Phillip Niemeyer from Brooklyn-based art and design studio Double Triple and Tim and Mike Rauch (aka Rauch Brothers Animation) will be sharing work and process. There will also be radtastic door prizes, as usual.

Full details on the AENY site.

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AENY: Thursday, August 28th @ 6:45

Photo by Cora

A friend of mine passed me Andy Rutledge’s “The Opposite of Professional,” a diatribe that argues, among other things, that design professionalism cannot be instilled through higher education. After reading it a few times, a couple lingering questions remain:

• What IS design professionalism (according to Mr. Rutledge, at least)? He never really defines it; he only sketches the roughest of outlines by describing what it is not. At some points, it sounds like Rutledge’s professionalism is what I might simply call “customer service.”
• Is there really a debate about this issue? I personally have never heard anyone argue that higher education can teach professionalism. But maybe that’s because I went to a school without a superiority complex (the Savannah College of Art and Design). All the educators I’ve talked to agree that there’s no substitute for good ol’ fashioned experience.

Those issues aside, Mr. Rutledge makes a pretty strong claim about freelancing right out of school:

As a general rule, I believe no designer should begin his or her career as a freelancer. My experience and observation shows that doing so amounts to a very unprofessional beginning and greatly limits one’s potential for growth as a professional.

The sort of requisite experience spoken about earlier is not found within a freelance practice. In a solo practice, one is largely beholden only to one’s own (often shallow, naïve, ignorance-based, and misguided) standards. The solo freelancer is denied the right sort of formative environment and pressures necessary early on for positive growth as a designer. I suggest that aside from being a very unprofessional entrance into the profession, starting as a freelancer does great harm to both the individual and his or her clients. This sort of mistake lays a poor foundation for what must follow in professional growth.

It is therefore best that beginning designers limit the harm they may do to themselves and their clients while maximizing exposure to the wide spectrum of designer/client dealings and details of business operation—inside of an agency with professional peers. Starting in an agency allows for a very important step in any trade or craft career: apprenticeship (or what passes for it in the design profession). Apprenticeship is a fixture in trades and crafts because it is proven to work, being a vital component to progress and, especially, integrity. Of course, in most agencies apprenticeship amounts mostly to mentorship, but the principle still applies.

At this point, it’s very important to note that Mr. Rutledge is making some sweeping generalizations that may not apply to motion designers. In major markets like New York and LA, many freelancers physically work in the offices of the studios and agencies that hire them, thereby exposing themselves to a “wide spectrum of designer/client dealings and details of business operation.”

In fact, one of the best reasons I’ve heard for freelancing right out of school is because it exposes you to different clients, different work-flows, different management styles and different responses to pressure. Freelancing in this way can be thought of an as extension of formal education—a residency program of sorts—that helps you figure out what you, as a design professional, value and want to pursue further.

Mr. Rutledge has opened up a couple interesting cans of worms here. Since there’s apparently no way to comment directly on Mr. Rutledge’s site, I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts about this stuff here.

Thanks to Umy for the link!

Posted on Motionographer

Andy Rutledge’s “The Opposite of Professional”

Posted on Motionographer

Rebus Farms Gets Off To A Running Start

Posted on Motionographer

Santa Monica Welcomes Elastic

Maxon announced features of its upcoming Cinema 4D R11 release at SIGGRAPH yesterday. Here are some juicy bits from the press release:

CINEMA 4D R11 highlights include a non-linear animation system, new global illumination render engine and dramatically improved render speed. Customers also benefit from the powerful Projection Man matte painting system, developed by MAXON for Sony Pictures Imageworks, support for the COLLADA file format and CineMan — a RenderMan-compliant tool that connects to Pixar’s industry-leading rendering solution.

Additionally, multiple improvements were made to MAXON’s popular texture painting toolset BodyPaint 3D Release 4. All of these capabilities and more serve to underscore MAXON’s ongoing and deep commitment to helping 3D digital artists further advance creativity and control.

Among the highlights included in today’s release is the highly-anticipated Projection Man tool. “Projection Man allows our artists to quickly project a painting onto geometry in a scene, simplifying even the most complex setups which can be easily organized within a single Photoshop file,” said Dennis Bredow, Texture Lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks.”The flexibility of the tool and its ease of use allow our painters to focus less on the mechanics of the shot and spend more time creating beautiful imagery.”

Expanded integration options, new workflow tools and boosts in performance for both PC and Mac users sit at the heart of the new release. On average, rendering speeds are now more than twice as fast as the previous version. CINEMA 4D R11 also boasts an all-new Cocoa-based architecture supporting 64-bit processing under Mac OS X Leopard.

“We are pleased that MAXON has created the CineMan connection to Pixar’s RenderMan directly from within CINEMA 4D,” said Chris Ford, Business Director - RenderMan at Pixar. “Now, MAXON customers can benefit from Pixar’s Academy Award-winning rendering technology featured in Ratatouille, The Incredibles and many others.”

CINEMA 4D Release 11 Highlights:

The list of capabilities and enhancements that comprise the new CINEMA 4D R11 is extensive; with each element designed to provide ultimate control to enhance the professional 3D modeling, texturing, animating and rendering process:

Non-Linear Animation
Move beyond the keyframe. Animation Layers and Motion Clips tools let users easily build, layer and loop discreet motions containing hundreds of keyframes in complex hierarchies.

Completely New Global Illumination
Take advantage of the most current algorithms and computer hardware with the all new easy to use Global Illumination engine. This technology delivers heightened flexibility to achieve ultra-realistic results with a minimum of setup time, even for animations.

BodyPaint 3D
New tools for painting rich, detailed textures onto a 3D model as well as an improved workflow are part of this major upgrade to the popular 3D painting application. The improvements facilitate even tighter integration into industry-standard painting pipelines with brush import, WACOM tablet support, PSD format enhancement and more.

Improved Rendering Speeds
Tremendous optimizations in multithreading and CPU efficiency offer dramatically improved rendering speeds. Overall render quality has been greatly enhanced as well. New parameters make it possible to create even more realistic glass materials.

Support for 64-bit on Mac OS X
CINEMA 4D R11 is the first comprehensive 3D package completely re-engineered to take full advantage of the Mac OS X 10.5 release. As a native 64-bit Cocoa application, CINEMA 4D can be used in 64-bit mode to utilize greater RAM resources so you can build and render more complex projects. All 64-bit processors are supported. Users can easily switch between 32-bit and 64-bit mode to suit their individual needs.

Projection Man
Leverage the same powerful matte painting system originally developed by MAXON exclusively for Sony Pictures Imageworks and recently used to create such blockbuster features as Hancock, Speed Racer, Beowulf and Surf’s Up. This formerly exclusive toolset enhances workflow and makes it easy to create and patch the mattes. Tight integration with Adobe Photoshop and MAXON BodyPaint 3D simplifies editing and manipulating extensive digital mattes and even fully immersive 3D environments.

CineMan
Power users can easily render CINEMA 4D projects utilizing Pixar’s RenderMan Pro Server, or other RenderMan-compliant engines including 3Delight and AIR through support for the RIB format.

COLLADA Support
R11 now supports COLLADA, an open standard XML-based format that facilitates the transfer of 3D assets between applications. Exchanging scenes with other 3D applications is now easier than ever for diverse digital content creation production pipelines.

Customer Friendly
An online update mechanism ensures users always have access to the latest updates and enhancements. A new license server technology helps corporations, studios and schools maximize and manage their investment.

Additional Features
CINEMA 4D R11 also boasts optimized render control settings, animation ghosting, a doodle tool and support for 3D Connexion devices (Mac and Windows). For a complete list and description of all the exceptional elements that comprise this new feature-rich version of CINEMA 4D, please visit http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/new_e.html.

Extensive CINEMA 4D R11 tutorials and demonstrations can be found on the MAXON USA. 24/7 education and training resource site, Cineversity.

Availability

CINEMA 4D Release 11 is expected to ship September, 2008. For pricing and upgrade information, please visit www.maxon.net.

Posted on Motionographer

Maxon Announces Cinema 4D R11

Posted on Motionographer

Smilefaucet’s Submission Date Extended

Photo by Angel Raul

Cnet.com’s coverage of last week’s RBC Technology, Media and Communications Conference paints a bleak picture for the current—and perhaps future—state of online video publishers’ ongoing struggle to attract big ad budgets.

While online video’s current advertising market is about $1 billion, it’s a far cry from TV’s estimated $50 billion. Executives are split on their predictions for the future. Some make a distinction between user-generated and professionally-generated content, e.g. YouTube vs. Hulu. Others say the entire web video market is handicapped, regardless of the content.

I don’t think it’s right to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. I do see some problems with user-generated content, all of which essentially boil down to a lack of control:

1. Poor relevancy. Advertisers can’t be assured that their their ads will be well-matched to appropriate content. Even the best algorithms can’t determine the relevancy of video content to an advertiser’s message.
2. Negative brand association. Advertisers don’t want to be associated with poorly produced, crappy content. Surely, not all the content on YouTube fits that description, but the vast majority does. Most big brands (with correspondingly big budgets) don’t want to sully their image by standing next to a home video of yet another Jackass-wannabe taking it in the nuts.
3. Legal landmines. Copyright infringement, libelous speech and other legally dangerous content abound on user-generated video sites. Advertisers can’t afford to have their message associated with such shenanigans.

Professionally produced content, like the videos on Hulu or on the major networks’ sites, seems to mitigate these issues by providing relevancy, quality control and sanitization. What these outlets currently lack, however, is volume. There’s simply not enough inventory for big advertising dollars to flow freely in the direction of online video.

Yet.

We’re in the middle of sea change, with networks finally waking up to the fact that people are spending more and more time watching their favorite shows online (or via online delivery methods like Netflix), and less time “tuning in” to their boob tubes. TV is, in many respects, becoming like radio: A noisemaker that sits in the corner and provides a constant background wash of content, most of which we pay very little attention to.

This is a debate about distribution models, not content. Content is—and shall remain—king. Sustainable content that can attract big advertising dollars is the result of good writing and solid production. There are anomalies that create spikes of interest, but advertisers can’t bank on spikes. They need mountains. They need huge, consistent numbers across several seasons.

YouTube is a loss leader for Google, and as such, it’s a successful means of keeping people hooked on Google-juice. But most user-generated video sites don’t have Google’s deep pockets. I predict that over the next few years, we’ll see more and more user-generated video sites either dying or starting to sponsor sustainable content that can be packaged more easily to advertisers. I think we’ll also see networks loosening the reigns on their properties, allowing for more Hulu-like sites that encourage the distribution of professionally produced content.

What do you think will happen?

Posted on Motionographer

No Clear Path to Profit for Online Video, Say Executives

PictoplasmaNYC’s limited early bird offer ends today! And that means the conference itself is getting close. The lineup looks awesome, including Motionographered entities like Friends With You, David O’Reilly, Fons Schiedon, Aaron Stewart, Studio Aka and Tokyoplastic.

Check out the PictoplasmaNYC site for full details.

Posted on Motionographer

PictoplasmaNYC

Posted on Motionographer

Soho Shorts 2008 Finalists Announced

RED’s been working on a plugin for After Effects and Premiere that will allow uses to natively open R3D files, and it should be available “within a week” (according to RED founder and chairman Jim Jannard on the Reduser forum).

At the moment, Final Cut and AVID don’t have native R3D support, so this is a pretty big boon for Adobe, at least in terms of RED workflow.

Disclaimer: Adobe is a Motionographer sponsor.

Posted on Motionographer

Native Support for RED in After Effects and Premiere