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What you have to know about working in the industry

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#1

[color=black][color=black]Hello Everybody,
It is my concern to see every day more and more hard voters and users with a strong lack of info about what is required to have a job and name in the industry.
I see people getting upset for users able to make models in 4 days with outstanding quality, or getting bugged because of regular 3rd party program users different than Zbrush who render and showcase their artwork with professional quality.
I’m using CAK1776’s Ester Alien to open this discussion because it was a clear example of what the community likes and dislikes, but most of all to make a point on how the manners and respect for other’s work must get back to the forum and the rates. (If the Admin or the artist think this is not appropriate feel free to contact me I will replace the image Immediately) Today I want to ask all those users with professional background including myself, to illustrate new artists on what is going on outside and what is required to achieve a studio position.
I hope we can create a conscience of respect, patience and tolerance with our peers, and at the same time give them tips on what compositing programs we use, where the base meshes should be born etc.

Looking forward to your opinions.

Luis Nieves ZbrushThread.jpg

#2

Whoa, I just checked the Ester Alien thread and saw such a great injustice in the votes, unacceptable really. And if u ask me if it it didn’t get top row it would have had much higher votes, but it’s not the artist’s fault anyhow.

I remembr u commented on my thread about my mention of a strange 1 star, but honestly I can’t complain, compared to the aforementioned thread. (Interesting that u mentioned works completed in 4 days, my last work was made in 4 days also ;))

It would be interesting to hear what people have to say regarding this topic :+1:

#3

Im a Zbrush purist…this is a Zbrush forum…we should demonstrate Zbrush?

#4

Then let the program run itself hehe.

#5

i feel the bar has got set real high here, and if your image isn’t spectacular you can have 2,000 views and no comments at all, and no rating either. btw i am a hobbyist ( trying to get into 3d full time ) and a total noob by zbc standards…:stuck_out_tongue: For some people like me who have struggled using ZBrush as a creative tool for the third year running, ZBC is the only forum to share work and see what others are doing. i am just the pencil and paper kinda guy who can’t get comfy with polygons or anything technical…sigh!A kind word, a little appreciation goes a long way. useful crits can help a lot too. i thought the ester alien looked great, and could have easily jumped up to the top row if the top row wasn’t that high up in the stratosphere. it went top row for the great render made possible using Zbrush ( technique top row! ) . but i guess the standards have to be set that high ,and some of us struggle to match up.

it would be nice if the professionals shared their tips and workflows. there are already very good examples of tutorials here.

#6

Im a Zbrush purist…this is a Zbrush forum…we should demonstrate Zbrush?
I’m not sure if that means that if I take my mesh and render out on MR or Vray I’m not a Zbrush Artist?
Would you mind to share with us what do you do for living? I would like to know what fields can we reach being plane zbrush artist

#7

Yes, for some reason some of the fellows here at ZBC think is impossible to achieve a model in 4 days, 4 to 8 is a very normal deadline in game studios.

#8

I got word big studios need 2-4 weeks for a full high poly character. Just sharing the info :slight_smile:

#9

From what I have seen it all depends on where you work, who is the client, and what is the budget and deadline. Larger studios will give you more time generally, i.e. several weeks for a hero character at least. Some places might spend months or more if it’s cutting edge. I think it took 1 year to make the first Aslan in Narnia, but that did include the rigging and all the custom stuff going on with muscles and fur.

As far as purism, this is something that doesn’t exist in the industry unless you run into pricks on the job or inexperienced supervisors. Anyone who is qualified and has worked in any kind of art industry will concur that the end result is what counts. It doesn’t matter if you needed to use a piece of open source software on an iPhone as long as the final result meets the desired goal. One time I was hired to work at a place on a TV commercial and we wasted so much time because the “art director” had a demented ego and wanted everything done in XSI even though we could have split the work between XSI and Maya and saved 1-2 weeks of production and made the work look better. He wanted to be a know-it-all and he makes that company lose money and produce results below what is possible.

Regarding what people say on here, I don’t care much. If you notice I don’t even post my own work here because I’ve seen that inexperienced people freak out with joy every time something decent is posted and glorify it, and more advanced people can sometimes crap on work of others. As artists, it is always hard to take criticism, even when you’ve been in the game as long as me (over 10 years), but sometimes constructive criticism can be taken as a put down, i.e. “it looks pretty good but the shaders made it look flat and the skin texture is not right.” And sometimes when you are pro for so long, it almost feels like a personal slight when sub-par work is presented and others drool over it.

Just like life, most places in the industry will not raise you over their heads in praise, in fact you will often get crapped on. And big studios are terrible at this sometimes. I have heard nightmare stories from guys I know who work at the big places of how they were treated, worked into the ground, not paid overtime because of shady dealings, and even tossed to the curb with no thank you after producing stellar work. So as I said, do it because you love it, and be happy with your creations. It’s a dirty bus no matter what kind of entertainment industry you work in.

I would encourage all artists to learn to work fast without sacrificing quality and take what others say with a grain of salt. BUT MEET YOUR DEADLINES. I always tell people I hire this. Do it because you love to do it, and never try or expect to please everyone. But you must meet deadlines and be realistic about what you can do in what amount of time. Most times, we work as a team, and we help each other out so we depend on one another.

Working certain places requires highly advanced skills and speed to meet deadlines and to compete with other studios/artists, but don’t kill yourself if you’re learning. Big studios also are big on collaboration, and many hands my touch a character or environment before the final composite. Sometimes even multiple companies will work on a single character or shot. Toss your pride and ego in the trash bin where it belongs because attitude plays a big part in this. I’ve seen projects fall apart because of one jackass. When moral is low with art, doom looms.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. I could write 10 volumes on this stuff.

#10

you are correct. it all depends on the model. 4 days would be extremely rare if we are talking about a unique character model and not average props or character variations filler characters etc…
apart from the complexity and mere modeling&texturing time of a given model, you also have to take the revision and turnaround times into account. one single model might go through a loop of many revisions, especially if it’s a main character.
2 to 4 weeks for a next gen character is the average and not 4 days. it can even be more than that.

#11

Those are the average times for film, yes. I heard is a different story in the games industry where ridiculous times like 4 to 8 days are not so strange. Maybe I’m wrong about that info, Thanks for sharing gentlemen. Although I think I did read that in an article where Magdalena Dadela was interviewed.

Cheers!

#12

luisnieves- I was taking about the games industry and my source is first hand development experience. not only in-house development but also including outsourcing management. a good serious outsourcing partner would usually quote 20 man-days on average for a good next gen character of mid to high complex level. of course it can be less, but at least when quality is the goal that would be rare while on the other hand such a deadline is easily and often missed if there are too many revision necessary. in reality it is often pretty hard to calculate, because everybody tends to assume the ‘if all goes well’ scenario and calculate from there. from experience I feel much safer calculating the worst case scenario.

let me describe a quick worst case scenario for the fun of it :
artist gets a concept that leaves too much room for interpretation and starts working on what is his interpretation of the concept. he delivers a first rough base mesh which gets rejected for a few revisions, because the art director and the lead game designer are not totally on the same page. finally everybody is somewhat happy with the base mesh and the artists starts zbrushing a rough detail pass. again a few reversions and in-between those a few down times where the artist is waiting for a review, because everybody is too stressed and busy to review the progress immediately. now finally all is fine and the artist starts high detailing and right in the middle of that comes let’s say the producer, who hasn’t had a single look at it yet and even worse either can’t remember that he really signed off the concept or had a totally different impression of what the concept would look like as a complete model. thus he isn’t entirely happy with what he sees at all and requests some probably drastic changes which require to at least partly rework the base mesh. well… you get the point.
Mind you, the described scenario is not a rarity at all. at one the THE biggest developers which name I’d rather not mention I have seen much worse than the aforementioned procedure :wink:

#13

yeah Julian is right about that. I was 5 weeks in on a project that was approved all the way and had to redo the whole thing in a week with barely any sleep because apparently the director of the film never bothered to look.

And yes, some places give ridiculous deadlines and expect artists to meet them in a few days. people get into these bad situations because the company has a big name and they suffer through it for a while just to get the credit.

And sometimes you get smaller clients who can only afford a few days so you do what you can, or the client is cheap and won’t pay for concept art so you have to guess your way through. Basically, things that make you want to bash your head against the wall. I don’t think I’ve ever had 2 identical projects where things went the same.

#14

Thank you very much Julian, very kind from you to take the time of giving us a light on the topic. I hope more members of the forum share their experience as well.

Cheers!

#15

Time is relative = depends on the project and scheduling abilities of some people :wink: My current job allows me for 2 weeks for a full ingame character [which means about a week for all the high and low res modeling and a week for texturing and refinement]. While working on cinematic stuff I had about a week to 2 weeks for a high res model [no textures].
I talked to other game studio artists and some of them might even have a month for Zbrush alone - really depends on how many characters there are, what type of characters you’re talking about [hero, crowd?] etc…

As for Zbrush vs other apps - Zbrush is only one of many, it’s not and will not be the main one for a while still so bashing people for using other softs is unrealistic. The fact that a model was rendered in Vray or Mray doesn’t still change the fact it shows great use of Zbrush… I’m finding the latest incidents on this forum [like the example of the alien] rather disgusting and cringe worthy.