Worst Comments 2

#661

Actually that hards to the main question i used to get and hear my workmates getting “Hi, I just printed that jpeg you sent me to show me what the layout looks like, and the colors are way off the companies color reference. Didn’t I send you that earlier? Here let me go and get that for you” (and this is firstly a highly compressed jpeg, that they’ve secondly printed out on a badly callibrated color laser printer, which in the end is meant to be projected onto some worn out screen using some ancient barco…needless to say, after having explained this to them so many hundereds of times already i expect that explaining this again wouldnt do any good so i agree to make the changes, then do nothing more than maybe play a little with the color calibration on my monitor for next time they come back)[/QUOTE]

I feel your pain. I worked for a-few small print shops in college and was quite often on the backend of your conversation. Picture you having that conversation and then that guy trying to print colors correctly on my printer and me telling him "no, my machines are digital, I don’t mix ink. I can’t color match. You have to do it in your file. No you cannot compare it to your office lazer printer it won’t print the same. Send me pantone colors or tell me what colors you would like and my pre-press department will color-correct it for you. yes, we could put it on the press. It will take time to make separations and templates.

I was explaining what I do to my mother once. We were talking about IceAge2. She said
mom I just think its so amazing how “they” can draw like that"
me theres no drawing involved its all cg. Its done on the computer.
mom You draw on the computer?
me no its polygons
mom whats a polygon?

I was working at Kinkos and a Man and a woman came in. They were foreign, probably middle-east somewhere. They give me a B&W photo and ask me to copy it. No problem. I make them a simple B&W copy on some gloss stock. They say no they want a color copy. I make a copy from the color printer. The customers are very dissapointed in me. After much disscussion that turned into me explaining the physics of the universe, they still did not understand why I couldn’t turn a B&W photo into a fully color photo as it would have been if it was developed in color originally. My boss sees me having trouble and takes over. The customer starts yelling at my manager for about ten minutes before finally leaving very upset. I shook my head and questioned how long my sanity would hold out under such circumstances.

#662

Bwwwhahahahhahahhaha!

#663

In light of the fact that no one on the outside understands what we do, does anyone know of a link to a brief description of 3D for the layperson? It would help me out quite a bit.

I was recently at the greenscreen shoot for a TV commercial that I will have to make the backgrounds for, and I was asked some pretty odd questions. One person in particular didn’t have a very good grasp of what 3D involved. I tried explaining to him about this other commercial I did that he saw, which involved this computer mouse driving through a white world with some objects flying by. I was saying that I made it in 3D, with the computer. I was then asked how large the mouse was…

I was also explaining that I had gotten a job making game environments. The person I was talking to was wondering how they would use what I made, if it was for the programmers to figure out how the shadows would fall. I think someone along the line they thought I was making stop-motion sets or something.

#664

While back in school turning in your concepts for your Demo Reel (basically a cut of unfinished playblasts, and hand drawn concepts):

Instructor Critique: This is all mainly just cycles. Really boring. How about these models? You have someone working on the textures? Add in some longer cuts with more action. Maybe some story elements to lighten it up a bit. DO you have anyone working on rigs to replace these rough models youre using?

Student(s): Id really like to work on games, atleast at first. Are you sure I shouldnt have cycles in it?

Instructor: Yeah cycles are really boring and will get you trashed. “In the industry…” even though youll just be making cycles mainly they really expect you to have more in depth animations in your reel. If you can animate that cycles are cake.

Student: Ok! And about the textures. The few Texture artists we have are all busy doing other models. I plan on adding a few simple textures, nothing fancy, that ok?

Instructor: You can. It will hurt your final grade though. Remember “In the industry…” its all about team work. We expect the same kind of team work from our students.

Student: We have like 3 texture artist and 1 TD in our graduating class. How am I going to do this?

Instructor: Well “In the Industry…” you really cant be just an animator, its good to have atleast one more talent. Try picking up a model from one of the many modelers we have and rig it yourself. (contrary to what they have been saying the past years, btw)

[i]Of course the Student(s) listened and reworked everything. Had some story elements, some full blown, models/rigs in their finished product. Half a year later some representavtives from Rockstar (one of the biggest game companies at the moment with the GTA games) came to the school and spoke with some students and looked at a few reels from the graduates.

I moved away but still keep in touch with a few friends who stuck around and went. I saved what he wrote to me in a file to remind myself to continue myself and never go back to school again. He wrote:

[/i]“Career Development contacted a few graduates that were in the area still I think. They just told me to come up and meet them. Basically he told me what I had wanted to do on my demo reel in the first place but what name of school tells you not to do–he wanted to see more cycles and short animations. He said to cut back on the textures and basically leave things with the background shader and a light rig like I had some of my cycles and not the full scenes I did with backgrounds etc. And then work on my camera moves. But yeah, the crit was mostly positive as far as the animation went, it was the rest of the packaging that was hurting me apparently.”

#665

OO!! ! I have a a couple of classics!!

I was out for a drink with a good mate of mine one night. We happened to start talking to a couple of nice girls and the chatter turned to what we did for a living.
One girl asked my friend “so… what do you do then?”
“I’m in IT” he replied “you know, fixing computers and stuff…”
“Oh right…” she said looking thoroughly unimpressed. Then she turned to me;
“And what about you?” And seeing my chance to impress the lady, I inflated my ego to full capacity and said “I’m an Art Director and designer… I create visuals and designs on the Mac for an advertising agency”
A second passed then she replied
“Oh… so you’re in IT as well then…?”
Needless to say we both went home alone that night…

My second one, and I must say my favourite one, is from my very own sister…
We had just come out from the cinema after watching TITANIC…
We we talking about how impressive the scene was where the ship turns vertically and starts to sink fast with all the people falling from the railings and hitting the funnels etc…
My sister said “It’s amazing… how do they persuade actors to do all that?”
I looked at her incredulously. “It’s not real Sis…” I said. “It’s all done with computer graphics!”
“Reaaallly?” she gasped “no way… I didn’t know they even HAD computers in them days!!”

Sigh…

#666

HahaAwesome !:thumbsup:

#667

I used to reply with “I’m a graphics designer etc etc” to such questions, but I gave it up a loooong time ago. If someone asks me what I do now, I say “I paint”. I’ve never even set a brush to linen in my entire life.

#668

“…that’s a job?!”

Date went down the drain from there.

#669

Just say that rendering is like taking a picture with your camera. You just had to build the trees, lights, grass, buildings, etc., direct the way objects move and how light reacts off of them.

Then I think they may understand that you’re job is basically playing god… :smiley:

#670

I’ve been awed by some of the stories I’ve read here, mainly because I had never encountered anyone who didn’t understand what I do.

Talking to my neighbor yesterday I mentioned at one point that I had gone to school for my Bachelors not to long ago. Later in the conversation he asked me what I got my degree in.

“Animation”

He looked at me for a second, then asked “What kind of job can you get with animation?”

It took me a minute to recover my jaw from the ground.

#671

I actually forget if I’ve posted in this thread already, haha, but anyway. I had some work once where I showed the client the latest render, and things went:

Client: “That looks nice but there’s a mistake, you’ve got more than one shadow coming from the product.”
Me: “Oh ok, I can get rid of one of them if you want.”
Client: “Yeah, because that would be ridiculous! Two shadows! Are we on Mars?!”
Me: “Things can have more than one shadow…”
Client: “Well I don’t know what crap they’re teaching in schools these days, but not when I was younger they couldn’t.”

:scream:

It reminded me of the time when I told this old man that I had a genetic condition and he said “oh, I’m lucky, they didn’t have DNA when I was born.” Haha!

Another time, I had to make ‘photorealistic’ shaders for a scene with no lights in it at all. When I sent the studio test renders (as per their request) they were like “you added lights (which I did), you’re not doing the lighting, just the shaders.” It was ridiculous because default Maya lighting hardly helps shaders look photorealistic and they kept telling me they weren’t realistic enough, haha. They were basing the shaders off of my renders. They wouldn’t do the lighting until the shaders were done. :shrug:

#672

I often get asked the same question about rendering doing all the work, even after wasting an hour explaing how much work went into modeling, shading, rigging and animating before rendering even starts. Now, a conversation goes like this

Client: So in the end the computer does most of the work for you?
Me: No, I fight with the computer to get it to work at all.

Which is true, when you consider how much tweaks you need to make to get a decent render.

#673

I don’t know how well this fits into the thread, but my high school computer animation teacher constantly talks about how important it is to be working on “mature” projects to put in portfolios for college (though I’m the only one I think in the last year who wants to go to college for this). So I’m bored, and figured I might try some architecture type scene, it’s not something I’ve really tried, and he stops me and says that’s not good enough, I should try making a space ship or maybe some star wars/star trek characters or ships because I can “be much more creative.” But who am I to disagree over star wars and space ships being more mature than architectural visualization.

#674

Seconded…LOL!

My neighbour asked what I was studying at university, I told him animation, and he was like ‘Is that like cartoons?’ or something along those lines.

#675

this topic is hillarious , but what surprises me is the ammount of idiotic and dumb people in the industry that have no clue whatsoever!

#676

YaY ! Keep the spaceships commi’n ! Don’t forget to add a supernova of lens flares :deal:

#677

I remember reading a column from an art director who got into a friendly conversation with, I think, a farmer. The farmer asks what he does for a living, so he replies - with an air of smugness - “I’m an AD”. He gets a quizzical look, so he has to elaborate: “I’m an art director”. And the farmer just starts to laugh, refusing to believe that such a silly title exists.

#678

Then they say: " Stores as well as houses?" Arrrggg!!! :scream:
:rolleyes:

Ya can’t win, I tell ya! lol!!!

#679

I remember talking to a girl at school one day, she asked “so what major are you” i said" i am in the 3d animation department" she frowned and said “So you use the computer alot…” I just sort of stoped talking there. Now i tell people i am a film major or when i am really bold a physics major(studying particles) It makes conversations go alot smoother. Animatiors and moders haev it kinda easy, telling someone you want to be a lighting TD or particles TD just causes more issues then it it is worth.

#680

My wife has two sisters, each has a boyfriend, and we’re all pretty close. One day us guys were helping her Dad move some stuff to a friends house. He introduced us thusly:

Dad: This is John, he’s a mechanic, Keith, he’s a chef, and Adam, he’s a… um… computer freak.
Me: you could just have said “artist”. :rolleyes: