Environments for Animation

joe gracey

Does anyone have any experience working on movies like Shrek or Toy Story doing environments? I wanted to know how hard it was to get a job doing environments or what it was like to work for an animation studio like Dreamworks or Pixar.

aesir

I dont think we have any of those guys here on polycount...

However, here's my guess. Make a portfolio of enviros on the same quality level as the stuff you see in their movies and you'll get a job eventually.

SHEPEIRO

aesir wrote: »

I dont think we have any of those guys here on polycount...

However, here's my guess. Make a portfolio of enviros on the same quality level as the stuff you see in their movies and you'll get a job eventually.

obvious but true ;-)

Sage

A lot of these companies say what they are looking for when they look at a reel. Go to ILM website or another of these studios and they say what they want to see. They used to anyway. From what I remember they want you to be able to tell a story, good sense of lighting. For modeling it has to be realistic, you have to show that you understand what makes object catch light properly, ie you know how to bevel things. They also want you to understand animation. Sorry if it sounds generic.

sprunghunt

A friend of mine worked on 'happy feet'

He spent 6 months sculpting a cliff. He said was very detail intensive even though happy feet wasn't 'realistic'. However they didn't hire him full time. A full time job is fairly rare in the movie industry - and therefore hard to get.

jpgourley

sprunghunt wrote: »

A full time job is fairly rare in the movie industry - and therefore hard to get.

Very true. I've known several people in that have worked in feature length animation, and you'll generally only find positions for the length of the production. I have a friend that was trying to get into animation and he was actually told that he should start in game development before they would consider him for a position.

joe gracey

Very interesting, thanks for the reply's!

Mark Dygert

Recreating an environment will be harder then you think. It will be hard to mimic the lighting, rendering and post rendering production, since they normally have dedicated people doing each of those positions it could be hard.

I've also heard that the film industry is very small and tight knit, its easy to find work if you get along with everyone but a few bad run ins with the wrong people and its back to the red headed step child that is games.

Jeremy Lindstrom

I'll second what was stated above, I've heard the exact same thing about the film industry, hire on for a project then got to look for another job, but I hear that same thing for this industry so it's not much different then.