Come join me tonight at GSG Live for another question and answer session. If you have a question about design, school, motion design, 3D, or whatever, I will do my best to answer it. See you tonight!
If you missed last week’s video, check it out below…
Comment Rules: I love helpful comments. We don't all have to be friends or agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Have fun and thanks for adding to the conversation!
Yay, Ustream Thursday!!!
is that 8pm EST? Mountain? Newfoundland?
Central Standard
Hi Nick, I wont be online at that time (2.am) in the UK so I will ask my question now and hope it gets answered.
Q : How important are grades when applying for schooling in motion graphics ? Is your reel and previous work more important ?
And also when applying for a job do grades matter as much as your up to date work ?
Thanks
Grades don’t matter unless you’re going to be teaching.
Yeah, unless it’s different in the UK somehow, no one will even give a crap about your degree. They MIGHT ask what field it’s in, but it’s not like they’re going to ask to see it with a transcript. Focus on your reel. I’d hire someone out of high school (if they’re mature) if their reel was kick-ass or showed some promise.
Can you PLEASE give the link to nice shit you are referencing in GSG live Aug 20.
Thanks for everything and keep up the fucking nice work.. \m/
Like when I reference a spot or a site? You want a link eh? I probably need a moderator eh?
yep exactly
Again thanks for the quick response
Hi Nick, another UK viewer and I’m in work at 9 in the morning so staying up to watch live streams at 2am isn’t that sensible (until hockey season starts anyway!)
So a big question for me that I think a lot of people would be interested in is… what method do you recommend for ‘shadow catching’ moving from C4D to AE with tracked footage. I’ manged to ham-fistedly get something running last night using a visible plane in my render, a shadow pass and object buffers which doesn’t seem ideal. The shadowcatcher plugin seems horrendous and turns a 5 second per frame render into minutes per frame for some reason. I’m also thinking 2 renders, one for the beauty pass with now shadow catching plane, and then one with no objects and only the shadow pass allowing more flexibilty without cluttering with object buffers/track mattes.
What do you recommend? Future workflow tutorial?
C4D r12… give us a ‘not seen by camera but catch shadows’ button in the compositing tag (I’m still on r10, I’m assuming r11 doesn’t have this!)
Cheers, have a good one. Matt
Replying to my own comment… sad.
Here’s my first test (ignore the crap animation and lighting, it really was just trying to get ANYTHING to cast a shadow on the filmed floor)… http://vimeo.com/6201475
Yay hockey! If I ever move to Ireland, I’m keeping my house in Tampa with a slingbox.
Yeah dude wish I could hook up a slingbox in boston and get TV quality nesn. hockeystreams.com is amazing though for the price. Every season, pre-season, playoff game live and archived (big bonus for me I can watch games at the weekend or listen while I work)
I’m guessing you’re a Bolts fan? (Go Bruins!)
That’s pretty cool. I might have to check that out. Fortunately I’m in the market so I don’t have that problem too often (unless it’s “stupid versus blackout night” of course).
And yeah, I’m a Bolts fan. I like it when my teams reach the top and then fail to succeed year after year. I suppose that’d make me a Bucs fan too if I watched football.
Definetly a tutorial coming up on that.
awesome thanks
Incase anyone’s interested I just found a great solution to my woes over at mograph…
http://mograph.net/board/index.php?showtopic=18856&st=0&gopid=168576&#entry168576
problem: shadow catcher takes forever to render
solution: don’t use it, use lumas instead to replicate what it does and renders full speed.
Courtesy of Lennart tcastudios.
Cheers, Matt
Nick ! Thanks for doing this, but would it be possible to do the Live session earlier next time because it’s very late for europeans !
Cheers !
I may try to do one on the weekend or during a weekday once.
Cheers!
So many European viewers (I’m from Ohio). I love it. Great cast tonight, Nick. Take it easy till next time.
Missed it tonight, but I just watched it. I’m definitely interested in seeing DK and see if my experiences in Tampa are even remotely similar.
I’m glad someone mentioned a moderator. That’s what I was trying to get at when I mentioned something like logging the questions.
I missed the casting tonight but I thought it was really cool. I noticed a lot of references to DK. So it got me thinking about a few of my own. What did you do before you got the position at DK and was it a though process getting the job? And not to get to personal, but at the higher-end more recognizable agencies, I was wondering, are the salaries more negotiable or are they generally the industry standards based on where you are located?
I worked as freelance and at a place called Somersault before DK. Salaries are always negotiable depending on your market and how talented you are.
Just listened to stream from last night at work, good stuff. It would be awesome if next time it was just a tiny bit earlier like an hour to 7pm CST. Staying up til 2GMT on a work night is fairly normal, staying up til 3 is pushing it. Give us european mographers some love!
Hey Nick,
my name was Daniel and yeah you were right, I am from Germany =)! I am still checking your Blog everyday. I am working my butt off to get a awesome Reel for the application. What do you think is best: Should I go to College next year at the Art Institute in Chicago or should I do an Internship first?
Thanks
SCAD is really rad too Daniel. I would go with school if you can. It’s a great time to learn, meet people, and learn about yourself too.
Oh, I missed it again! I’ve now hooked up a Chicago-clock on my dashboard so I’ll be on for the next stream =D
These are some really nice shows you are putting up. Thanks, man!
How to get those avatars, btw?
Gravatar! I just found it yesterday…
http://en.gravatar.com/
upload an image, crop it within that, set it up for your email then when you input your email in things like this it automatically links to your gravatar. Clever stuff
Awesome! Thanks, man =)
Thanks matt, Yeah it’s gravatar. It’s great!
Hey Gorilla, or anyone that might know…What do you use for your blog/site? Are you running a CMS, WordPress?
It’s all wordpress.
Thanks bud. Is it a plug-in that gave you that categories bar (C4d, AE, PS)?
let me rephrase…plug-in that moved it to above your posts, or was it pure CSS design?
With all the talk about schools and learning design, it reminded me I bookmarked this a while back. This is a great resource and link, and everyone should go through it again!
http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/teach-yourself-graphic-design-a-self-study-course-outline/
hm can someone link the reels which are reviewed? i really would like to see them…
Yeah man, we interested in the Photoshop DVD when’s it out!!??