Institutions vs collaboration.
6 Comments so far
Leave a comment
September 15, 2009, 8:23 pm
Filed under: Art in business, methodology and leadership | Tags: linkedin
Filed under: Art in business, methodology and leadership | Tags: linkedin
If you have read some of my recent articles on the history of 3D visualization you will know I am an advocate of collaborative process and believe it is crucial to the survival of our industry at the advent globalization. I was recently sent a TED talk that speaks to this point exactly. Enjoy!
Advertisement
6 Comments so far
Leave a comment
inspirational video, as is this blog, having recently become an 3d arch viz artist fast tracked into management I am finding your blog a really interesting and useful resource, thanks for taking the time to share your insights and mentorship
Comment by patrick September 16, 2009 @ 3:18 amThanks Patrick, I’m glad you find the blog interesting. I do know of Lastpixels work, well done, you have some great folio work! Good luck and feel free to add ideas, comments as you feel the opportunity. We are all together in this crazy career!
Comment by andycatterick September 16, 2009 @ 7:38 pmInteresting video. Hard to see exactly how the collaborative model will work when an exchange of goods comes into the equation though. Can this model apply to people collaborating in a commercial way or is the organizing institution necessary for this?
Comment by Eoghan O Sullivan September 16, 2009 @ 3:50 pmThanks for the comment Eoghan. Principally I am associating the idea with production process and not hand-off. We typically form a CG company that employs artists to make models, render them, animate them and so on. The production process is relatively slow and expensive and often very monotonous to an artist. By reaching out to individuals domestic or overseas that wish to make a contribution in some way we can leverage the millions of amateurs out there trying to make a break in this industry. I honestly believe that this model will form over the next 5 years, we could be having models built in no time at all for little cost yet retaining the art in-house. It would require firms like Turbosquid.com to rethink their business model but I think they are a crucial part of the future and could lead the way. With this open collaborative model we could reduce overhead with numbers of employees doing basic work and focus employees on doing what they love, artwork. We don’t need to exclude amateur modelers from this industry, we need to encourage them to come on-board and try out for if the 80/20 rule applies to this, we cant survive without them.
Comment by andycatterick September 16, 2009 @ 8:29 pmThe one problem I have with this idea is the potential unreliability of it when it comes to commercially driven deadlines. I take the point about collaboration being flexible enough to mean we don’t have to plan anymore but when you have two weeks to get a project done and dusted, do you really want to be relying on people who you can’t guarantee will be there to do the work.
In the collaborative examples in the video, the process was very organic, people post their information in a very casual way in their own time. Can you imagine trying to tell people who are contributing their free time to a project that they have to have something done by the end of the week or the project will miss it’s deadline. It’s an exiting area for sure, but I’m just not 100% convinced if it has a big role to play in a pressurized environment. I stand to be corrected though!
Comment by Eoghan O Sullivan September 17, 2009 @ 2:52 pmYou raise an excellent point, thank you. I believe this is one of the fears that we need to overcome, not just in our own perception of working out of house but strategically ‘how to’ work out of house.
The market for artists is becoming completely saturated and with open markets and faster, cheaper global communication this will surely become even further saturated to the level seen with aspirational motion picture artists. The competition alone will ideally root out the people that are in this half heatedly doing this and might even provide a welcome mat for those artists that are desperate to prove themselves and their talent.
However, I agree with you, even in the most idealistic situation, any manager that’s taking on a high pressure project will want to keep that project close, and local with trusted and proven personel. But even with this condition, their is still scope for reaching out to modelers around the world to produce your 20 custom pieces of furniture. They could all be completed overnight if you chose your country with a complimentary time difference.
But what if they are not custom pieces. Imagine having thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of 3D content available for little cost, perhaps no cost. There are already several firms doing this, but the libraries are still limited to some degree. What if this was opened up for global submission as an advertisement of skills for the artist and tagged as such.
It would require a change of process I admit, it wouldn’t be a ‘model, deliver, get paid’ approach. More of a global internship to learn the craft and getting your name out there within the top firms. The idea would need a lot more thought behind it, but perhaps we can find a way to all find a role in this industry and nurture the talent that’s out there.
Finally, you raise a great point concerning trust. I think working with any contractor to some degree is a risk, overseas a greater risk. Do we really ever have 100% control? I’m not sure if we do. They could walk off the job, like any freelancer, they could even experience a power shut down, or even a natural disaster such as an offshore earthquake that severs comms for days (this actually happened to me). Ultimately we don’t have much recourse apart from not paying them, as much as we like to think we do. I believe the trust has to ultimately come from working on a small test job through to eventually offloading portions of project work after proving themselves. But all this has to start somewhere, perhaps with that one tagged free model you downloaded, and perhaps an open global resource hungry for a chance is the place to find it?
Comment by andycatterick September 18, 2009 @ 9:28 pm