A pretty cool thing happened to me a few weeks ago. The team I entered a cg contest with several months back had a chance to speak with Manny Fragelus, a name I'm sure you won't recognize but a name that means quite a lot to me and the team I was a part of. Manny is a modeling lead at Dreamworks animation in Glendale, CA. He's been there for a couple years, modeling characters and environments for Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon and upcoming films. He came to Full Sail to hold a discussion with us lowly students about what to expect from the industry, how to improve our work and what employers like Dreamworks look for in potential employees. It was especially significant for me because Manny critiqued the work our group turned in for the cg contest. Like....he looked at the work I've done. I don't know why I feel like that is such a huge deal to me, but it is. I feel like...to draw a comparison, if I were a quarterback in college football it would be like having Aaron Rogers give me pointers specifically catered to my performance.
Anyway, he didn't spend a whole lot of time speaking to us, the team, but what he did say kind of messed with my head a little bit. He didn't have anything really negative to say about our execution, just with our concept. That messes with my mind. The way I look at things, concept is maybe 10% of the overall workflow. Execution is 90% of the overall workflow. So in my mind, if the concept isn't really outstanding but the execution is flawless, that's a success. Manny has different ideas. He suggests, in essence, that the concept is more like a foundation. You have to start with the foundation and it must be sound, or everything you build on top of it will come crumbling down. What Manny saw in our work was good execution, but the concept was bland. I can agree with him about that, specifically in reference to our group project. But for Manny, a bland concept equals a failed project overall. It doesn't matter how good our modeling, our texturing, our rigging, our effects, our rendering, our compositing, our audio is...if the original concept isn't unique, it's all worthless. I'm not sure I agree with him, but I do believe that's the attitude of a professional. That's the attitude of a person who has long since mastered the whole execution process, and for whom execution is an almost machine-like process. I think, for professionals, modeling, texturing, animating, rigging, every major step of the computer animation process is like a stop on an assembly line. For professionals, people in one section of the assembly line are interchangeable; so, in essence, the real creativity and unique-ness is found only in the conceptualization part of the process. And when I really think about it, I agree that concepts are what make artists unique. The means of expression (be it in oils, pixels, words, melodies, whatever) is not as important as the message itself. Anyone can pick up a guitar and learn to play it, but no one can coax sound from one the way Hendrix could. Anyone can smear paint across a canvas, but there will always only be one Picasso. The more I think about it, the more I see how Manny is right in what he says about concept being king, but this realization is a daunting one when I truly let it sink in. Ours is a world over saturated with artists. Well...I should say, our culture is saturated with people who want to be artists. But my point is that being unique in world where everyone is trying to be unique is almost an impossible task. Even now, as I try to comprehend that, the best I think I can come up with is just to be exceptional. I've never been one to try and reinvent the wheel. I'm more a person who wants to know how the system works, and I'll find a way to fit into what's already there. But in the professional artist's world, the people who find new ways of doing things are the most valuable.
I do try to remind myself that the kinds of lessons that Manny has learned are lessons that have taken years to understand. He's been a professional for years, developing his skills years ago and perfecting them among the most talented artists in show business. Me and my fellow students are still learning our fundamentals, so it should only be expected that we have lots of room to grow. But on the other hand, is the conceiving of new, unique ideas something anyone can learn? Or is it something that simply exists inside those people destined to be true artists and forces its way out of the artist regardless of formal training or preparation? Should the fact that I'm a student have any impact at all on my ability to come up with new ideas? My knee jerk reaction is to say, "Of course not. Unique ideas can come from anyone at anytime." So if that's true, and if unique ideas are not something I find pouring from my consciousness...does that mean I'm basically screwed? If I don't have that ability know, I'll never have it." Not necessarily. In the computer animation industry, one rarely finds him or herself working on their own concepts anyway.
Anyway, the five or so minutes he took to impart some wisdom had something of a profound impact on my thinking about the CG industry. It certainly has given me some new perspective on personal projects - the primary way I'll be getting my name out there to the industry at large as a new graduate. Very interesting stuff, to me at least.
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