
c) It’s all a waste of time anyway because you’re doing things you hadn’t budgeted time to do because you thought you’d pretty much finished.
d) You just want to get the whole thing out of the way and get on with the next project.
e) Even when you’re done, you don’t feel happy because there’s always the nagging feeling that you’ve missed something and nobody’s now going to check your work before it gets to the distributors.
Added to this, the process always takes longer than you’d anticipated and requires you to make some tough decisions.
Top of the tough decision tree on Friday was the fact that NASA hadn’t come up with the high resolution footage I needed of a solar sail test. I’d been given the footage at 320x240 resolution and used it in the edit where it worked well, so I was looking forward to getting it at HD quality (or even PAL or NTSC)… Unfortunately, nobody at NASA was able to locate it – and even trying to contact the people responsible for the test failed, so I’ve eventually opted to replace the test footage with some general CGI shots of solar sails created by me as a test at the beginning of the project…. It doesn’t really work brilliantly, as the footage isn’t totally relevant to what’s being said.
Still, I’m not going to get the footage I need and the main focus now is to finish the project.
Refusing work
Ok – having said last week that I owe it to myself to refuse work that I know isn’t going to be worthwhile, I’ve actually put it into practice. In fact, I’ve refused two pieces of work in two working days….
The first was a book cover: the guy had a very specific idea of what he wanted to produce, but he only had a budget of $125 – which was fine, but not going to work for me in the UK where the dollar exchange rate isn’t so good. I’d have wanted to spend a couple of days on the project at least and £60 wouldn’t get me minimum wage if I had done.
The second was this morning. A client I’ve done work for before came to me with a photo composite they’d seen before, but couldn’t find anything like in any stock libraries.
It was a fun image and one I could have reproduced and been paid for. They’re a good client and know what they want and have decent budgets, so I’d have been sure of producing some good work.
However, when I started to search for textures to use in the image, I came up with the exact image they wanted on a micro stock library… priced at $2!
Of course, I could have just ignored it and done the job. But I didn’t. I told them where to find the picture they wanted and saved them £400…
‘cos I’m nice like that.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Well, I managed to finish off the film – pictures as I get them. And it was a very long job. I really should have known it was going to be. I ended up working Friday night when I should have been on the way down to Worthing to spend time with Lisa and George.
Right now, most of my projects seem to be on hold and I’m waiting for people to get back to me with small, but important pieces of information. This has meant that I’ve been able only to do small tidying up jobs and frustratingly slight progressions on work while I wait for the info that will let me really get stuck into jobs.
This is doubly annoying because I know there are a lot of jobs in the pipeline waiting for me to work on – so the longer I spend not being able to do them, the bigger the rush when they all inevitably turn up on the same day…
It looks like I’m doing one big project now though – which will involve me going to Palma next week for a couple of days…. Which would be a nice break if it wasn’t just a 24 hour visit.
Still, the one thing I can get on with is the Trex poster… here’s where I am so far – it’s really beginning to shape up.
Right now, most of my projects seem to be on hold and I’m waiting for people to get back to me with small, but important pieces of information. This has meant that I’ve been able only to do small tidying up jobs and frustratingly slight progressions on work while I wait for the info that will let me really get stuck into jobs.
This is doubly annoying because I know there are a lot of jobs in the pipeline waiting for me to work on – so the longer I spend not being able to do them, the bigger the rush when they all inevitably turn up on the same day…
It looks like I’m doing one big project now though – which will involve me going to Palma next week for a couple of days…. Which would be a nice break if it wasn’t just a 24 hour visit.
Still, the one thing I can get on with is the Trex poster… here’s where I am so far – it’s really beginning to shape up.
the only problem is it’s so large (both in terms of polygon detail and scale) that the rendering is really hard – every little change takes ages to make, and ages to check by rendering…. Also, the finished piece is going to be so big (10,000x7000 pixels) I’m going to have to render it in pieces and that’s something I’ve never done with a single picture. And every time I try a different way of doing it I have to wait hours for the inevitable crash… and then start again.
Documentaries
Hopefully all this delay means I’ll be able to do at least some documentary work this week… I’m nearly ready to do the final tweaks to “how to colonise the stars” and then I need to launch into the next run of documentaries… which it’ll be great to finally start proper work on!
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