Outsourcing Animation Isn’t Scary: A Guide
I often run across questions people ask regarding outsourcing animation. I seem to be one of the few people that has outsourced animation successfully. I’ve written a handful of short articles on the subject, but I thought it was time I edited and assembled them all into one handy guide. :) I won’t dwell on [...]
Tools of the Trade: HTTrack Website Copier!
Ever bookmark a website full of great information, only to revisit it later and discover the link is dead? Worry no more! HTTrack Website Copier is here, and you need never fret over dead links again. It’s a free, very easy-to-use, highly customizable tool that automatically downloads webpages in their entirety. You can set how [...]
Random tip for finding good artists: Find their friends!
This may be outlandishly obvious, but for some reason it never occurred to me until this week. Here’s a tip for Art Managers and Artists both! Art Managers, when I find a portfolio of an artist I like (even mildly), I go to his Links page and find a list of all the artists he [...]
Improving contractor feedback
I’ve been doing some thinking and experimenting with the way I structure contractor feedback and I have some slight tweaks I’d like to share. Here’s my new template: [Absolute asset name] ([Iterative asset filename)]) – [Positive Feedback] [Reference\paintover image filename] – [Locational callout] – [Feedback] Instead of using absolute asset names, I’ve been using the [...]
Project: Outsource Everything followup – SUCCESS!
This is a followup to my Project: Outsource Everything post, nearly a year later. To be frank, almost everything I planned to do succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. :) Not without a few hitches and problems from which I learned much, but on the whole, my crazy notions were a complete success. It’s actually silly [...]
Seven Maxims of Writing smArt Feedback
I’m on a major feedback-writing pass this week and I had seven feedback maxims I’d like to share: Make subject lines COUNT. Be as descriptive and meaningful as possible, especially when dealing with contracts. Use special easily searchable key words like “ArtStudio signed contract AS-0004″ or “(2008-05-15) Feedback for Fat Stinky Orok.” Everything MUST create [...]
Contracting tip: Layered PSD paintovers for color roughs!
Agh, sorry for my slowness to respond to comments lately… I’ve been crunching on something big ever since GDC. I only have time for a short post relating to a thought I had tonight. I’ll expand a bit on my “Outsourcing Concept Art smArtly” article… I’ve found an approach working with one of my outsourcing [...]
Contracting Tip: Bi-weekly payments for maximum motivation!
One really interesting trend I’ve found in the last couple years is that artists are *far* more motivated to keep working if their contracts are structured so they get paid bi-weekly. The “big fat contract” high wears off after a week or two on average, and productivity goes SHARPLY down after that. But, if I [...]
Outsourcing Animation: What Do They Need To Know?
I made a forum post this week on what information I provide to the studios I outsource my animation work to, and I thought I’d repost it here. The speccing process for animation work needs to be detailed and thorough, as does as the reference. However, most of this work only needs doing once, and [...]
Outsourcing Concept Art smArtly
Based on the last ~15 months of contracting out concept art, I’ve refined my style a bit and just made a dramatic change in the way I parcel out work. I used to price out concept art per piece. Everything from initial roughs to polish to ink to color to turnarounds was a single asset [...]
Work-specific IM accounts
If you get to be a manager of external artists of any kind, MAKE A NEW ACCOUNT FOR INSTANT MESSAGING that only your contractors have access to. No friends. I’m trying to separate work and home life more now and this was a critical mistake I made early on. Now I can’t work without friends [...]
Learning In Progress #10: Writing Effective Criticisms
I’ve been trying to come up with a simpler and easier way to structure my feedback on assets I receive that makes it easier for the contractor to focus on one aspect at a time, without being dependent on anything but plain text. Most of my job is communicating ideas. And there are so many [...]