Software Proficiency
CA
Lighting and Compositing Artist
Cole Armstrong
Awards
Ideaology
I believe on any team the primary goal is to create a collaborative environment with standardized practices and automation driving majority of the setup. This allows artists to explore their creativity within a common framework and focus more on artistic challenges, ultimately delivering a more visually appealing product.
Workflow Optimization Strategies
Team Dynamics
- Types of Artists
- How best to support
- Important to identify sub-leaders and have them help train
Resource Management
Team Dynamics
Ensuring a collaborative, approachable and positive work environment is always a crucial part of any team's success. Having all members "buy in" to the goals, strategies and workflows is fun
Types of Artists
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Artistic
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Technical
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Buddy System when Onboarding
When onboarding new artists, it's always great to implement a "buddy system". This immediately sets a point of contact and promotes team communication (which is especially important in a remote/hybrid environment). The buddy artist will often recognize the leadership role they are put into and take ownership of the new artist's training.
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Technical Problem Solving
Every production comes with it's own technical challenges to troubleshoot and develop a "plan of attack" for. These challenges are great opportunities to delegate to a technically strong team member as it recognizes the artist's skill set and gives them an opportunity to have a voice in the team's workflow (an opportunity that isn't always given).
Empowering Artists through Delegation
A large part of resource management is empowering seniors or "sub leaders" on the team. These are strong team members that are assigned specific tasks or sequences and given a sense of ownership of that role. This often leads to increased morale, stronger production and faster artist development.
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Ask/Encourage Team Members to Request Specific Sequences or Shots that Peak their Interest
This will give the artist a sense of ownership of the shot/sequence and encourage them to give their best work since they specifically requested to work on it. I find quite often artists that go out of their way to work on a specific shot/sequence typically have a vision already in their head of how they want to approach the task.
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Buddy System when Onboarding
When onboarding new artists, it's always great to implement a "buddy system". This immediately sets a point of contact and promotes team communication (which is especially important in a remote/hybrid environment). The buddy artist will often recognize the leadership role they are put into and take ownership of the new artist's training.
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Technical Problem Solving
Every production comes with it's own technical challenges to troubleshoot and develop a "plan of attack" for. These challenges are great opportunities to delegate to a technically strong team member as it recognizes the artist's skill set and gives them an opportunity to have a voice in the team's workflow (an opportunity that isn't always given).
Things to Look for when doing Episode/Sequence Launches
Before starting work on a new episode/sequence, a launch meeting should occur in which a plan is developed on how best to approach the upcoming challenges and creative goals.
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Story, Mood and Feeling
Story. Story. Story. The goal is ALWAYS to use lighting and compositing to enhance the story through use of colour, light/shadow play, saturation, lens effects, etc. The creative approach dramatically changes depending on what emotion the artist is trying to convey to the audience.
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Potential Technical Challenges
Often new episodes/sequences include new challenges that perhaps your production hasn't faced before. This can include (but is not limited to) heavily motion blurred objects such as car wheels, new FX caches, crowds rendering, DMP setups, Screen Inserts, Animated Lighting, Heavy Shot Caches and the list goes on. It's best to flag these things early and work on solutions as fast as possible to ensure a smooth production.
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Lighting Changes (Time of Day)
Always make note of any lighting changes, whether it be time of day changes or numerous lighting setups for the same ENV/Set. Making sure these changes are clear and well organized to reduce potential confusion and continuity errors is extremely important.
Keyshots
In Lighting one of the most important parts of starting production on a new sequence is Key shot selection and assignment.
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Try to choose wide shots with many characters
This will help establish "the look" of the environment and hopefully all characters within the scene.
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Simpler is sometimes better
Choosing a shot with a static camera and very little "shot specific" needs such as animations or 2D FX can lead to a cleaner template for Parent/Child artists to work from. The more complicated the Key shot, the more complicated and cluttered the template work can become.
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Play to artist's strengths
All team members have various strengths and weaknesses. I believe it is important for any strong leader to identify these attributes and plan accordingly. Ex. If an artist has shown interest and strength in night sequences, it's important to take mental (or even literal) note of that and assign them future night sequences.