Harsh Truths About Working in the 3D Industry

hey guys had any more confirm flip normals here in this video we are going to be talking about some of the harsh or truths about working in the creative industry we want to start this off though by saying that this is awesome it's an awesome feel to work in we don't want to scare people away by thinking about we are too old vitter guys who hates all this kind of stuff which you do see some people who are we we really enjoyed with 2j 227 yeah we just want to we just want to talk about some of them the realities of industry yeah more so than the depressing old facts and so we we brief fracture was left the jobs at at the studio worked on we worked a Dean egg for two years and it was a great time worked in super cool movies and really just had a good time we were doing creature modeling and texturing and all that kind of stuff I mean I've been doing this since I was 16 and think I started working professionally when I was 16 that for some archivist companies doing visualizations where we want to commercials and then into the effects afterwards that's a good 10 11 years now what what would you yeah very similar I starters started when I was like yeah 15 16 and he's been doing this for a long time now is almost for doing it for longer than I haven't yeah scary so so now recently we we just went full-time on with normals just in the last few weeks now we just been very exciting so now we can bring you tons of more stuff here so now that we're not in the field anymore well we're still in creative field just not working for an employer directly we have some more freedom to talk about different things yeah so in this one we just want to talk about just some of the realities of working in industry like aimed at people who are not yet in the industry there might be student or maybe you're a young professional yeah and you just want to get a bit to know about it so one of the modern things we wanted to talk about before we get into all this is we've been seeing a lot of students now with very overinflated confidence which is which is always kind of heartbreaking this might not be because they think they're the best thing in the world because they were because they know what the work is good one of the things we see a lot is due to social media now you you post your stuff you get 200 likes on our Facebook that might not be representative at all you know off the quality in not even of the quality particularly of the quality for getting a job let's say you're posting you do some kind of like sexy woman or like an the celebrities likeness sculpt or something like that it might not be the best thing but because it's a popular thing because you're doing like spider-man or something yeah you just get a lot of attention for that so now you think that you are super hot and you come into the field now and start applying for things and you just get rejected like crazy yeah yeah you see I I'm not a big fan of Facebook as a medium for getting feedback no um I mean I'm sure you have some really good groups I just haven't found them yeah for 3d or 2d feedback or whatever it is but I feel like a lot of the stuff that gets posted on some of the bigger bigger groups there it's just it's a weird thing where like all the groups have this have this rule that you can't do any self-promotion first of all but by posting your own stuff you're technically doing self-promotion by definition and then the feedback that people get is like it's it's in the form of likes and in the forms a form of these words all that's awesome mm-hmm something like that and then people who pay people like this this is all this must be really good then you keep posting these things and maybe you're a decent artist but by getting this kind of feedback in quotation marks you're not actually getting any feedback no and and getting the right kind of feedback there I think it's super valuable especially when you're starting out you want to get fever from people who have no doctor neutral they don't they don't look at your spider-man sculpt and they were biggest spider-man fan in the world I'm like this is awesome I'm looking at from a technical point of view like any model spider-man yeah I guess this are you he's tight enough like you see Anatomy there and all that they're actually analyzing work instead of just being like super cool the reason one of reasons we will inspire to talk about this specific thing is I was I was at a student event just yesterday and a bunch of people there they they've been told by other professionals and just by people who come through school maybe they were on a recruitment trip or something similar and this person might not have a heart to tell them that their stuff isn't super good they're just looking at it they don't they're not really there to get a feedback and they're just like this stuff is super nice and it's not they've been like you should contact all the big studios and it's really super tight but in reality maybe it's it's not and that's really heartbreaking because now you have these people who are just you're just applying everywhere you're applying to like Blizzard and everything because they've been told by professional who might not just had the heart to tell them that her stuff wasn't good enough that and now they're gonna get her heart crushed because there's a blizzard they don't want them yeah which is which is always so it's really this heart crushing for me to see that so I'm we want to just talk about that like if when you are getting into the industry you just need people who you can trust I'm I've trust I don't mean a good friend who will have your back like at a pub or something I mean somebody who you can trust for professional level feedback and this might be a bit controversial but that is not your teachers and I don't trust general teachers in universities to give proper feedback not the people because like oftentimes the way that our creative fields are taught is that you have a teacher who is a teacher yes it's not a professional anymore they might have been teaching for 10 years and they might be very good at teaching us but there may be there their sort of quality their standards starts to drop and they see the same thing over and over again they think oh this is really good they should be good enough but the reality is they don't know they don't know what it requires anymore and they haven't been they haven't been really tasked to produce anything of quality maybe ever maybe they have literal notes they've never had to produce quality work well so some of the people that spoke yesterday were talking about their school the school they went to and they had literally one person who had industry experience that was it for a few years like that that is insane I wouldn't trust anyone apart from this one person maybe maybe this one person with that but this might be an animator you wouldn't trust him for effects feedback just because worked at wetter or what valve or whatever yeah doesn't mean that he has any level of like EDA has any legitimacy for that like I've been working as a character modeler I can't really feedback your technical animation that kind of stuff like it's I'm just not qualified for that mmm but it's also I think it's important to note that like it shouldn't it shouldn't scare you off from applying to a bunch of play notes no it's just it's just more of know what you're getting yourself into yeah because I think the issue is that for some reason with a lot of teachers and you know friends that you go to feedback we're like don't go to a family for feedback you get put on this pedestal where you're told you can do anything when in reality you're not the best and you can't do everything I know that's how super harsh but it's it is it's a competitive field and whoever is better gets the job yeah that's that that's the harsh truth of it so finding someone you can trust is also super hard finding someone you can trust for feedback is extremely hard yeah it really is that is when the hardest things you can really do yeah because once you have that once you have someone who can give you a consistent feedback that is so useful yeah so how do you find these people that's just a tricky one it could be teachers who had before like people from the industry it could be we have we have foreign like I flipped almost this course server now which you can find on hub dot Flik normal SOCOM which you know we can get people give each other feedback there you find people just around the point is once you find them yeah you just need to yeah you know you have forms like polycount yeah seems like it's also a good place on the discord handing an i or are frequently there as well but there's a bunch of really talented people that are always willing to get feedback so I think that's that's really good but I think if you're if you foster a community on like Facebook yeah community face book to me is a community that's foster to be like look at this great thing I did and everyone goes it's a great thing you did mm-hmm but if you foster a community that's centered around honest feedback then people aren't just gonna go oh yeah that's so great that's amazing ya know that actually give you honest feedback and I think that the important part I heard I heard a nice quote some some years ago which kind of stuck with me it was about why you struggle with insecurity and it's like the reason you're struggling in security is because you compare your behind-the-scenes footage with somebody else's highlight reel and I think that's very true like Facebook is everyone's highlight reel this is not where you go to show you behind-the-scenes footage and behind the scenes footage is where the movie gets made that's where everything is made your highlights that is like the end result of it if you only see in people's best work at all times with no weakness at any point that's not representative you need to see their struggle and that's where you can see on the forms you see work-in-progress threads keep posting work-in-progress threads like I find Twitter actually to be better for fee for feedback than Facebook because they're you connect with people you don't know well Facebook you connect with people who do know you have your friends and family from uni in school know my stuff so I find Twitter actual to be a pretty useful place in order to at least meet people who can give you proper feedback I can reminds me of so that it's always popular to talk about concept art and finished concept art or like you know finished illustrations because often time I think people confuse box art or whatever's on the cover of a you know a magazine or something with concept art mm-hmm when in reality it's not that's an illustration like if you look at the concept art you know there are some fantastic concept artists out there that's not what I'm saying but it's it's it's a lot more less refined than the final illustration which you spend hours trying to work up because it's a concept art you just have to turn out a lot of concepts really quickly so there's a there's a different level in terms of of like finish to the pieces and if if people of all they see they go to art station and they see concept art and all they see are like finished illustration from from League of Legends or whatever for for the new heroes or something like oh yeah okay that's console dark but in reality that's an illustration that people spend days weeks working on there I like to think of conserve art not as concept art but as idea art this is really where you you need to just generate ideas illustration and console are two very different thing like mortises correctly as you're saying so one of the things you also wanna talk about in this video as well is no just a harsh truth of Facebook Likes but it is that once you get into a job like this which is awesome I'm working on we had some jobs which were really happy with like we worked as character modelers a concept artist like we did bunch of stuff there for four films and that is honestly one of the biggest honors I've had in my life to work with these people like it was such a privilege to work with with the talented people like when I was at MPC and then a Dena Glazer on the talent there is insane yeah so leaving that was really bittersweet for me because it's it was a hard job to get work really hard like I said more than I would work for like twelve ten years just to get even in there yeah but once you are in there and this is not a critique on any studio it is just that it becomes a job you work from like 9:00 to 6:00 and and then you you just get into the routine you come in there you have some breakfast you you see the same people day in day out you have supervisor you have a clear hierarchy you go into daily so you get your tasks you get your feedback and let's say you only working on the cooler stuff like so you're only doing creatures even that becomes repetitive in the way that you if you're sculpting something day in and day out I mean it's awesome it's it's an insane job trap but it still becomes a job and that's not because we're we're young Millennials were like or worshippers boiling we only want to cool herself it's just that we're never we're never happy yeah my toes so it's not that we're it's not that we're trying to be spoiled Millennials we might be but who knows what is more that we try to just have a realistic view of this that any person I've worked with for more than two years in this industry have come to realization that it is just a job in a beginning you're super enthusiastic and we were still enthusiastic it's awesome to do it but we didn't never grew her and all that it was just that it becomes a job get into the routine and once you've worked on your seventh movie and it's another creature it is another creature hair it's and they're pretty similar and not to me is anatomy yeah there are some different proportions here so it goes from the point where you like this is the craziest stuff I've ever worked on - its it's a job it's a career like it's again it's not about you know I know it's like the harsh truth of job and stuff but it's not to bring people down no and and think to themselves oh god okay so even if I become like hotshot effects artist in I'm just getting tired of making explosions all day that's not work no no the thing is like I still even up until the day I quit I was still enjoying going to work every day yeah cuz I I get to work on cool monsters I get to do constant thing for cool stuff but there's also everyday tasks in there you know still have to make a digital I still have to soft select this part of a boot to make it not intersect with this mesh I still have to fix some movies reduce some mesh like crazy hit the reduce button use edit edge flow it's that kind of stuff and sometimes you're just you're just gonna know okay this is the next month yeah I'm just reducing what this podcast land for a month but the same thing goes for other professions in there as well like I said you have an effects artists you know it's not just all by explosions no a lot of effects artists do dust that is I think that's the majority of what they do they do like someone puts their foot down there's a little dust cloud or you know there's dust on in the distance or whatever it is like four riggers is not just about doing cool deformation and stuff there's also all the technical bits my rake is broken this doesn't work so this is this is this goes through for all the professions in there yeah we're talking about this just before as well like no we were recording that when we were at MMX in 2014 there was a talk about Pixar and they were talking about thing was monsters University and they were talking about how they would simulate or at least animate the the the stair the steps in the staircase when the when the heavy character was walking down I think was Sulley walking down there and that is an effects are as a Pixar now that is an awesome job to have a cool studio NOLA and I'm sure these people are doing awesome stuff as well they're doing the craziest level but you have also simulate a step in a staircase well Monster is more about it which is to point you can barely see you can totally feel these companies and they're important but it's like it's not just too glamorous things and that is what all behind the scenes footage are showing they're showing all the you showing a dude with like a Cintiq and they were sculpting monsters I've wet a workshop and it's all fun and games and all that and yeah that is a big part of it but that's kind of highlights we lettuce the highlight reel of behind the scenes I've been I've been a part of that whole recording behind the scenes in a server ticularly you have like a camera team that comes in and then they go can you do some work so you take your model into ZBrush and then you just spin it around yeah yeah or what some people do is they they smooth off their entire model first to make a morph target that's mode of their entire model and iris sculpting it back with the morph pressure it looks like you're just sculpting for nothing and you're just doing magic it's big yeah how do you do it it's literally fake I think one of the things that is nice about this industry and something that can break up the monotony of doing the same thing over and over again is what is it's both like a good and a bad thing about this industry it's the jumping around different companies doing different kinds of jobs so if like you've got a new company that's a new culture that's new people cereal a new cereal maybe shitty kitchen or something that's out that can really help you know not that you just like okay I'm here for months I'll go to the next no from once go to the next one but I've I've been in different places also doing freelance and stuff I I was in Japan for a month working for a company there I went to Norway for for a month or so as well to work for company there and you know doing the freelance going back to Denmark staying here in London working for different companies and that's really one of the awesome parts I think about this job is that you get to move around mom where is he I seems like like my girlfriend she works in games and it seems like from talking to her and her colleagues in games it's a lot more common to stay at a company for longer I think because the the development time for a game is usually a lot longer than a film film you might be on a show for like two to six months or so but that's fairly common maybe you in a freak accident you end up ready to play one for a year and a half more like a GU storm just for you it would just never want to die I'm sure you're still working on it currently what's the new oh yeah the the Wonder produce one yeah yeah that's freaky yeah you don't wanna be in that yeah this really good point you bring up for the whole thing you could travel a lot as well and one things I really enjoy about his industry is that you meet people from all over the world like you meet people from like Africa and all the different countries just around the world Asia to all the countries in Europe you meet a lot of Italians Italians and French people yeah I think that's about the Spanish I wasn't seeing a lot of them as well okay yeah we definitely had there's definitely an Italian and French mafia if all of you wondering yeah it's interesting because they have sort of their own kind of like especially for French people they have their own 3d sites in French their own 3d tutorial sites in French which keeps a little more hidden it's like a gym that you don't know so it's it's an awesome feel to work we just wanna we just want to talk about this one the main point about this video I really want to make is that be aware that it becomes a job because if you if you're not then suddenly gonna be like three four years into this field maybe more than that and you're like oh this is this is my life now his only work you're doing you're only doing over time doing weakens and that is your life now by realizing that it does become a job early on you can now start doing different things you can start doing you can start actually having a life outside of it like you know actually see friends making that a priority focusing on mental health focusing properly on your you know your sleep but your fitness levels traveling around and actually taking the time off work yeah like really just getting something which inspires you outside of work because if you are let's say you're your junior and you're just loving your job and you like God it's not gonna happen to me it will happen to you because it is literally a job yeah it is yes it's a different job we can make a lot of cool stuff but it is a job like any other job like that so but being aware of that you can now just preemptively just get a look at a life yeah it's not like you should enter the workplace and like always already be jaded no it's not at all but it's just being aware of it I mean and that's the thing like I said before I've never gone to work and felt like ah this sucks no wow that was like this it was like this one period and we do bricks for six months you really start to question things in life but but apart from that but it's interesting because I I've worked with people that have been I don't know maybe mid-40s start 50s or something like that in the effects and boy those people are I don't know like it's like I don't know what happens when you hit that age but some of them some of them were intense to work with yeah cuz I don't know I think they just realized you know they've realized that it's a job for a long time but it's not to be confused you can have in the entire world you know was I was when I was younger you know I worked in a grocery store and I've worked on like a camp side and we're done a bunch of different shitty jobs Iraqi construction I was outside being cold making concrete for like two years yeah so it's a lot better to make monsters inside and be comfortable you're working inside this is amazing you have an air Colleen you know wet all the time yeah don't don't go into construction if you live in a city with rain stone or 70 days a year there's a little tip for us Owen as a little side note Henning mentioned the whole thing about overtime and weekends and total doing a video about that at some point and you don't have to yeah we actually love to hear your thoughts on overtime as well I essentially all of these things were talking about now yeah but it's really it really boils down to at least for me get a hobby get something I'm currently learning Chinese I'm starting some martial arts soon I was doing Krav Maga for a bit will you learn to kick people in the groin in a run away doing something we used to do is a rock playing both of us you know just I did some blacksmithing recently and that was really cool it's like it's kind of like 3d modeling we're just so much harder yeah like manipulating metal is kind of like you have a box but you have no one do ya and it has to be like 900 degrees in order for you to make something and you get super stick arms as that's awesome yeah no but like I think hobbies are are really a good way to sort of also break it up I think it's cool that you go home and you work on your own thing yeah that's what we're doing there's also a hobby yes like that is also like when you're doing when you are doing stuff into production you are not doing monsters and stuff for yourself and that is really hard to accept that with even if you are a concept artist and which is one of the most creative things in this field you were still working for somebody else you still don't have full creative say oh what you're doing if you do that's awesome but that's a rare thing yeah most of the time it's client work so I mean having like let's say you are like in our case like we were sculptor Lucy person's like for like since we've had milk and child to kindergarten super early stuff here that's when we started that's when we started but it's like it's for going home with sculpting can be super relaxing and super then it but it's that is a legit hobby it's just get something which is not just work yeah I think it's important to also sort of like trying to separate those two is even even if you go home when you do the same thing you do a work it that can like sometimes maybe you end up losing the spark a little bit and so it could be tricky to find the motivation there sometimes yes then that is really like the harsh truth about work in the creative industry is you could talk about like all kinds of different things here like the door like overtime and like how people are overworked and all but it but in general this for me this is one of the biggest things which kind of came as a surprise in a way that it becomes a job yeah which you just gotta accept that like it's not a if it's like the five stages of grief like if it's like if you if you're not accepting you're in a first step which is denial it it is a job yeah like that that's a fact but it's an awesome job it's an awesome job man where we really want to end this on a good note just that it is like we have been saying here it was a real privilege to work to work we're still industry but so what we're doing differently now we're becoming the teachers that aren't gonna be in the industry and then we'll be able to like give people feedback for three months just trash so if anyone wants feedback you've got about three minutes until we are no longer qualified because then you can show us this video you're like oh but you said yourself that you just have teachers who are oh yeah okay yes so let me clearly the teachers were talking about that who who are relevant they're not teeth they're not people who's making your tutorial cover an extra and still doing stuff it's people who worked at all so we're an exception yeah I'm totally exception here particularly because fortuitous work um yeah but it's really it's really people who worked in a commercial studio independent up mid 90s 25 years ago and they were like yeah I totally know how the industry works today yeah we don't we texture and photoshop and photoshop body paint yeah I still think you know you definitely have teachers who don't work in the industry that if said qualified guess there's nothing wrong with being self-taught Absalon you have access to a bunch of really cool resources everywhere online there's so much free stuff on YouTube so that like it doesn't mean that just because you're not don't have industry experience that you don't you know have the right or qualifications to sleep like someone you might not just be up-to-date on what people are doing in the industry and what tools they're using so yeah it just means you can talk specifics about what software yeah I mean adjustment detract from the sort of overall artistic feedback that you can give people you can still look at a model and be like well that that face looks like a dog not a human so you should redo that yeah you know so yeah we really interested to hear your thoughts on this well like have you encountered any any harsh truth while working in history do you have any questions about it like about generally working in the creative industry we're not just talking about film or VFX were like this all of this applies to gaming or photography or whatever less you might be doing this is a general general thing yeah I mean we're just we're just talking from a VFX point of view um but like I also worked in in print and design for a while and that also becomes a job it doesn't matter it's all the same but yeah yeah be very interested to hear from you guys what you have to say on the topic No so yeah I guess that's that's kind of here so thank you for watching you want to see more content like this in the future make sure to LIKE comment and subscribe you

Channel: FlippedNormals

Views: 199,020

Keywords: 3d, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, autodesk, film, vfx, animation, twitch, mjthehunter, flippednormals, henning, morten, creature, character, texturing, sanden, jaeger, substance, painter, designer, education, foundry, pixologic, nuke, cinema4d, art, fundamentals, art fundamentals, art school, art tutorials, drawing tutorials, 3d industry, 3d jobs, vfx jobs

Id: E2H0MfW7LbE

Length: 27min 41sec (1661 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 06 2018