#19: Q&A - Conflicting art feedback, go niche or broad, and whether to learn python

[@henrique-3d]

Subscribers from blender guru need to know about this channel!

[@Quinold]

You need to somehow promote this channel on your blender guru channel. These podcasts are amazing and need to be seen by more people!

[@fakecubed]

I only just found out about it because of the Blender Conference, way at the end of his interview on the official Blender channel when Pablo asked him what happened.

[@BenTheMagnifice]

You have a unique clarity in your perspective on many topics, and I appreciate the useful advice you offer for free to the Blender community (and the art community more generally). As the owner of a small design/manufacturing business (furniture), I would love to hear more about some of the important the lessons you've learned in starting and running your businesses, both the social media business and Poliigon. I'm sure that you would have valuable insights to offer and it must be an interesting story! I do understand though, that this would be a more niche topic and may be less applicable to your core audience. Anyway, keep up the podcast! It has tons of potential!

[@fakecubed]

The reason I go to places like Reddit and answer people's Blender questions, which I do fairly often, is simply because I am paying it forward. I got so much free help from so many people, not to mention just random tutorials on KZbin which may or may not be monetized. It makes me want to give back to the community. I think that's what a lot of people are doing too. Because I've always been able to get help when I need it, and I also think it's really cool when more people get into Blender, get better at it, and then make great art that I might get to enjoy sometime and also they might contribute to the Blender project with bug reports or even writing code. I feel like we all have to do our part, and when we do, it makes the software better for all of us, which helps me to make better art myself.

[@vfxeriksen8694]

Amen and amen, Andrew. there will always be a certain type of formula for music, movies, and pop culture. I currently work in Advertising and we stick to a few route formulas that work. That's the reason they exist, and so many people have no idea that's what they're consuming: a formula. It isn't a bad thing per say, but I'm quite honestly very bored of popular music and movies. I love appealing to the one percent that is like me and wants something truly different.

[@harrison298]

As someone named Soandso who grew up in Wherever, I felt very called out

[@salivangamechannel3776]

Dam idk how this happened to me but hear me out, watching Andrew speaking i noticed his uneven mustache line and it got me visually infuriated so much that i had to stop watching, and i cannot unsee it now. Do i need Jesus, or a therapist? Help. P.S - I appreciate u Andrew, ty for bringing me into blender. Thanks to your donut and anvil tutorials i've started to learn the software :)

[@Shivakisa]

You need to hear the podcast on Spotify ^^ ahahahaha

[@baril3d]

Love this podcast!

[@JasonKey3D]

great stuff 👍 regarding feedback, I occasionally will solicit some from 'non-industry' people as a gut check, and many times I'll get something I can use to make tweaks that really help. Like you said, the key is interpreting the feedback properly. Sometimes it can be as simple as "it's feels too dark" or "seems really fast".

[@pennytowner728]

Help on perspective...there is a lot to be said for high school art class and basic drafting with pen and paper. Look up "vanishing points" and perspective drawings. Computers are great for calculating the geometry for you but there is allot to be said for understanding the process and how we actually see things from a non-technical point of view.

[@MC-ew7sc]

Great podcast.

[@rakeemrobinson]

DON'T STOP WITH THE MAKING PODCASTS!!!

[@ryan-sh8vi]

My skills are big and they keep getting bigger, that's cuz Andrew Price is my rigger

[@casualguy6354]

It's Jennifer Lawrence

[@jonashill7664]

sure

[@gamecreator7214]

Does someone know who the actor was? could not find it.

[@spuddie3207]

I disagree about you saying that animators need to learn other aspects of the pipeline. In a studio environment, if an artist receives a problematic rig, absolutely they should not try to fix it themselves and they should send it back to the rigger. In a studio the animators animate and that's all. It's of course important to have a general understanding of what the people you work with do, but you don't need to know if yourself. For other disciplines like modeling/texturing/rigging this is not the case, but animators are unique in that regard. You say its yourself 30:00, opportunity cost. If an animators spends 30% of their time learning other aspects of the pipeline they will simply not be a better animator than if they spend 95% of their time animating. In fact, rather than broadening their skills to the wide range of vfx disciplines, they should instead dive deeper into the non-medium specific timeless fundamentals of animation. You're advice could result in animators creating their own characters and rigs, which is in 100% of cases not a good idea if you're trying to become an animator at a studio. There is a reason most animation showreels all use the same handful of well crafted rigs. Ok ramble over love the pod ❤

[@vator_rs]

From listening to these podcasts, basically since their beginning, I think Andrew is coming at it from perspective where, when you start working you will most likely go to a smaller studio, where few of you will do all kinds of jobs. He will do animation for majority, but sometimes maybe the person will need to know how to model a certain object, or how to use photoshop and that sort of stuff. I don't have much experience in the studio industry, so I am not sure if that is entirely true, or how exactly studios work, but this is just based on previous podcast episodes.

[@spuddie3207]

​@@vator_rs Thats not a crazy thing to assume, but as someone who works at a smaller vfx studio (about 50 people), the animators exclusively animate. Unlike my role as a '3D Artist' where I do modeling, texturing, layout, rigging and all kinds of other things, animating is unique in that way.

[@vator_rs]

@@spuddie3207 ah alright, I did not know that, again I never really worked in a studio environment, other than freelancing for some once or twice. I hope Andrew reads some of these comments, if for anything, just to get a different perspective. Thanks for the insight, and happy holidays!

[@pennytowner728]

As you are sitting on the couch watching a football game "hey honey, can you do the thingy majig with the watchamacallit because the wirligig is acting up again." Supervisors and design managers have to have the ability to translate a customers needs via a customers vocabulary to an engineer/designer who will translate to a fabricator. If you wish to be a success in any industry/occupation you need to have a minimum understanding of both the vocabulary and work of the team/shop above, below and beside you as well as the tools they have at their disposal. We each have x amount of tools in our tool box. It's never a bad thing to have more tools or a greater understanding or vocabulary of tools. What is a bad thing is re-design the wheel with your limited toolbox all when the team beside you designs wheels like it's child's play. Communication and basic understanding of intersecting jobs is a wonderful thing and makes everyone's job run a bit smoother. Thank God Ron Howard never listened to your advice regarding staying in your own lane and ignoring the teams around him!

[@spuddie3207]

@@pennytowner728 You've misunderstood my comment. My advice is discipline-specific within the VFX industry, not general advice.

[@vfxeriksen8694]

teenage ticktockers! XD

[@levvi917]

FIrst thousand viewers? Nobody cares I guess.

[@casualguy6354]

he forgot the spelling of his own company(p o l i i g o n) for (polligon)