Jean Hauptman
Forum Replies Created
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An art director I once worked with changed my POV on this. For the first 5 years in CGI, I expected at least a 10 hour day. But when I worked with this guy, he had a mind like a steel trap, and got me working with with incredible efficiency. He also demanded that I leave at the end of an 8 hour day. After a few weeks, I started really liking the idea of having a life and not dragging into work tired. I was actually more productive working with him in 8 hours than in other shops at 10 hours. That was a turning point. It seemed like after that I was working in networks and shops of seniors who came in got the job done and went home. After that, the 10 hour shops felt inefficient and draggy. This isn’t to say that there aren’t times when you’re stumped by a design and feel like you should put in more time. But I’m convinced that nature will only allow us so much energy to spend in a day, and if you work fast and then try to do more, you will burn out after a period of time. I’ve seen it happen to designers.
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Oh Lord, Grin! Make my day!
(It’s great hearing from you, though!) -
It depends.
Shops run by mature designers are careful not to burn out their people. The same
can be said of most respectable studios. For seasoned designers, 8 to 8.5 hours is a norm – or should be – especially for staff jobs, where you’d die doing long hours every day. The long, long hours are usually in kid shops where newer people haven’t picked up the speed, or young people who use long hours for bragging rights.Not to say that there aren’t times that require OT. But as people gain experience, they work
more focused and tend to want a life. Walking around tired and grumpy gets old.Technical, eyeball-intense jobs – like roto or designing elements such as lower 3rds
are draining. It’s insufferable to put in more than an 8 hour day on that stuff. On the other
hand, you may want to put more time into a highly creative motion graphics project – just because you feel like it’s your baby.When working at home on a creative animation, I can put in a little more time because home
is more relaxing and there’s no transportation time.
At home, you can break up the day with a nap or a jog.The office environment is rigid and bosses want to see you at your station, not wandering
around a bookstore looking for inspiration. So the hours need to stay union, in my opinion. -
Dave, if there is a strong narrative (like the intro to the old Anna Nicole Smith show where they illustrate a rundown of her life story), I’d say :30 tops. And :20 is probably better. TV show intros that I’ve designed that are pure flash and eye candy, have 3 to 5 seconds of animation. If talent or additional information is introduced, animation can go as long as :15. To hold attention beyond that would take either a breakthrough visual idea or an evolving story. That’s just my opinion.
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Doh I was under the gun when making that post. Philip Hodgetts has the great FCP assistant. Not Brian Higgins. You can check it out at https://intelligentassistance.com/
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I just ordered this book from You Work for Them. Expensive, but nice elements.
https://youworkforthem.com/product.php?sku=P0601 -
If you are going with Final Cut Pro, I highly recommend Total Training DVDs. Brian is a brilliant teacher, and even advanced people learn from his most basic tutorials. https://www.totaltraining.com/prod/apple/finalcutpro5_ess.asp?mscsid=
Another Brian – Brian Higgins has a product that embeds training within the FCP interface. I’ll post his URL over the week-end.
Are you a motion graphics firm? I was an editor before getting into after effects, and feel like animation is editing on steroids. If you are experienced in AE, editing will be a piece of cake. I would suggest a basic video course at a community college to get a basic understanding of things like levels. Or you could pay an editor a consulting fee, which might be a better idea. You’ll have someone to call if problems come up.
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Dave- For projects like this, I don’t spend much time figuring budget details. Mainly because low budget producers tend to shop around for the lowest price. Think roughly how many days it will take, and add on a few days as a safety. To keep from getting screwed, put in writing precisely what elements you will provide, and that the budget is good for one redo. Any extras, and any more redos will be billed at an hourly rate of whatever. And when they try to worm in extras, be sure that you tell them at the time that it will cost additionally.
If this is a small company, you MUST get an up-front deposit of at least half the budget.
Hopefully, others will chime in with better advice. I’d like to make this longer, but have to get to work. -
I’m sure you know to have “Best Quality” checked on for all of you layers. And quality Best nd Resolution Full in the render menu.
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I’ve had terrible problems with aliasing in 6.5 both from photoshop files and from illustrator files.
And it happens almost every time I use a lot of precomps in 3d space – I use nulls a lot and
am starting to suspect that might exacerbate aliasing..A couple of things that have helped on occasion:
Render in frames instead of fields. Not a great solution, but at least the alasing improves.
Rendering from a precomp, and using the mov
(quicktime on Mac, and I guess AVI on pc?) in place of your precomp.If you were working with illustrator files, there are a lot of things you can try – one is to
scale the element way up in illustrator, instead of doing this in AE.A tip Trish Meyer recommends, but hasn’t worked for me yet, is to try moving your frame up
or down a single pixel.