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Why Motion Designers need to have solidarity with the #VFXProtest

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Amador

As someone who doesn’t work in the VFX (Film) industry its been hard to follow the #VFXProtest movement. You read one blog and people are arguing over what the problems are. Another blog may feature exchanges over what the solution is or should be (if there is a solution at all).

Either way I do see an overlap in problems within many different industries. Whether that’s in advertising or even game development. Not to mention most of us in “motion design” probably know a few people in LA fighting for their futures right now.

I ran across this post by Bran Dougherty-Johnson on twitter and decided to share it HERE.

For more background on whats going on in the vfx industry read the Wired.com article on it. They did a great job of covering every angle on this and linking to many different sources related to the story.

Category: animation, CG, vfx Tags: , , , , , , ,
  • http://twitter.com/bran_dj Bran

    Thanks for the post Amador! And the site’s green! Looking good …

  • Murat Pak

    Dear client and agency of the design industry,

    We, motion-graphics and VFX as two sibling industries, are suffering from the global crisis as you know. I would like to take a minute from your lives with this small text that describes the situation from another point of view.

    Over the years, most of us motivated ourselves to create the best quality work possible to make both sides happy, achieve something technically possible and more importantly stand against the test of time with the power of quality. However late news (R&H,DD, many others) confirm that even “being an experienced perfectionist and trying to build the best thing possible” is not enough to stand against many other factors.

    As you know, besides big studios there is a huge section of the industry that works with the agencies rather than directly with the client. This leaves a big gap between the side that requests the top quality work and the side that gets the real work done. Also agencies apply the 90%-10% rule, keeping 90% to themselves and feeding the rest with breadcrumbs.

    So, dear client,

    I’m offering you a new perspective which I call it “transparency”. Please, please, request where your money gets spent. Request to reach us, the designers, artists, VFX teams, basically the creatives you are paying for – the real horsepower that gets your work done. Instead of bird-feeding the real mechanism, get the control over your budget and request everyone to be transparent. The real effort should be rewarded.

    And dear agency,

    We all know how important you are within the whole system. However, by supporting the bird-feed mechanism you’re causing a real collapse in an already-diseased industry; leaving us – creatives – in a complete dilemma and simply leaving the industry to death. Also remember that without the creatives, agencies would not exist.

    Please do care about the balance and not only choose what is the best for you but also choose the best for the whole mechanism. Otherwise the industry will lose the real talents who deserve more than peanuts to work. Those talents will leave the stage to newborns which will be enough for some time to help you trick the client for prices that will make you happy; but in the end the mechanism will not only stay work-less but also stay completely judge-less; which will cause a real collapse of the ideology behind all the work that is produced: Perfection.

    So, dear industry… I invite you to being more transparent; for creatives and for perfection, before it is too late. Leave us a reason to “be” before we “become” something else.

    Dear creative,

    Don’t worry. Even if the whole system collapses, you are still needed to make whatever-comes-next perfect. You were always on the edge, you will always be.

  • http://twitter.com/EchoicAudio David Echoic

    well said. interesting read