Another day in the exciting world of Animation and VFX

I’m starting to run a little behind on my blog posts.  Finding the time to write these are becoming harder and harder to do lately.  It is important to me to continue writing posts, so I will keep trying to find the time.  This week more then other weeks I have had a lot of people mention to me that they enjoy reading my blog. I sometimes forget people are actually reading them.  Sure the site will tell me numbers of how many people have read them, but it is easy to look at that as just numbers.  When people tell me they are reading my blog it makes it seem more real.  So thank you everyone for taking the time to read my words.  I promise I will keep getting better at this writing thingy.

I do have to say that even though I work way more hours then I used to I love what I do.  I sometimes feel like the only time I’m not working is when I’m sleeping.  I have the one client that takes up 90% of my non-sleeping time, and the other 10% gets filled up by trying to find more projects, thinking of ways to grow my business, and eating(often eating happens at the same time as work though).  Everything is new and exciting right now, and I hope to find ways to keep things that way.  It will be a challenge for me to constantly find ways to take my company to uncharted waters.

Last week I was bidding on VFX work for a low budget horror movie.  They had almost 200 shots that they needed some work done on ranging from turning eyes black to removing wires.  You know your typical horror movie stuff.  I thought things were going really well in the negotiations, and there was a price on the table that was low, but still doable.  The gentleman I was talking to said he needed to check with the director and would get back to me. A few days later I heard from him, and he told me that they decided to split the work between my studio and another.  The other studio got more shots, but the easy stuff, and I got less shots but the harder stuff.  Work wise he was offering my studio around 75% of the work, but was offering 23% of the total budget.  As much as I wanted to take on this project I knew it would be very difficult to find artists that would help me on the project for the rate that was being offered.  So unfortunately I had to turn down the offer.  Hopefully in the future I will get to work with this guy on another project, but it was not going to be this one.

On Tuesday of last week I finally got to meet up with Manny Fragelus.  Manny used to work at DreamWorks Animation(DWA) as a modeler, but eventually left DWA to focus on his newly started company Cgma Art Academy.  The company is a provider of online digital art education.  They offer online classes and workshops for anyone wanting to learn how to do Concept Art, Illustration, or Entertainment Design.  When I heard about what Manny was doing I wanted to meet with him to hear all about it.  We originally made plans to meet the first week after I left DWA, but I ended up getting so busy with the Toys’R’Us commercials and watching Kelton that I was not able to meet up until last week.  Manny is a very bright guy, and has done a lot of great things with his company.  His company seems to be doing really well, and now has a good amount of students and growing.  All his professors are industry professionals, and if you are interested in learning any of these crafts I recommend checking out his website.  Within the first few minutes of talking with Manny it was very clear how much he cares about our industry and the people in it.  He has dedicated a great deal of his time and effort in teaching students what they need to know to be successful in this industry.  Things they don’t always learn from the traditional schools that many of them are still in financial debt to even years after graduation. It was great getting to talk to him about his company, and reminisce about our days at DWA.  I look forward to watching what this guy does, and if I’m lucky we can find a way to work together.

This week Hashi, and one of my artists came over to the house to shoot toy characters on green screen that we will be adding into some of the commercials we are working on.  This was a new experience for me, and we had a lot of fun doing it.  Well at least I did, and hope they shared in my excitement.  I hope it all turns out once we get it edited into the commercials.  It is just another day in the world of animation and VFX!

 

If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  Also, if you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.