Worst Comments 2

#1242

At my old job, we were uploading some videos to ftp for a client in france. Their internet was really slow so we had some problems with the large files taking ages to download. Then one lady walked in with the brilliant suggestion of sending them a url to the files so they could just open them in the browser and not have to take so long to download them. We burst in to laughter. She wasn’t impressed. But we were :smiley:

#1243

I met a traditional artist yesterday. Myself being classically trained, we started up a conversation about art. I mentioned that I think that a lot of todays Michelangelos are working digitally. He said that maybe there are a few great artists working in 2d, but 3d is cheating because the computer does everything for you :eek:

#1244

This just happened
my work colleague who does all the illustration work for this company was asked to make an a2 poster by the big boss. Basically the director of the company had a holiday in India and while he was there he visited the office where his call centre is. He felt sorry for all the people that works there. So now he wants to hold a competition where they can win a holiday to london.
So he wants a few large a2 posters to send it to the call centre so they can enter theis small compertition. My work colleague was given a bunch of 480x 640 images that was nicked from a travel agents website and was expected to use them in this a2 poster!
Of course my colleague had better sense and went on the search for some better images. 3 hours into the project the boss comes marching in and saying why is it taking so long this is a 30 minute job my wife was offering to do it in 5 minutes with the original images! How come she can do it and you cant!
Sadly only my colleague and I could imagine how hideous it would look for this tiny picture of london to be stretched to a2 proportions.

Poor work colleague. :frowning:

#1245

Buy my school book for only 1 million $! LOL

#1246

Well, how sensitive of him. Why spend money to improve the working conditions of your employees if you can hold a cheapass competition instead… I’m sure everybody in the Indian subsidiary feels much better about their work and the morale is much better now… :rolleyes: But whatever helps to silence the big boss’ conscience and make him feel better…

Anyway, sorry, I’m going off topic and starting to sound bitter ;). Please go on with your stories, I love this thread :).

#1247

Oh yeah totally agree. Thats his good deed covered for the next 5 years.

#1248

I’ve been doing web design jobs for awhile, so I’ve learned to have a signed design proof before I do a minute of coding. I don’t expect any clients to understand what goes into the final product anymore. But last year I did a job this guy who I should have strangled twice before I ever finished (my nightmares consist of indecisiveness and arbitrary color changes). But anyway I finish his site (to exact specifications) and before the “job finished check” is cleared I get a call… “My wife thinks, and I agree with her, (of course, right?) we should go with the horizontal navigation bar, not the vertical. Could you change that please?” Right. All I have to do is turn it on it’s side, this job is friggin’ EZ. I don’t answer clients till the check clears any longer. When someone says to me “My wife (or husband) says/thinks/wants” I don’t know if I should laugh or shoot myself in the face. I’ve gotten it a couple times, but next time I’m going with… “No problem, but just for my peace of mind ask your wife to bring in her art degree and an updated resume, just so I know my life hasn’t been a complete waste.”

#1249

My very first CG job was at a small accounting software company that also made instructional videos on the side.

The owner of the company was a hyperbolic man from Mexico who lived to humiliate his lieutenants with screaming rages. He never spoke to me, however. I was below the tantrum-worthy threshold.

But one day he came through the studio and saw me sitting at the AMIGA 500 piecing together a graphic.

“Is that what you do all day, make pictures?” he asked.

Imagining that he was being ironic since that was indeed what I was hired to do, I replied “yeah, that’s all I do!”

He grimaced a little bit, continued on out of the studio, and two weeks later I was laid off.

Lesson learned: people not speaking in their first language rarely engage in irony.

I suppose I would have been laid off faster if he had regarded me as having full-human status but at only $1300/month I probably went to the bottom of his to-do list which had other weighty things on it like giving his son a Lotus convertible for his 18th birthday.

#1250

"…After everything was done, he told me that he underbid the project and could only pay me 80% of what he promised.

And why this story is appropriate for “worst comments”?..

One of the last things he said to me was, “I can see that in future projects I’m going to have to get someone with more experience so that the job can get done right.”"

I suggest WEBFOX as the first cg talk saint

#1251

Well i bought Combustion A year ago. It cost me well 1000 Dollars. So while i was talking with some jerk at a 3D Class he said

“Paid 1000 For that crap?, Movie Maker is free and way Better then Combustion”

I wanted to punch him for that

#1252

No, no. Don’t hit him, he’s clearly brain damaged and you’ll just make him more stupid. lol

#1253

It happened to me when I bought Maya. A know it all friend told me that I was crazy because I could get Bryce and Poser for a fraction of the cost :open_mouth:

#1254

I remember reading a newspaper article about a young stop motion animator who had finally made his first short film. He boasted about how wonderful the art is and then took a stab at computer animation…

“bah! You just sat in front of a computer to do that!”

#1255

On a lousy budget:
“…think monsters inc!”

#1256

or 3 days before deadline of 30 sec. animation clip, client asks:

“Hey, why don`t we put some fur on this character, to see what it looks like?”

#1257

mwoehahahaha,…you made me rofl for real!!
did somebody really say this?..

#1258

Well yes. On the other hand, it was that project managers first attempt at ordering/working with a 3D project so I should have taking charge in educating her a wee bit more about what to expect for the money they had.
Mistake corrected now :slight_smile:

#1259

Hey, just finished reading this whole thread ( over the course of the last few days ), and there’s a lot of “cool” stuff in here. I can relate to most of them, and it really helps to vent off some steam.

Here’s something that happened to me this year.

Prologue
Right, so I do 3d for about 7 years, but I went and got into Arts college ( Photography & Video section ) for the sake of having a diploma and meeting people, doing photography, etc. To my amazement, the teachers here act like Ubergods of Computer Technology, but have no idea about tools in After Effects, Photoshop ( and we do Photoshop a LOT here ).

The English language is a chore for them ( we’re in Romania ). So you can imagine that them navigating the interface of diverse software programs become more like quests.

Chapter One
I was in line to show my video for the semester, and there was this girl from second year class at the PC showing our Video Arts teacher what she did. She filmed several random objects, and had edited the video in Aftereffects to have text show up next to them.

You’d normally go for something like a Screen/Add method for this, right? No. Wrong. She made a new layer, and gave it 50% opacity, and then apparently smashed it over the original footage. The result, a hazy video of plants and footballs, with gray ghostish text flying around them.

Teacher: What’s this crap?
Her: Umm… I added text to show what I mean with the objects.
Teacher: No no no no…
Me: …?..
Teacher: You use krooma key.
Me: OMG.
Her: Allright, I’ll get it back tommo…
Teacher: No, you don’t know how to use it. Here, let me show you.
Me: (thinking) This should be interesting.

So he starts exploring the alien and unknown territory that is the After Effects user interface, looking for the Chroma Key effect. He’s first looking under file. Then in the Export settings, and navigates through all possible codecs. Eventually he stumbles on the Effects rollout list.

Me: (thinking) Finally!
Teacher: krooma key krooma key…
Her: ZzzzzZzzz (absent minded look - her body was on autopilot by now, and her mind was probably in a happy place)

What he does is go through EVERY effect and applies it to the girl’s footage, ONE by ONE. Even the useless ones that have nothing to do with layers/compositing whatsoever. Every so often I caught glimpses of the Chroma Key effect, as the master flew by it with the mouse cursor.

Me: MUST… NOT… GRAB… MOUSE! MUST… NOT… SLAP… TEACHER! --teeth grinding–
(15 slow minutes pass)
Teacher: Here it is. Krooma key, you use this. Put it there and here are the options.
To which he then proudly started sliding the parameters at random to show her it works.

Oh, then my turn came, at which point he was exhausted and started yelling he can’t work like a robot all day, he needs his coffee.
Teacher: So come back on Monday.
Me: But today’s the deadline and I worked all night to finish it on time.
Teacher: I can’t work like this!!! I’ve got a busy schedule coming here each day.
Me: (thinking) Yeah, from 9 to 12, you jerk. How do you keep up?

Chapter Two
Anatomy exams! Now, remember I’m in Photography and Video, so why we need to know perfect anatomy to take pictures and film people is beyond me. But no matter, I need it for my 3d work.

We had to first make a portfolio of the human muscles and bones in order to be allowed into the oral exam. Now, we’ve got a class teacher (old, arrogant, grumpy guy - we all HAD to buy his book to study from), and a seminar teacher (middle aged cool guy, fun, knew how to approach lessons). I asked permission from the seminar teacher to do the portfolio in 3d.
Me: So I’ve been doing 3d for many years now, here’s a cd of my work.
Seminar Teacher: Woah, this is cool stuff.
Me: Thanks! So can I do the portfolio in 3d? I’ll have it printed out on A3 papers just like the drawings should be.
Seminar Teacher: Sure, just make sure it’s your work. Not from the internet.
Me: No problem!

I then spend the next five days sculpting the human muscle system (using references and even the old fart’s book), print them out and add them to my portfolio of drawn human bones. Then comes D-day. I find out 9/10 of my classmates failed the oral exam so far. Damn. Here comes my turn, I go in. There’s like 5 of us there with the teachers, and we get random subjects and get 10 minutes to figure it out before being examined.

I got the leg bones and the forearms muscles. No poblem. My turn comes, and I see the old teacher is the only one doing the examining. Seminar teacher is on standby next to him. (damn - allright, chill; I know this stuff)
Me: Bones blablabla
Old Teacher: Mmmhmmm.
Me: Muscles blablabla
Old Teacher: Mmmmhmm. (vague inexpressive look of disgust on his face - think Roman Emperor before his subjects)
Very obviously disturbed, he agrees I deserve a 5/10 for my responses. ( where 4/10 and below would count as a fail )
Old Teacher: Right, you seem like you somehow stumbled over some notes on anatomy, and randomly remember a few bits of info on them. This is NOT the way we do things here at the University.
Me: But I studied from your book for the entire last month.
At which point he asks the seminar teacher about my activity at the seminars. He makes extremely slow gestures ( rotated his head for 5 seconds just to look at the other teacher ), and speaks like he’s half asleep.
Seminar Teacher: Oh he’s really active. He’s at all the classes, and - oh! He’s made this really cool thing for the portfolio. He made the entire human body in 3d.
Me: - Extremely proud - ( here’s a chance to raise that 5 to perhaps a 7-8! )
The old teacher grabs the portfolio and looks at all of it, then proceeds to empty it on his desk and started laughing.
Old Teacher: Hahahaha, you think I’m an idiot? Hahahaha, these are from the internet. I KNOW these exact images. And the exact pose.
Me: Well that IS the standard anatomical pose, would you have expected him to be lieing on the ground or sitting on a couch? And they’re not from the internet, I’ve been doing 3d for the last several years, and I’ve got work files to back this up.
Old Teacher: (still convinced he caught me red handed) No no no, I know these all too well.
Me: But look, there are even some mistakes. Here - and here. I didn’t manage to get these just right.

Redundant conversation ensued for about 5 minutes, with me nearly ripping off my chair to keep myself from yelling at the old fart. I got him to agree I did in fact make those, but he was by now set on failing me nonetheless.

Old Teacher: (putting my nice plump 4 on his list) I hope this serves as a lesson for you…
Me: For what? You agreed I DID make those…
Old Teacher: (ignoring what I had said) …and I expect you to come back in two months for the reexamination having learned proper anatomy.

As I left the room, I noticed he also wrote next to my name: “Great portfolio”. :hmm:

I then met with my classmates and they rolled on the floor laughing. I was too pissed to care. Later, the seminar teacher told me: Tough luck, kid. Sorry it turned out like that, next time just stick to drawings.

#1260

please tell me you are no longer enrolled at that school…

#1261

There’s this movie on TV right now, don’t remember what it’s called but it’s about Albert Einstein doing some… things. The point is, I have this image of Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein belittling your work and despite the rage I feel along side the you from that story, I can’t help but smile a little bit at this image.