It was 1997, I was asked to do an animation of a performance structure within a public entertainment venue, mostly gobo’s, video and moving camera work, very simple stuff. To be honest it wasn’t even that accurate. It was good enough for an illustration but I wouldn’t want someone to create a CD set from it! But I synced it with a Fatboy Slim track, cut the piece like an MTV video, laid it down to VHS and hey presto it was a HUGE hit with the client, they loved it. I had done other animations that were technically accurate but they were a little boring and had many awkward moments in the sequencing. I hated those other projects, anybody could do this, I felt like a guy with some software pushing the buttons. At that point I knew that this industry had a problem. When does the designer let go and the artist start his work?
The answer to that question has not ever been answered entirely, its subjective. The designer wants to be an artist and the artist wants to redesign. It’s a paradox. The problem was approached by firms hiring designers that could do some 3D, but as the technology grew independent of CAD, those individuals slowly became master of none and often shifted back into design. The ones that moved into 3D art were the brave. The industry didn’t exist back in those days. Sure you heard of a few names, Hayes Davidson were leading a flock of HD like firms. But it was a tiny group of people doing this.
Well as things developed, the technology grew fast, very fast and then exploded. I use that word with great vigor. It literally exploded. Vray, MentalRay, Final Render, Brazil were suddenly all common names and on the desktop of young artists. Cracked version were everywhere, I didn’t know anyone that had a legit copy unless they were working for an agency. The offshoot of this was the technology getting into the hands of everyone. Autodesk did this years ago. Few people realize part of the reason they have such dominance was a very intelligent upgrade policy they had for a while. Knowing how much AutoCAD had been cracked they offered everybody to upgrade, no questions asked. Of course every man and his dog did it, this gave Autodesk huge market growth and the inertia to make one of the best pieces of CAD software ever written. Well a similar inertia took place with advanced rendering. Everyone was scrambling to figure out which was the best one. I was interviewed about this in a London Magazine. They interviewed myself, Hayes Davidson and a leading architecture firm. I was the Vray guy. Brazil had screwed me over on a project and Splutterfish weren’t that much help to be honest. Vray was my guy.
One day I was working on a new proposal. The fee was close to £75,000, about $122,000. I was wrapping things up when a supervisor approached me with a letter. I read it and couldn’t believe my eyes. With their rates they could do this for £5,000!!!! How I asked myself? They were from Bulgaria, the work was good, not great but good enough that they could of spent twice as long and made the work great and still be WAY under my fee. Oh crap! It hit me. We are now global.
From China to India to Vietnam everyone was learning about this 3D business, and getting good, REAL good! They were charging $4 an hour, my charge out rate for a Senior artist was closer to $100. I couldn’t compete.
For a while we all ignored it, but slowly these firms broke into the marketplace, going direct to arch firms and clients. We would get comments like ‘well company X will do the image for $300, can you do it for that?’. It was a problem and one that has almost killed the industry.
But, there is good news, the work was mostly excellent, technically great, but firms were getting frustrated with trying to art direct. When the work had to go back and forth 10 times to get it right, the fee started to rise, a lot. If it didn’t rise, the deadline approached and you got 90% the look and feel that you wanted. This isn’t true for all overseas firms. Some were awesome, amazing, stunning! But most were technically good, just technically.
So this brings us back to the two emerging categories, the technically brilliant 3D renderer and the 3D artist. You need them both on your team, but now you needed a third group, the overseas technical renderer. This worked for a while but soon we realized that the artist sitting in the corner that can’t finish the shot is only as good as the artist in Taiwan, but your guys costs another 30-50 dollars an hour. Firms were starting let go the renderers and bring on artists and art directors. It was the start of a big change and would reshape the way every firm out there would work.
In the next part of this series I’ll talk about how the industry mistakes and successes due to 3D art globalization and what we might have to do to survive it.
Next. Part 3. Make art, collaborate or fail.
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