Google expects artists to work for free...
polycounter lvl 10
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/business/media/15illo.html?_r=1&em
This is a fucking joke.
Google can afford to pay artists, they are a multibillion dollar company, so this is just being plain rude, and setting a horrible precedent for artists.
Man i wish this sort of thing could be outlawed.
This is a fucking joke.
Google can afford to pay artists, they are a multibillion dollar company, so this is just being plain rude, and setting a horrible precedent for artists.
Man i wish this sort of thing could be outlawed.
Replies
Its also about the fact that google can afford to pay, its not a small start up company. And this sets a bad precedent for other corporations...
http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2008/12/professional-photographers-vs-hobby.html
Hasn't everyone had someone try to propose this shitty deal as some point?
"It won't pay but it will get your name out there!" Then you laugh in their face.
Lame, Google, lame.
"It won't pay, but it will get your name out there!"
The important thing to ask is, "It will get me name out where?" I love the little sketches and drawings that Google uses for their logo from time to time. But I couldn't tell you the name of a single artist who produced them. I've worked in small indie design studios before, and various people were always trying to feed us this crap. They weren't willing to pay us, but they'd make sure our name got "Out There."
"Out There" does not pay the bills.
Meh, Something For Nothing is only good as a Rush song from the album 2112 - and even then, not one of their best.
I see this as having a two-fold effect. First if a large corporation like Google has no qualms asking for such a thing, smaller firms certainly will follow suit. And there's always some 'artist' willing to fill that spot you won't. Second, it will more than likely dilute the market with sub par, yet free/cheap work (see: clip art). Companies are very often willing to cut costs at the loss of quality. In a time when print is going out of style and the illustration industry and is struggling this creates a very dangerous slippery slope.
http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL209.htm
Seriously fuck Google. 1.42 billion quarterly profit? Hook these people up.
A contest is still a scam to get a lot of artwork for a very cheap price. But there is something there for anyone who participates to enjoy. Straight-up pro bono for nothing but "exposure" is outright extortion. You can't even write that crap off on your taxes. A company with deep-ass pockets like Google has no excuse for this sort of behaviour.
A perfectly good scam to get craploads of free graphics for nothing. Hmm, that sounds familiar...
The artist position is heavily discriminated against, and even more so between artists of different disciplines. Artists get paid the least of any department in a production pipeline, even though their skills are the hardest and most time consuming to attain. You can teach a monkey to program in a year. I've been drawing for 5 years and still got nothing.
For this state of affairs I blame artists themselves most of all, because of the contempt they show towards other artists, and for being such prostitutes and selling themselves for nothing at every chance they get.
On an unrelated note, how much is Polycount paying all of the artists who have their work shown in the rotating banner graphics at the top of each page?
bills? pah, say you're damaged after a lifetime in front of the computers, and the state will give you cash.
and then you can work for free.
actually this is how things should be. the government gives you money, and you create stuff of value.
you get to have fun and create stuff, the govt makes sure you stay alive, and is happy, so you can create stuff.
its my new ideological system. i call it social capitalism.
While I take umbrage to the implication that programming is easy, I freely acknowledge that art is much harder to teach. At the end of the day, an artist needs a certain degree of natural talent, as well as practice, in order to make decent art. You can teach almost anyone to write decent code.
And as far as employment goes, a lot of the time decent code, or even half-assed code, will suffice. As long as it works, that's good enough. It doesn't work that way with art. If its half-assed, everyone knows it, and its not good enough.
Totally, you never see incompetent artists making the same salary as you (or more than you). Game art is a totally merit-based position, you can't just skate through by kissing ass. No sir. Only the best survive!
I think that is part of the beauty of doing art as well, because it is so difficult that when you succeed it feels unreal.
Now if only they had a way to advertise that they where taking free chrome skin submissions... like some kind of ad software or a page everyone visits... humm...
All three of those CAN AFFORD to give things away. (And Koons is a no talent hack who relies on workmen to get his ideas out)
But..
Please be careful with your complaints about "free" work. Mods, and startups have to rely on people willing to give their own time. Many times for projects that may never see the light of day.
[ame]
Oxy - there's a huge difference between a mod or startup and a corporate giant like google looking for free work.
And Ben - that video is awesome.
I'm a web designer by trade. I regularly code in HTML, XML, Actionscript 3.0, PHP, MYSQL, ColdFusion, and CSS. In my free time I dapple in C#, Python, and Objective-C. (like everyone and their dog, I am working on my own iPhone app) I'm not a programmer in the strictest sense. I majored in Graphic Design in college and have only ever taken one programming course.
Of course, that's part of why I think most people can learn programming without much in the way of talent. I learned most of the programming I know on my own. We only had like 2 weeks worth of web design in university. Everything else was traditional mediums and general theory. If I can manage to learn multiple languages on my own, I would imagine most people could learn at least one with competent instruction.
Perhaps most importantly, programming is a "behind-the-scenes" discipline. It is back-end. When a programmer does his or her job right, it seems like magic to most non-programmers. People interact with a programmer's work all the time, but they never "see" it. As long as there are no glaring bugs that show up in the final product, the end user is fine.
But that doesn't mean that the programmer has written solid code. Good code is easy to change and easy to follow. It lends itself well to the structure of the project in question. But there are any number of solutions. And a bad, convoluted solution can end up providing the same functionality as a streamlined, well-documented solution. A bad programmer can get the same results as a good programmer. His results will probably take longer, and they will be a nightmare to go back and change later, but he can still provide a comparable product.
An artist works on the front-end. Their work is immediately obvious, because it is what the end-user actually sees. If they make bad art, most everybody can tell immediately. You have to be a programmer, and have access to source-code, in order to recognize bad programming. You don't have to be an artist to recognize bad art.
So just curious because... uh a friend of mine is doing the same thing, how did it work out for you in the end?
The quote about a monkey learning programming is not mine but my brother's who is a senior java developer at a cell phone company. I only took a couple of programming classes in college and I did ace them ::pats on back::
Calm down programmers, nobody is saying your job is not hard to do. It, also takes many many years of training to master, and lots of reading to stay current.
And also i should note that there are tons of free software out there, open source and what have you. Or my beloved xnormal.
But you better watch yourselves programmers. Because market forces can push in unpredictable ways, and 10 years from now, you could be here complaining about not making enough money.
It could happen to you
to you...
to you...
I saw $5 for 40 hours a week, for 8 months.
I call bullshit on bad programmer being able to get the same end result as a good programmer if given enough time. Programming is about problem solving and solutions. Some minds simply don't think the same way as others and as such some solutions can be hard or impossible to find by some.
I think people should be fairly compensated for their work, no matter what it entails. But don't start talking out of your ass of things you really don't know so much about.
Nothing pisses me off more than people wanting others to work for free with a promise of exposure.
When was the last time you asked who the specific artist was who designed the FF logo? or the MS logo? Come on.
I'm so sick and tired of people thinking that artists, no matter what their skill can shit out quality art that's perfect to their every nitpicky need like it's an unwanted effortless bodily function.
Take a wild guess.
A friend of mine was in the same boat as your 'friend' while working on some projects for some self-important fraud who also happens to be the director of a school at the university.
Tell your 'friend' to get out of that shitty deal now.
It's because we make it look effortless!
to the programming is easy crowd:
programming isn't easy, you may have a natural aptitude for it but that just means its easy to you.
What about internships that require you to be a flawless artist already?
They pay or sort of to their google summer of code students...even considering they're students, not pros or freelancers living of it...
Once again, artists' work hours mean nothing to a lot of people...
It's even worse if Google does it... Last news I had was that enormous company had not suffered from crisis , compared to other huge companies...
And just for the art of a tool... I mean, is not such a big quantity of money...Not for them in any case.