VFX r u ok? Why It Feels Like the End of VFX

Interesting vid about the VFX industry and how it’s kinda limping along at the moment. I kinda consider danklife VFX adjacent as it’s VFX but for stills. A lot of this pertains to my day-to-day operations for sure.

“This video has been a long time coming. A year post strikes and our industry is still struggling to recover. Many of us are struggling to find work and make sense of everything going on. We've definitely been battling a lot of career anxiety lately...

We delve into the issues the industry had for years prior, and all of the current threats to our industry like strikes, tax credit reductions, the trend of downplaying CGI (No CGI) and AI.”

ASMP Calls Out Adobe for Its ‘Shocking Dismissal of Photography’

Yeah this is pretty awful of adobe. Plus, the AI functions are pretty garbage for anything above 2k.

“At the beginning of the month, PetaPixel reported that Adobe was running advertisements for its software on various social media platforms with the tagline “skip the photoshoot.”

The ASMP felt strongly about this statement — enough to write an open letter to the Silicon Valley software giant, calling them out for attacking the very creators it relies on.

“As one of the largest professional associations representing photographers and all visual creators, and as our 6,500 members well know, creating a career in photography is harder than ever, with the average photographer having to navigate stolen images, copyright infringement, broken business promises, and now, the specter of wholesale replacement of their art and craft by AI platforms,” ASMP Chair Gabriella Marks writes.

“But while fighting these battles on these multiple fronts, photographers would not have expected to have to defend themselves from attack by the company whose products are inseparable from the current and past toolbox of the professional photographer. Put simply, why, Adobe, would you dismiss and discount all that your most fervent and loyal customers aspire to?

“And this was an attack; an attack on the creativity of the photographer, on the skill and nuance they bring to the photoshoot, and the countless hours they spend preparing for, and working after the photoshoot you are so cavalier to simply throw away.”"

Little preview

Trying to get some new portfolio pieces organized and posted but not having a lot of time to set aside for that ATM. That said, here is a little before and after teaser that was fun.

Pak on the frontier of NFTs.

Interesting interview with Pak on Foundation.

“As a creator who doesn’t self-define as an artist, I can only compare the crypto world with the design scene. There are many differences in intention, purpose, and value distribution. For a design production, the product* is generally assigned value based on how much time goes into the work’s creation, and the creator’s vision is substantiated based on their back-log of successes (aka their "portfolio"). The crypto space (specifically the #cryptoart space), on the other hand, can value ideas almost instantly. This valuation sometimes ignites the realization of the product*—which wouldn't exist in a traditional production world. In short, this scene makes some things* exist instantaneously.”

NFTs

We all know about Beeple and his crazy NFT sale at this point, but I am interested to see how this all shakes out. For so long now art and music has just been digital trash artist’s though out into crappy social media platforms for free and get nothing in return for creating their art. If it actually brings value back to creative pursuits I am all in. Checking out Nifty and Foundation ATM to see what the deal is. Will keep you posted on how it all goes.

Behance.... huh, look at that....

Have not loaded up my Behance page in some time. Seems like my stats have gone a little bit nutty. Hello all you Behance peoples!

I need to do a round of portfolio updates soon I guess. It’s always a major pain in the ass to pull files and make before and afters…. wah, wah, wah!

'Welcome to #Hustletown': How hustle culture took over advertising - Digiday

To be clear, hustle isn’t just hard work — it’s showing that you’re working hard. It’s Instagram posts about how much you have to travel for work, it’s LinkedIn and Medium memos about how if you’re not working yourself to the bone you’re not doing enough. It also smacks a little bit of “work at all costs.” And if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough.

“There’s this whole thing about how being an entrepreneur, or even just a person working, has to be like falling on your face while eating glass,” said Eliason. “That’s bullshit. This is a job, and you can quit any time.”

This is such bullshit bro culture crap. It’s needs to die with the “Gig Economy today.”

There is backlash coming to this. Eliason is one of them — he’s instituted new rules at his agency that include flat fees, not time billed. People are now focused on balance, mindfulness, and not dying because you have too much to do. 

“Younger employees rightly question their return on doing things 100 times. Is the work getting better as a result of this?” said Clark.”The approach to creative ideation is necessary and good and yields better work, but there is a point where it gets to diminishing returns.”

Source: https://digiday.com/marketing/welcome-hust...

The Burn

Just getting off of a pretty crazy push through a lot of projects. Just a reminder to everyone out there to remember to take time for themselves as well. Balance people! ;)

Conoco Animations.

Jeremy spent all day yesterday making us awesome new animations for the portfolio. Look for more updates to come in the following weeks. 

Total Finder for Mac

Found this little plug in on the Modo forums and so far I am really loving it.  It brings back the full color bar for labels in the Finder window instead of just the little dots. Some other nice features I like is that windows are forced to open in the same tabbed group and you can have it put folders at the top of a list. Overall makes the Finder much easier to work with when you have a large number of files / projects going on. Called Total Finder.

Building 3D with Ikea

"

Today, around 75% of all IKEA’s product images are CG, and they have a ‘bank’ of about 25,000 models. “These are all created at a ridiculously high resolution,” explains Martin, “We render them in 4Kx4K, and they need to hold up to that resolution. We need to be able to do whatever we like with the renderings - print them on large walls in the stores if we need to. Even if most of them are only ever used on the website, they all have the capability to be printed very high-res.”

 

The first entire room image to be created in CG for one of IKEA’s catalogues was in 2010. “There were a LOT of people involved in that image,” says Martin. “As you can imagine, the first time you do something, everyone wants to have a look! But then the catalogue after that had four or five images and it really took off.”

 

“The most expensive and complicated things we have to create and shoot are kitchens. From both an environmental and time point of view, we don’t want to have to ship in all those white-goods from everywhere, shoot them and then ship them all back again. And unfortunately, kitchens are one of those rooms that differ very much depending on where you are in the world. A kitchen in the US will look very different to a kitchen in Japan, for example, or in Germany. So you need lots of different layouts in order to localise the kitchen area in brochures. Very early on we created around 200 CG exchanges versions for 50 photographed kitchens in 2008, with the products we had - and I think everyone began to understand the real possibilities.”

Very interesting write up over at CG Society.  Took Ikea a number of years to make the switch but they did.  

On a side note, V-Ray for Modo exists now in Beta and hopefully I will be able to run some tests with it soon. Grant Warwick has a very impressive looking Mastering V-Ray class I'd love to go through.  As far as I can tell Modo does not seem to have a specific in-depth shader tree / node class.  And yes, I have watched all of Richard Yot's stuff I could find but it is more about rendering and not shader tree specific. ;)

Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement » British Journal of Photography

Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement Getty Images has single-handedly redefined the entire photography market with the launch of a new embedding feature that will make more than 35 million images freely available to anyone for non-commercial usage. BJP's Olivier Laurent finds out more

 

Wow, that is a interesting line to take. I could see how they could make money if the embed flips to an ad every 30 seconds or so but to do it so it is not a flashing, annoying banner ad will be tricky.  Also, once they monitize this will the photographer ever see a dime?  Otherwise all the Getty shooters just created a huge content pool for Getty to dish out for free.

 Way down at the bottom we see this, "As for Getty Images’ own photographers, the new embed program won’t have an opt-out clause. “If you’re a Getty Images contributor, you’ll be participating in this.”

So basically Getty went the Indie Music marketing route.  Best it gets heard / seen then forgotten. Too bad they are a business and not a band though, could be the root problem of this model. 

 

Source: http://www.bjp-online.com/2014/03/getty-im...

Adobe creating a cycle of Continuous Customer Disappointment.

 I was chatting with photographer Mike Powell the other day and he was asking about the new rental model Adobe is using now.  While I am on the record as being fully against it, I found a nice break down with a more concrete business view on why it is such a bad idea.

 Adobe

While creating a predictable revenue stream from high-end users, Adobe has created two problems. First, not all Adobe customers believe that Adobe’s new subscription business model is an improvement for them. If customers stop paying their monthly subscription they don’t just lose access to the Adobe Creative Suite software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) used to create their work, they may lose access to the work they created.

Second, they unintentionally overshot the needs of students, small business and casual users, driving them to “good-enough” replacements like Pixelmator, Acorn,GIMP for PhotoShop and Sketch, iDraw, and ArtBoard for Illustrator.

The consequence of discarding low margin customers and optimizing revenue and margin in the short-term, Adobe risks enabling future competitors. In fact, this revenue model feels awfully close to the strategy of the U.S. integrated steel business when they abandoned their low margin business to the mini-mills.

Money is something people live on. Exposure is something people die from.

 If you own a small business or are self-employed, sooner or later you will be asked to work for free. The more successful you become, the more requests you’ll get.

But with the right response, you can turn these freeloaders into something positive.

You may want or need to work for free, especially when you’re just starting out to build a resume, client list or broaden your skills. At any time, you may be happy to donate your time and talent to good causes or very good friends.

Here are some ways to respond to common requests:

I can’t pay you, but you’ll get great exposure

  • What exactly is the nature of the exposure? How will my name and description be used? Will you have a link to my website?
  • How many people will be there?
  • I’ll need a testimonial from your company for my website and brochures.
  • Thank you, but I obviously have enough exposure since you contacted me.

Couple more examples in the link. Great advice here for anyone in a creative field.  

Link: What to say when you’re asked to work for free.

Creativity is rejected: Teachers and bosses don’t value out-of-the-box thinking.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

 

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.  

 

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_s...

Adobe Hacked. Check your CC accounts and credit cards.

Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders.

 

Still have not upgraded to CC and this makes me happier that I have not.  

Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/...