The Biz

Definitely, yes it can!

Victor Navone, who created Alien Song in A:M was hired by Pixar Studios. I also want to point out to all the newbies with stars in their eyes and dreams of success, that this goes to show that all you need is one STRONG piece of work to go to the top. This is of course assuming that the Alien Song was one of the reasons that Victor was recruited:) With all of Victors talent, in both 2d and 3d, it was no wonder he was brought in to the Pixar fold.

Alien Song certainly played a part in Pixar's interest. I'm sure it also helped that he's a real nice guy and isn't a raving ego-maniac (though he has enough talent to justify it :-). But, I stopped by Ed Catmull's office when I visited Pixar last month. (Ed is the co-founder and President of Pixar). A friend of his had emailed Alien Song to him, and he said that the studio was already talking to Victor. So, it sounded like there was a very good chance they'd hire him, since Ed was aware of him. Hopefully Ed showed Alien Song to Steve Jobs :-).

Ken Baer, Hash Inc.

In regards to the submission format, Beta is not that hard of a format to get too. Pretty much every submission to a any type of competition has to have a standard format. As I recall, the submissions at the last convention they had a projection equipment that allowed the Beta tape to be shown to the whole Pasedena Civic auditorium. And it was great.

Most conventions accept only film, for display. The cost of film transfer is much much greater than transfer to Beta.

Now, in regards to solutions. If you need to get your animation to Beta, first thing is to go ahead and get your film together into a good format. Such as quicktime, or a .dv. One cheap cheap way to get it to beta is to contact your local cable operator, they should have all the equipment you need. They have to have the equipment, because the law (US) provides that it be there for "public access shows". Call the person who runs the cable access studio, and let her know what you need. If you have your file all set to go, and ready to be transferred. It should probably be pretty quick, and probably at a minimal cost if not free in some cases. The most I have paid when going this route is $100 cause I had to do some editing. Negotiate or trade. Heck you may be able to barter some work.

James "Dingo" Griggs

If you're serious about protecting your work, however, why should you settle for "better than nothing"? The following is excerpted from the website of the Library of Congress:

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is "created" when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time.

No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
• Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin.
• If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
• If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
• Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U. S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies.

Apparently, the registraton fee is now $30, but several works can be filed together as a 'collection'. There is a boatload of useful information on the subject at the website, including downloadable forms, a FAQ list, and lots o' legal details.

Brian Dalton

You don't need to use any specific language. Remember it is all in the attitude of how you say something not what you say. So say it with attitude. It is in fact more creative and less likely to turn off a potential employer / client.

Don Swail

I believe you need to be a good all rounder. You need to be able to model, texture, animate and explode realistic looking space ships just as well as creating characters who walk and talk. You need to be able to create complex architecture and photo realistic looking scenes. You'll also need to be an expert at integrating your 3d animation with live video footage, one of the main things studios like ILM look for when hiring animaters. Of course A:M can do all this, it's just a matter of making it happen.

-Glenn Thomas

Not to argue with your main point, regarding making AM more competitive with other softwares in the industry, but I would clarify this one point. ILM doesn't really look for any of those things in prospective character animators. You just have to know how to animate a character. We *do* look for those things when hiring TD's, compositors, etc. Character animators don't have to know diddly about integrating CG into live action, modelling, etc. Just FYI, not a flame.

-Hal Hickel, ILM

I agree with Hal on this point. Here at Lucas Arts, they have hired a many animators that have not even touched a computer, but have outstanding "on paper" animation skills. Heck, when I model something, sometimes I do not make the textures. It is passed off to someone else who all they do is texturing. Now on the other hand, our Compositors and digital F/X guys need some of those skills you are talking about.

Also just for some more info and also not a flame.

-Bill Hennes, LucasArts

No, it's really not considered part of the skillset that is looked for in a character animator. On the other hand, if you're submitting a reel and your animation is full of pops and weird stuff, we're not going to be able to judge the animation very well.

Most of our animators know how to chain (bone) things in Softimage, though this kind of rigging work is almost all done by our "technical animators", these are people who might animate a little now and again, but spend most of their time rigging characters. Our Modelers handle the socking (stitching all the patches together) and our character TD's handle enveloping and simulation issues. The animator is really supposed to concentrate on creating the performance.

Mind you, this is just ILM's approach, there are lots of other shops that require animators to be much more "jack of all trades" types. I prefer our working environment becuase I really like to animate more than anything else.

Hal Hickel

Aha..the Character Bible. Basically, it's a book that you need to make with different views and poses of your character(s). You'll also want to include character attributes, such as who it is, kind of a short bio on that character. Sketches are gret, both pencil, colored, and maybe some 3D prints if yo've already modeled it.

Greg Schumsky

Three to five minutes, but if you're a beginner you should probably do a lot of short and simple things first as excercises. Especially to get a good sense of timing.

Storyboard your film to see how best to translate your writing to a visual medium.

I wouldn't try it for a three minute film with sound. If you want to distribute to festivals, it should be on film, 16mm or 35mm if you want to be ambitious.

In North America there's the Animation Celebration, Spike and Mike, Ottawa. Annecy is a big one in France, I hear it's very commercial (as opposed to artsy). I believe the best thing is to look at industry magazines (for independent filmmakers), which will have ads for film and animation festivals in the back. A very good resource is Animation World Network at http://www.awn.com . They should have plenty of info on festivals and links to useful web sites.

Mark Borok

100 hours? That's one guy doing it for two weeks, or two people for one week.

I could be wrong, but I think you're grossly underestimating the time needed for a project like this.

Take into account the following:

Model construction, which includes:

• time to build models
• time to create textures and apply to models

Then comes composition:

• time to compose models in scenes
• time to set up the lighting
• time to test-render the lit scenes

...lastly....

• creating the camera flight path
• rendering wireframes and tweaking the timing (faster here, slower there)
• adjusting the path so you don't fly through anything or make the viewer dizzy

And let's not forget the time needed to render full rez frames. Something with lots of objects and lights is going to take a few minutes per frame. That adds up quick at 30 frames per second.

Mike Caputo

Frankly, 5 minutes is a LOT of video: if you've only done titles and hobby-level animating, you may not understand quite how -much- video that is. Nine -thousand- frames.

If the guy is on a real tight budget (i.e. he can't pay you at least twenty thousand dollars) then he probably cannot afford this at all.

You're talking about five minutes of full human figures in all their spandex-revealed glory, interacting heavily, presumably laced with massive special effects, all being scripted to a pre-existing sound-track (yeck!). That's even before your customer comes back and tells you about the crowd of one hundred innocent bystanders that he just -has- to have.

At a very rough estimate, I would guess that you will be spending at LEAST one thousand man-hours on this. If that sounds like too much, do a breakdown on paper. Remember to include everything: storyboarding, character sketches, modelling, decalling, bones and constraints, lights, scenery, camera pans, post-production, etc., etc. Oh yes, and 9000 frames of animating.

You could conceivably turn out five minutes of video in one-thousand hours. But if you can, you deserve a lot more than twenty dollars hourly wage. :)

-- Tony

You should charge the same rate for your time regardless of who you're creating the work for. To charge a different amount based on the size of a client's company is a bad idea...if they find out that you charged them a premium for no particular reason other than who they are, they may refuse to do business with you in the future (can you blame them?)

Now, apart from the value of your time, there may be other items you could charge a client for that can vary from job to job (i.e., usage/ownership rights, supplies/expenses, etc.) These factors should be made clear when you submit your estimate, job confirmation (or contract), and again in your invoice when the job is completed. For example, some clients may want to buy all rights to the artwork, particularly if it has to do with their corporate identity...you could charge extra in this situation, but it should be made clear to the client what the additional charge is for. The rate for your time, however, should not be any more than what you normally charge other clients.

Now, if you want to charge more or less than what other artists charge, that's entirely up to you. There are no standard rates in freelancing, but you should obviously charge at least what it takes to keep you in business. If you're dependable and excel at what you do, you can (and should) charge more for your service...clients are willing to pay more than the 'going rate' if they know they can count on you to get a job done exceptionally well and on time. (If they've been buying art for a while, they know how hard it is to find a really good freelance artist.)

D.R. Greenlaw

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this.

Perhaps you chould not adjust your rate based on the size of the client, but I feel it is okay, and even good business, to charge more or less depending on the amount of use the design will see.

In other words, If I were designing two advertisements, one of which would be publshed in several nationally or internationally distributed magazines, and the other of which would be published in a local newspaper, I would charge more for the first than the second, even if the amount of work (time) involved in each project was fairly similar.

Just my opinion, though I have heard other (successful) designers express similar thoughts.

Scott Nicholson

It would be impossible to give you any numbers like this. The best way to charge for work is to figure out how long it will take you to do it, how much you'll have to put out to get it done and what you think you're worth for that amount of time. If your confident about your work, be confident about your pricing.

ed Lynch

Another point is that everybody who does work for a client should get them (before you start working) to sign a small contract that states you the artist retain all copyrights untill you are paid in full. As an admendment to such a document - You may also state that you keep the models and computer files (After all you are producing an animation not giving away models) ... About getting paid, Ive known designers who as part of their contract state that the artist "retains all rights to the work" but will give out "a royality free licence" to the client to use the work as often as they like - even "restricting the media of use". For example : a client gets you to do a small add for a local paper, You get them to sign a document that lets them print that add as many times as they like but ONLY in LOCAL newspapers. If they find the add succesful they can return and buy the rights to use the work in any international publication (The price worked out in the origional document - perhaps as a percentage of the inital job cost) This has the advantage that if the clent only wants to print the ad in a local paper, then they pay less. Also it protects you from clients who dont pay since thay cant use the work unless they pay you all the money owed (If they do use it? their in breach of international contract and copywrite laws). Also if the client later on wants to use the work for another purpose, you get more money (But its a really good idea to work this out before you start working for the cleint - else you could extort heaps of money from them the second time - but thats not im your best interest)

If you want to do a really cheap job for a client, you can state that the models you produce can be used for any other purposes - in other work ... therefor if a client wanted a cheap job that involved a CG car, later on you could use the same car model for another client (Probably rework it a bit though)

Just some ideas.

Oh, And I hope everybody is aware that under international copywrite law, If a client comes to you and gets you to produce an animation - they OWN the Copyright to that work EVEN IF THEY DONT PAY YOU!!!! ... So get them to at least sign the copywrite over to you .. this can be done in the job quote. ... It gives you more leverage and an honest client who intends to pay you shouldn't mind. (this also means if someone doesn't pay you by a certain date then you are free to use the models and animations for other clients - at least you haven't wasted your time)

Im pretty sure thats how it works in the USA, and the rest of the westen world.

- Glenn Wilton

In America the artist owns all work he creates unless he signs away his copyright in writing. You have the option of selling only those rights you want to (or those the client wants). You sign away all rights to the work you create when you are hired full time at most companies.

As a freelancer, If a company uses your work with out your authorization you can take them to court to stop further use, but can only sue for damages if you have registered the copyright with the Library of Congress.

After being burned in the past I finally evolved a system of getting the client to initial changes and getting a % up front, and a % on completion and delivery of final work when the specific copyrights are signed over. -And make sure you don't get caught being responsible for 3rd party expences! I saw this happen to others! Either get all expences up front, or stipulate that your client is paying for these -they are not billed to you.

Glen Crowell

For the US market get "Graphic Artist's Guild handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines" from North light books (513) 531-2222. (You should realize these are N.Y. city prices...)

Know your rights. After that every thing is negotiable.

I've had tons of movie ideas. The hard part is not the technical side of it. Cost of equipment is negligible. Cost of time is not. And making a movie in CG will take a freakin long time. If I were you, I would find out your technical limitations, then write a script around that. After that, storyboard the script to have the least amount of time consumption. If you watch a lot of Japanese animes, they cut corners left and right! They'll have 10 paragraph monologues with no one on the screen saying it. They'll just show moving still frames to set the tone. sure it looks cheap, but with a strong story, it will be a good cheap movie.

Jeffrey Lew

OK, and dealt with above.To do the film for commercial cinema release would minimally require twice the video frame resolution - about 1500 - 2000 x 1000, and thus require about 4 - 6 times the frame render time (or a similar number of additional computers, which would be the option of choice) - and frame storage uncompressed (say about 7mb/frame)! (commercial agencies here in London charge about $5 U.S. per frame!! for "writing" digital graphics to 35mm movie filmstock, so the cost would be 5x162,000=$810K)

So basically, I reckon that to do it FULL TIME would require at least 3 years, and cost upwards of $70,000 for the video version, or $900,000 to get it to 35mm film (Furthermore, I suspect that in practise, these may still seriously underestimate the true costs)

The problem with that approach, working part time at it, as a hobby, applied to something the scale of a feature-length video/film, is that computer graphics ( and consequently audience expectations) are moving so fast, that you risk making an end-product that no-one else will want to watch because it will be severely out-of-date, by the time it's finished. Admittedly, if you were doing it only for video, the if you have pretty good computer equipment already, costs would be much smaller, of the order of perhaps between $200 to $10K, depending on whether you need a second computer, extra hard discs, an archiving format such as a CR-writer and a PVR card etc

I don't think that making a potentially commercial computer animated movie at home is totally impossible (in fact, I think, as I have illustrated above, that it is JUST ABOUT possible now), but I do think that it is likely to be the most difficult thing that most people would be likely ever to attempt.

It would seem to me to be considerably more realistic to aim at 2 (or perhaps 3) short, five-minute video animations per year, which should be achievable, and then to use that work as a portfolio with which to seek proper funding and help, to subsequently make something on a larger scale, on grant-aid, or commercially.

The other thought with regard to Tomas' position is that if his story idea is REALLY good, then he has "intellectual property" which it might be possible to sell as a "treatment" or a script to an animation studio, to get it animated professionally (although the number of scripts "out there" exceeds very greatly the number of movies that ever get made)

I would LOVE to make an animated feature myself, so I am VERY sympathetic to the wishes of Tomas and others, but I think that realistically, its not quite do-able yet. However, the day of the CG short-film home-animator has certainly arrived!

Dave C

Yes, this has proven to be a problem with me too. The most can do is put a copyright on the images and on the website, allowing me to reserve the right to prosecute if any of the images are advertised without my expressed permission. People can of course rub the copyright out, even if you place it over part of the image (though this will deter a lot of people). Another thing you can do is secretly put your signiture on your model as a texture map and hide carefully. eg I haven't, but I could have maybe put my sig as part of the already complicated bump map on my dino. People won't notice it, but you can point it out to anyone in court if need be. My favourite method at the moment is to tell the mailing list about my site therefore if any trouble does occur, I have the backing of about 600 people (on this list at least). Some people keep most of their mail, and if somebody passes your stuff off as theirs, and you told the list about the picture 2 years ago, someone is bound to have kept a dated mail with again you can use as evidence. Indeed, I'm having a bit of trouble at the moment with my monkey project as I've just seen some pictures on the net from Lost In Space, and whilst the creature looks totally unlike my ones (mine is quadropedal - theirs is bipedal. The faces are different, the colours are different etc), they still convey a certain "monkey-ness." We know we didn't copy it, and it's obvious we didn't (we didn't have access to the pics, and they are totally different anyways), but we want to submit it to Zero's 2nd competition, so I mailed Zero personally because I am worried that LIS will have been released prior to us submitting the project, and people may think that we have been influenced by it. We haven't - heck, we'll be well into development and the film will still not have been released. Again, may I use this email itself as proof of our innocence. Feel free to compare our designs, but I think you'll agree that they are totally different (except that they both have big ears - but big ears are not patented). Somebody please keep this email (just in case). Thank you. Which reminds me, I really must practise what I preach and get some sigs onto my models. Oh, and I beleive that copyrights are free as long as you write "Copyright *your name* 1998" Don't make your self into a company (eg Bean Co. or Syko Inc.) - it's not legal.

Chris Anthony