Logo design for Oneil Junior, dog walking service, Boston
09 March 2010
08 March 2010
Do Do bird
I am working on another animated character, but for what is a mystery... even to myself. I hope to get deeper into C4D Bodypaint for the final textures and develope a very stable rig and maybe some "canned" animations like running, walking etc to use in tests.
17 February 2010
Art does not Equal Money
One comment I hear quite often, bothers me quite a bit. It’s when someone shows they have an artistic talent, makes the mistake of showing people, and then have to hear comments like, «You should sell your art and make millions!». I know it seems like a completely positive thing to say, but the reality is it just makes the artist feel like a total loser.Why? Think about it... how realistic is that statement? If someone could make a million dollars doing something they love that easily.. wouldn’t they be doing it already? Almost all those making the statement don’t buy art themselves... where do they think these «millions of dollars» will come from? As a result the artist ends up thinking they have somehow failed in exploiting their talents or worse, they think that they actually can make tons of cash and will crash into depression when they discover winning the lottery is more likely. The statement also devalues the personal statement and drive to make the art into a simple product anyone can make and sell.
Success, the type of success these comment speak to, is extremely rare in the art world. For every Andy Warhol, there are 2 million people who never even get a chance to show their work, no matter how fantastic it is, in the local café. Face it, the most successful artists are dead ones.
The same is true for creative jobs, like I have. If you are anyway involved in making movies or TV shows, you are assumed to be raking in the dough. A film like «Avatar» might cost ½ a billion to make, but that doesn’t mean each technician made 1 million each. In fact many make less salary than your average person despite having very rare and specific skill sets that involve constant retraining and experimenting to keep up to date. I might charge 50$ an hour for contract work, which seems like a lot until you realize getting 40 hours of paid work a week is actually impossible, that my computer system to do the work cost 5 000$, that the software to do the work costs even more, plus updates every 18 months... you see what I mean. Also a small filmmaker like myself will work alone for years on a film that will costs hundreds of dollars (not including time and already existing hardware etc) and they won't even make that money back.... ever. No matter how many hits they get on Youtube.
It’s perfectly reasonably to want to make such hopeful (yet misguided) statements to someone who’s work you admire. Most people work in offices, where many things, like the cost of software and hardware for example are covered by the company and never thought of. So unless you have a way to get this creative friend of yours into a situation where they can actually make some money off their talent, please refrain from making them feel it’s a given they will, or worse, that it’s their fault somehow that they haven’t done it already. Instead, if you like it that much, offer to buy it for a reasonable price for the time and effort put into making it. Now THAT would be a true compliment!
03 February 2010
28 January 2010
To Flash or not to Flash your clients
It was THE thing online for many years... every client had to have a Flash site, even if they no idea what it was. I worked with a print designer who kept saying he wanted «the flash» in his site. Turns out «the flash», to him, was a simple html rollover, but because it changed something on the page, it was Flash to him.
It was and is still an amazing technology. It came on the scene when a fast connection was 56k by your telephone line, yet I was able to design pretty complex and interesting interactivity with it... all under 800k per animation to keep loading under a couple minutes. (Yes, people actually use to wait minutes to load sites back then). It still is the only good way to get decent animation in light files online.
Why all the hate now, then? There are some very good reasons for this. Early excesses was one thing. Sites with flash became so damn complicarted they took forever to download and usually for no other purpose than to satisfy the needs of some bored or badly trained web designer to show off. Spinning logos were everywhere... elaborate web intros with no «skip this intro» buttons were a plague on early internet browsers. It became more and more associated with bad design, excess and annoying download times.
Another big problem was the over reaching of the format. It’s practically it’s own operating system now. It’s animation tools have become secondary to it’s developement tools and though there has been recent improvement in the user interface, it’s still an incomprehensible mess to non programmers. It’s really lost it’s way as it has tried to be an animation program and a developement platform at the same time.
Personally I love what flash brings to the table animation-wise for the web... limited interactivity is great... small fun games, interesting presentations for your site, it all works for me. Under Adobe, however, it has gone far beyond what many designers and certainly what animators need or even want. Instead of enhancing the experience, it’s become something to avoid. I still use it, for small animations, but I don’t even tell the client it’s Flash sometimes. That’s how bad the reputation has become.
I say drop the pretense that it’s an everything platform and go back to the basics... an internet format for interactive animations that loads quickly. Make it something to be desired, not avoided once again.
03 January 2010
À venir / coming soon
voice - recorded
thanks to Michael Z. Keamy
model - rigged and ready (I think)
thanks to Cactus Dan, C4D Café and Denis LeClerc
25 December 2009
02 December 2009
another murale
The SDC village complex murale. St Cathernine Montréal, village gai
click photo for larger image
01 December 2009
New web site
TriFury, a club for triathletes in Massachusetts (USA) has hire me for remaking the team web site. It is still missing some archival information and the forum is not yet ready but the site itself is done. Because of possible changes in the menus and the need to update certain sections easily, I've used spry menus and spry html databases in the coding.
28 November 2009
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