SO YOU WANNA BE A 3D ARTIST?

 

First, I am not and have never been a paid 3D artist or animator. I do it because I like it.

I have done Architecture and designed things all of my life and even made some of my designs in the real world. I still do this today.

I think I was almost born a 3D artist. I have used Blender, the free 3D computer design and animation program since version 2.4 - I think it was in the nineties – before that I fooled around with more primitive software since there was nothing better at the time.  Before that I learned to design with very sharp pencils, pens and rulers and compasses. Yup. I go back that far.

Now we are up to Blender version 4.4. It is mind-bogglingly complex. 

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When I was younger I looked into doing animation and design as a job but there were serious things to consider:

First, unless you lived in California there are not a whole lot of employers.

Then you needed to have the tech savvy to run the computers that the work is done on.

Then there were the working conditions: you are contracted by a company and the real hours start at about sixty a week and go up from there. No, that is not an exaggeration.

CGI companies are the whipping boy of the Studios and that means that if the Director needs reshoots, you and your company do them pretty much for free as part of the contract. ASAP.

You won’t be using Blender for any of this, of course: it’s 3DSMAX, Maya, Houdini, Shake and various other full-priced software packages being used in these companies.

You will probably need to learn these programs before any company will let you in the door and for that you need to go to one of the approved training courses - or if you are very lucky, get training in- house. Six months training in an expensive US University or College: not cheap. Maybe you could learn all that yourself but there is still the cost of all those programs too, although some of them have free "student" versions.

All this to get a job that will most likely entail pumping out VFX clips as fast as possible because everyone has deadlines to meet - you won’t be making any masterworks here.

More likely you will be making advertisements for food products you would not eat or gadgets you can’t afford on your pay rate. Oh - and of course, you are living in LA or somewhere near it in California so the rents are going to be astronomical. Get used to eating Instant Noodles my friend.

Can’t say I was enamoured of the idea.

All that was before (a) The Coof ruined a lot of things and (b) the fires torched large ares of the hills – oh, and of course, (c) the current Cali government seems to be trying to kill off a lot of Californians in various ways – well, that’s how it looks from way over here.

Most of that is probably gone now anyway: Big Movie Companies will probably call on teams of workers from places like India, Vietnam or Indonesia to do the same work they once paid locals for at a tenth of the cost or less. That’s international economics. You know where the Simpsons animation is done, right? 

Will AI take away jobs in the CGI and FX business? You can bet on it - to some degree, but really they still need people to run the software, no “AI” software is going to be smart enough to do much on its own for a very long time if ever. It’s just the latest buzzword being used to push up corporate share prices and threaten workers to not ask for more money “or we will replace you with AI”.

Go ahead, big corporations who think you have billions to burn: throw them at more server farms and power plants, but you are more likely to get a nuclear fusion plant to work than you are to get any kind of true AI consciousness in software: there is a kind of technological hubris at work here. (No, I don’t think nuclear fusion will ever work either. Look at the history of this if you doubt me.)

To imagine that consciousness is just an algorithm that you can run on a sufficiently complex computer system is greatly underestimating the situation. It amazes me every time I see some would-be expert trying to tell us all that AI is just around the corner and that it will be smarter than us, and that consciousness is just a bit of sofware running on a "wet computer".  

But hey, the shareholders will believe it, right? Give us more money to make sure the AI monster will be controlled by US, not the evil foreigners.  You can trust us.

 

Hollywood is mostly dead. But don’t take my word for it, look for yourself.

So is most of the big “NEWS” media. They sold their asses to the wrong side and now the new boss will clean house and they are gone. Lie all you like - if nobody is watching you, the advertising money will dry up real fast.

The streaming services are eating each other trying to stay alive. Thanks to Woke DEIsease they are still pouring money down the drain wondering why people are not watching them.  

Smaller independent news people and channels are now more popular and respected than the big old dynosaurs of Teevee Nooz.

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Okay, so you want to tell stories onscreen and you would like to do it on the net. GREAT!

Get a decent PC with a good video card, learn Blender and Unreal Engine and Metahuman and a host of other bits and pieces (ALL FREE!) and MAKE YOUR OWN STUDIO.

Get online with other crazies like yourself and get a team together, make a GOOD movie or series (or even a game?) and sell it online. This is what the internet is great for.

You will have a lot more fun, easier working hours and you can keep your day job until it starts paying off well enough. If it ever does. Sure, you will fail - Learn from your mistakes, just get back up and try again. And again. And again.

If you want to see an example of how it can be done have a search for DYNAMO DREAM. 

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A

This started off as one man’s work and is still growing .

I am sure there are others too that I have not seen yet.

Put your own work out there, do the hard work - you never know what could come of it.