I actually managed to finish my work in good time today. The wall street animation seems to have gone off without too much of a problem (the clients haven’t come back to me about it wanting changes at any rate).
The deadline for the newsletter was moved forward to today (I heard about that yesterday). I’d have liked more time, particularly because the newsletter is announcing the launch of a new version of the video editor whose purchasers the newsletter goes out to – and I’d have liked to have seen the package before writing about it. As it is I’ve had to do the article based on the company’s press releases - but no problem, it’s done and seems Ok. Next month I’ll have the package and will be able to get to grips with it a little more thoroughly.
That left me with most of the afternoon to start work on another commission with a slightly less immediate deadline. This one’s a children’s poster of Tyrannosaurus rex. Fun stuff, and I’m aiming to bring a little of the latest thinking on the beast (like the fact that it’s young were probably feathered) to the picture.
I went out last night with a friend of Lisa’s and I’m feeling a little the worse for wear, so it’s good to have been able to spend the afternoon on something gentle… not that Trex is gentle, but sculpting in z-brush is a fairly relaxing job if you don’t have a harsh deadline for it!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Faking it
Having re-organised my showreel, it’s clear there are a couple of gaps – areas in which the work I’ve done so far either isn’t stuff I can or want to show off, or just isn’t varied enough to appeal to the markets I know are out there…
The most obvious of these is web banners and intros. Video on the web has only really exploded into everyday sites in the past couple of years, and it’s only now people are starting to get the idea they can create intro screens and banners with content as rich as you’d get on TV – that means I’ve only done a couple of such projects (all in the last few months, which I guess is the point).
So I spent Friday faking work – producing a whole showreel of banners and intros… based on fictitious companies and made-up products.
See if you can work out which in this showreel are real and which are created for the showreel….
It’s not really a cheat – there’s no difference between a piece of work done to show off what you can do and one done for an actual commission except that commissions often don’t let you show off your skills to the same extent, so I don’t feel I’m making any false claims by introducing these elements – a showreel is just there to show what you can produce…
In the same spirit, I decided my main showreel was a bit limited in the area of combining video and shot footage, so I added a couple of “pop video” clips just to show I can work with people as well as cg sharks!
One I did in a very clean graphical style, the other, I gave a much more grungy treatment.
I think what people find hard to grasp when looking at showreels is that ANYTHING is now possible with CG. The problem is that unless you know your way around the software, you can’t really say what’s very easy and what will add weeks of design time to a project, and that’s probably where clients find it hard to work out what they can afford to do.
Maybe I should produce an effects crib-sheet for commissioning clients to let people know what’s easy and what’s hard…
Maybe when I’ve got a minute….
Wall Street Crash
… which right now I haven’t – primarily because at about 5:30 on Friday, the company I created a series of Mexican wrestlers for a month or so ago contacted me with another commission.
As before, the deadline was Wednesday (remember, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend, Monday was a bank holiday and Tuesday I’m looking after George)... and as before, the company are operating out of blackberries – so all communication for this complex project has to come in the form of ambiguous text messages.
What it turns out they want is a video clip to look like a videogame for a proposed Wall Street trading game. I have to fill an empty trading room with CG traders all standing around chatting, and place a player character in among them….
It’s not an easy job to animate a whole crowd of people in a couple of days.
I think I’ve nailed it now, but I did have to do some work over the weekend, and getting it done for the deadline was very tight… I was working until half ten last night.
I usually have a strict rule about weekends and evenings, but with this, it was either accept a little overtime, or not take the job on….
It looks like with the success of my advertising campaign, turning down work is something I’m going to have to get used to doing… it just never seems to be the right time to do it, but I’m going to have to find a way if I’m ever to get back to my documentaries!
Having re-organised my showreel, it’s clear there are a couple of gaps – areas in which the work I’ve done so far either isn’t stuff I can or want to show off, or just isn’t varied enough to appeal to the markets I know are out there…
The most obvious of these is web banners and intros. Video on the web has only really exploded into everyday sites in the past couple of years, and it’s only now people are starting to get the idea they can create intro screens and banners with content as rich as you’d get on TV – that means I’ve only done a couple of such projects (all in the last few months, which I guess is the point).
So I spent Friday faking work – producing a whole showreel of banners and intros… based on fictitious companies and made-up products.
See if you can work out which in this showreel are real and which are created for the showreel….
It’s not really a cheat – there’s no difference between a piece of work done to show off what you can do and one done for an actual commission except that commissions often don’t let you show off your skills to the same extent, so I don’t feel I’m making any false claims by introducing these elements – a showreel is just there to show what you can produce…
In the same spirit, I decided my main showreel was a bit limited in the area of combining video and shot footage, so I added a couple of “pop video” clips just to show I can work with people as well as cg sharks!
One I did in a very clean graphical style, the other, I gave a much more grungy treatment.
I think what people find hard to grasp when looking at showreels is that ANYTHING is now possible with CG. The problem is that unless you know your way around the software, you can’t really say what’s very easy and what will add weeks of design time to a project, and that’s probably where clients find it hard to work out what they can afford to do.
Maybe I should produce an effects crib-sheet for commissioning clients to let people know what’s easy and what’s hard…
Maybe when I’ve got a minute….
Wall Street Crash
… which right now I haven’t – primarily because at about 5:30 on Friday, the company I created a series of Mexican wrestlers for a month or so ago contacted me with another commission.
As before, the deadline was Wednesday (remember, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend, Monday was a bank holiday and Tuesday I’m looking after George)... and as before, the company are operating out of blackberries – so all communication for this complex project has to come in the form of ambiguous text messages.
What it turns out they want is a video clip to look like a videogame for a proposed Wall Street trading game. I have to fill an empty trading room with CG traders all standing around chatting, and place a player character in among them….
It’s not an easy job to animate a whole crowd of people in a couple of days.
I think I’ve nailed it now, but I did have to do some work over the weekend, and getting it done for the deadline was very tight… I was working until half ten last night.
I usually have a strict rule about weekends and evenings, but with this, it was either accept a little overtime, or not take the job on….
It looks like with the success of my advertising campaign, turning down work is something I’m going to have to get used to doing… it just never seems to be the right time to do it, but I’m going to have to find a way if I’m ever to get back to my documentaries!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
New website
I’ve finally got round to updating my website – on Monday I put together and uploaded a new showreel and today I’ve been re-designing the still images side.
Updating your portfolio website always involves a little self-reinvention. Each picture or clip you decide to include goes a little way to building up the picture visitors will have of you. And if you use the site for getting work, as I do, then you’re not only saying who you are, but who you’d like to be. You’re not just choosing your best work – I’m leaving out quite a lot of my best work – you’re choosing the work that you think is most likely to get the future commissions you’re after.
And that means some tough decisions. I thought about how to restructure it long and hard – after all, from my google advertising, I’m getting (roughly) one enquiry per week from about 800 clicks. In other words out of 800 people visiting my site, 1 decides to email me. That’s OK in sales terms, but I should be able to improve on it. Not least so that I can reduce my advertising spending!
And the conclusion I came to was this:
My website up to now has been about me. It’s been a boasting forum for me to let people know what a great artist and animator I am. All the decisions I’ve made about what to put up there have been about showing off the strength and variety of my work.
But I don’t need to do that.
I don’t need to show people that I can do 3d design and animation – that’s clear from the pictures. I don’t need to impress the visitors to my site because if they’re going to be impressed, they will be anyway.
If they were artists or animators themselves, they’d be doing the work themselves so they’re not looking at the mastery of different techniques – they’re looking for examples of the kind of work they need.
What I need to do is show them that I can produce what they’re looking for – that they can come to me with a brief – however vague – and that I can transform it into something that will work well in whatever they’re doing.
So, up to now, my website has been divided into sections for prehistoric art, science images, animation, etc.
What I need is to focus far more on sales – and that means directing visitors to images that mean something to them….
Reconstructions
Business communication
Advertising images
Illustration
Web graphics
Education
Editorial
Each section will probably only contain a few images, and there will be some overlap, but they’ll be very finely aimed at specific clients.
For video work – I think I’ll only do one video, but I’ll include buzz-words to make it clear what some of the clips relate to
Documentaries
Web animations
Music videos
Advertising
Logos
Videogames
Visualization
Title animations
It’s not quite finished, but the majority of it’s up there…www.darkin.demon.co.uk
I’ve finally got round to updating my website – on Monday I put together and uploaded a new showreel and today I’ve been re-designing the still images side.
Updating your portfolio website always involves a little self-reinvention. Each picture or clip you decide to include goes a little way to building up the picture visitors will have of you. And if you use the site for getting work, as I do, then you’re not only saying who you are, but who you’d like to be. You’re not just choosing your best work – I’m leaving out quite a lot of my best work – you’re choosing the work that you think is most likely to get the future commissions you’re after.
And that means some tough decisions. I thought about how to restructure it long and hard – after all, from my google advertising, I’m getting (roughly) one enquiry per week from about 800 clicks. In other words out of 800 people visiting my site, 1 decides to email me. That’s OK in sales terms, but I should be able to improve on it. Not least so that I can reduce my advertising spending!
And the conclusion I came to was this:
My website up to now has been about me. It’s been a boasting forum for me to let people know what a great artist and animator I am. All the decisions I’ve made about what to put up there have been about showing off the strength and variety of my work.
But I don’t need to do that.
I don’t need to show people that I can do 3d design and animation – that’s clear from the pictures. I don’t need to impress the visitors to my site because if they’re going to be impressed, they will be anyway.
If they were artists or animators themselves, they’d be doing the work themselves so they’re not looking at the mastery of different techniques – they’re looking for examples of the kind of work they need.
What I need to do is show them that I can produce what they’re looking for – that they can come to me with a brief – however vague – and that I can transform it into something that will work well in whatever they’re doing.
So, up to now, my website has been divided into sections for prehistoric art, science images, animation, etc.
What I need is to focus far more on sales – and that means directing visitors to images that mean something to them….
Reconstructions
Business communication
Advertising images
Illustration
Web graphics
Education
Editorial
Each section will probably only contain a few images, and there will be some overlap, but they’ll be very finely aimed at specific clients.
For video work – I think I’ll only do one video, but I’ll include buzz-words to make it clear what some of the clips relate to
Documentaries
Web animations
Music videos
Advertising
Logos
Videogames
Visualization
Title animations
It’s not quite finished, but the majority of it’s up there…www.darkin.demon.co.uk
Friday, May 16, 2008
windows, linux and friday afternoons
I’m getting there.
I think I’m going to finally have some time next week to work on documentaries. I did get another couple of jobs yesterday (one a web banner for a property company and one an illustration for Nature) but neither are too taxing, so I should have finished them by the end of the day.
Curiously, I also got wind today of someone at a museum looking for a film about trilobites… one of the subjects I’d wanted to cover, but haven’t been able to (mainly due to time constraints) track down people to interview. Maybe if there’s interest, I can put it higher up my “todo” list.
That’s the thing with working with really low budgets – it just takes a little contribution to really get things moving. Also, because I’ve got no commissioning editors, I can move quickly if I need to change direction.
Updating my website
Because I had a little time this afternoon, I thought I’d start on updating my website… www.darkin.demon.co.uk
I think it looks good already, but I can’t help feeling I’m missing out on work from it because it doesn’t put enough stress on the corporate, businessy stuff and concentrates instead on science illustration.
Of course, the scientific stuff is still important, and it’s what I’d like to do more of, but I don’t think I need acres of shots of (for example) dinosaurs to show I can do that kind of work… whereas I do need a few examples of logo animations, text work, ident graphics and web banners to show the business and TV community that I can do that stuff as well – even though they’re not necessarily as pretty.
People looking for someone to do a quick piece of animation or a business graphic often don’t have time to look at the techniques used in a particular set of pictures and work out whether they can be applied to something they’re looking for. They’re more likely to simply see whether there’s something on an artist’s site that looks a bit like what they want and ask for something like that.
It’s more like buying a car than commissioning an artist. There’s a tendancy to say “can I have that in blue?” rather than thinking “well, if he can animate a Trex, then a logo will be child’s play”
So anyway…. I got about 2 minutes into the re-vamp before I hit a major Windows Vista orientated snag.
All my source files for my site are on a portable disk which was first formatted on my old windows XP machine. That machine now doesn’t work, and thanks to the fact that Vista Home Premium doesn’t support “dynamic disks”, I can’t get to any of the data on it.
Why doesn’t windows Vista Home Premium support dynamic disks? Not a clue. It’s just one of those stupid Microsoft things that suddenly make it impossible for you to work without giving you any prior warning of the problem.
I searched the Internet for most of the afternoon, and the only viable option I’ve found is to download puppy linux – a version of linux which can be run from a CD. Puppy linux will apparently allow me to access my drive and copy files over to another drive.
What a pain.
I have to add a whole new operating system just to get data from a drive because it’s in the form Windows told me to put it in a year ago.
On the plus side, My first experience with Linux is great. It’s easy to use and things just WORK – I guess it’s the advantage of that whole open source thing they’ve got going, but it’s a really good system.
However, I promise not to become one of those Linux bores – so I’m not switching and I’m not going to go on about how much better it is than Windows because I just can’t be that techy.
Friday afternoon
As usual, Friday afternoon ends with Monday turning into a headlong rush…. This time it’s the new newsletter – which I was asked to write, but which then disappeared off the map for a couple of weeks, but which now suddenly needs doing on Monday. Added to this, the web banner I did today needs finishing off and the image for Nature needs another tweak – all of these things came in at 6:15pm.
That’s Friday afternoon for you. Especially since Tuesday is my day for looking after George, so “any time before the middle of next week” now means “Monday or else!”.
I think I’m going to finally have some time next week to work on documentaries. I did get another couple of jobs yesterday (one a web banner for a property company and one an illustration for Nature) but neither are too taxing, so I should have finished them by the end of the day.
Curiously, I also got wind today of someone at a museum looking for a film about trilobites… one of the subjects I’d wanted to cover, but haven’t been able to (mainly due to time constraints) track down people to interview. Maybe if there’s interest, I can put it higher up my “todo” list.
That’s the thing with working with really low budgets – it just takes a little contribution to really get things moving. Also, because I’ve got no commissioning editors, I can move quickly if I need to change direction.
Updating my website
Because I had a little time this afternoon, I thought I’d start on updating my website… www.darkin.demon.co.uk
I think it looks good already, but I can’t help feeling I’m missing out on work from it because it doesn’t put enough stress on the corporate, businessy stuff and concentrates instead on science illustration.
Of course, the scientific stuff is still important, and it’s what I’d like to do more of, but I don’t think I need acres of shots of (for example) dinosaurs to show I can do that kind of work… whereas I do need a few examples of logo animations, text work, ident graphics and web banners to show the business and TV community that I can do that stuff as well – even though they’re not necessarily as pretty.
People looking for someone to do a quick piece of animation or a business graphic often don’t have time to look at the techniques used in a particular set of pictures and work out whether they can be applied to something they’re looking for. They’re more likely to simply see whether there’s something on an artist’s site that looks a bit like what they want and ask for something like that.
It’s more like buying a car than commissioning an artist. There’s a tendancy to say “can I have that in blue?” rather than thinking “well, if he can animate a Trex, then a logo will be child’s play”
So anyway…. I got about 2 minutes into the re-vamp before I hit a major Windows Vista orientated snag.
All my source files for my site are on a portable disk which was first formatted on my old windows XP machine. That machine now doesn’t work, and thanks to the fact that Vista Home Premium doesn’t support “dynamic disks”, I can’t get to any of the data on it.
Why doesn’t windows Vista Home Premium support dynamic disks? Not a clue. It’s just one of those stupid Microsoft things that suddenly make it impossible for you to work without giving you any prior warning of the problem.
I searched the Internet for most of the afternoon, and the only viable option I’ve found is to download puppy linux – a version of linux which can be run from a CD. Puppy linux will apparently allow me to access my drive and copy files over to another drive.
What a pain.
I have to add a whole new operating system just to get data from a drive because it’s in the form Windows told me to put it in a year ago.
On the plus side, My first experience with Linux is great. It’s easy to use and things just WORK – I guess it’s the advantage of that whole open source thing they’ve got going, but it’s a really good system.
However, I promise not to become one of those Linux bores – so I’m not switching and I’m not going to go on about how much better it is than Windows because I just can’t be that techy.
Friday afternoon
As usual, Friday afternoon ends with Monday turning into a headlong rush…. This time it’s the new newsletter – which I was asked to write, but which then disappeared off the map for a couple of weeks, but which now suddenly needs doing on Monday. Added to this, the web banner I did today needs finishing off and the image for Nature needs another tweak – all of these things came in at 6:15pm.
That’s Friday afternoon for you. Especially since Tuesday is my day for looking after George, so “any time before the middle of next week” now means “Monday or else!”.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
synapsids microraptors and primitive amphibians
Science Photo Library
As part of my plan to get back to doing some documentary work very soon, I’ve been dedicating this week to finishing off a couple of projects that have been going on for too long now.
One of these is a series of stock images I’m doing for Science Photo Library (http://www.sciencephoto.com/) on the subject of “Missing links” – animals which bridge the gap between one type of creature and another.
After the painstaking process of making the 3d models, and texturing and posing them, I’m finally ready to put them into scenes and render them out as finished artworks.
Science Photo Library demands very large image sizes (typically 4000 pixels along each side) and rendering such images in 3d is a time consuming and difficult process. That size of picture requires an awful lot of detail, and the more detail in 3d, the more complex the geometry, and so the more strain is placed on the computer.
This in turn means you have to make compromises – typically the renderer will crash if you try to include too much at too high a resolution – and it’ll often take hours to get to the point of crashing, so finishing the images is often a long job.
It also often requires a lot of post-work in photoshop.
Here are a few of the pieces I’ve finished today:
As part of my plan to get back to doing some documentary work very soon, I’ve been dedicating this week to finishing off a couple of projects that have been going on for too long now.
One of these is a series of stock images I’m doing for Science Photo Library (http://www.sciencephoto.com/) on the subject of “Missing links” – animals which bridge the gap between one type of creature and another.
After the painstaking process of making the 3d models, and texturing and posing them, I’m finally ready to put them into scenes and render them out as finished artworks.
Science Photo Library demands very large image sizes (typically 4000 pixels along each side) and rendering such images in 3d is a time consuming and difficult process. That size of picture requires an awful lot of detail, and the more detail in 3d, the more complex the geometry, and so the more strain is placed on the computer.
This in turn means you have to make compromises – typically the renderer will crash if you try to include too much at too high a resolution – and it’ll often take hours to get to the point of crashing, so finishing the images is often a long job.
It also often requires a lot of post-work in photoshop.
Here are a few of the pieces I’ve finished today:
Microraptor – a four winged dinosaur
tiktaalik – One of the first vertebrate creatures to crawl out of the water – half way between a fish and an amphibian
Dimetrodon – an early (pre dinosaur) reptile - a synapsid
Titanophoneus – another synapsid – one of the creatures bridging the gap between reptiles and mammals
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Today is my actual 40th birthday, and I awoke to the rather disappointing news that a work project I thought was going particularly well, isn’t going to happen at all. I did a test for a children’s book illustration job which I’d way under-quoted for because it looked like a fun project. But it turns out that the book’s writer doesn’t like the illustration… here it is:
personally, I think the image works very well, but the author (who does a little sketching himself) would be better off doing the illustrations himself since he obviously has some picture in his head of exactly how he wants it to look, but doesn’t want to see somebody else’s interpretation of it.
I think the reality is that he’ll probably end up with the kind of hasty watercolour scribbles that most children’s books are illustrated with. Which is a bit of a shame, because I think doing it the way I was would have made the book into something unique.
Oh well, never mind.
At least it gives me a fighting chance of getting some of my other projects up and running…
personally, I think the image works very well, but the author (who does a little sketching himself) would be better off doing the illustrations himself since he obviously has some picture in his head of exactly how he wants it to look, but doesn’t want to see somebody else’s interpretation of it.
I think the reality is that he’ll probably end up with the kind of hasty watercolour scribbles that most children’s books are illustrated with. Which is a bit of a shame, because I think doing it the way I was would have made the book into something unique.
Oh well, never mind.
At least it gives me a fighting chance of getting some of my other projects up and running…
Monday, May 12, 2008
Having upgraded 3ds Max, it can now import and work with much larger more complex scenes… however, it’s not completely helpful because in using that extra power, I’m hitting the problem of my computer not being powerful enough… I’m getting a lot of crashes once I’ve put the scenes together and that’s really annoying. It’s also not something I can easily solve because my motherboard can’t accept any more than 2gb of RAM….
I really need a 4gb machine for HD video editing and high quality 3d modelling… but aside from the cost, I really don’t have the time to buy and set one up with all my software… I’m sure I could get my other PC working again, but I haven’t had time to even do that. It would even be a good idea to take out it’s graphics card which is far better than the one I’m currently using, but I’m working from one project to the next right now and don’t even have time to do that.
Actually that’s not true- installing the card would be the work of 20 minutes… however, if it went wrong, I could loose half a day trying to fix it – and that, I can’t afford!
It feels a bit like I’m on a constant cycle of work right now… now time to stop or work out what I’m doing.
Do I need to take on less, or organise myself better? Probably a bit of both – because I want to get back to my documentaries soon… Real work is getting in the way!
Got a call from a guy on Friday who wants to design a range of personalised vinyl transfers for custom motorbikes. And a call today from someone else looking for animation for a pop video…. Well, let’s see where that leads.
No news yet from the advert in malta I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve all but given up on it – since after the agreement to do the job, I suddenly stopped getting emails. Despite trying to contact the guy I’ve heard nothing, and the initial deadline has come and gone.
I’ve been assuming that the project they were trying to advertise has hit a snag, and that the person I’m dealing with has gone off work for a while, but with no replies to my emails, I can’t do anything on the projects and I’ll have to assume it’s not going ahead.
I really need a 4gb machine for HD video editing and high quality 3d modelling… but aside from the cost, I really don’t have the time to buy and set one up with all my software… I’m sure I could get my other PC working again, but I haven’t had time to even do that. It would even be a good idea to take out it’s graphics card which is far better than the one I’m currently using, but I’m working from one project to the next right now and don’t even have time to do that.
Actually that’s not true- installing the card would be the work of 20 minutes… however, if it went wrong, I could loose half a day trying to fix it – and that, I can’t afford!
It feels a bit like I’m on a constant cycle of work right now… now time to stop or work out what I’m doing.
Do I need to take on less, or organise myself better? Probably a bit of both – because I want to get back to my documentaries soon… Real work is getting in the way!
Got a call from a guy on Friday who wants to design a range of personalised vinyl transfers for custom motorbikes. And a call today from someone else looking for animation for a pop video…. Well, let’s see where that leads.
No news yet from the advert in malta I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve all but given up on it – since after the agreement to do the job, I suddenly stopped getting emails. Despite trying to contact the guy I’ve heard nothing, and the initial deadline has come and gone.
I’ve been assuming that the project they were trying to advertise has hit a snag, and that the person I’m dealing with has gone off work for a while, but with no replies to my emails, I can’t do anything on the projects and I’ll have to assume it’s not going ahead.
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