This is the thread for my progress on the Backhoe Collaboration.
Ask me questions, give suggestions and post some images that may help my progress.
Thanks
@theluthier this topic has been so informative. You should do an article on this for everyone! Including what @adrian2301 and 
dostovel have said.
"Try and keep the roughness less than 0.5, and bump up the glossy". -©2020 adrian2301
Haha brilliantly stated. We Blender nerds felt that in our souls 🎯
ketre I definitely need to "officialize" what's being discussed. Wayne Dixon has been mentioning another freelance / career oriented livestream discussion for a while. If not that then an article..maybe start with an AMA on the forum and turn the answers into an organized article. Something will come about!
@theluthier uhhh question would you ever get said what you needed with all the questions we'd ask? 😝 lol that sounds like a good plan!
@theluthier , on from what ketre said in regards to a topic for an article, quite a long way on if I'm honest, have you or CGC as a whole ever considered a small production piece as a showcase for CGC. There is so much talent on here, I was wondering if it had ever been thought of. Maybe a CGC Online Studio could develop , for promotional pieces. A bit like the backhoe collaboration, but bigger, much bigger. The likes of yourself, @jlampel and @waylow could pick people to do certain tasks and over see it rather than be completely involved as I can imagine you are all busy with all the other stuff you do. So you would oversee a team of modellers, @jlampel would oversee the texturing, shading and lighting team, and @waylow would oversee the animation team. I heard @wesburke is a master at sound effects. There are probably more people at CGC that could be involved, but you get the idea. And of course there would be some MoLE 's to help out.
You could all even ask for a pay rise.
I'd love that!!! I'm sure they could find something small and SIMPLE for me haha
@adrian2301 I think I'm picking up what you're throwing down. It sounds like a pipe-dream I have about what the backhoe project represents as a learning format: Basically real-world production experience as a team.
bit like the backhoe collaboration, but bigger, much bigger.
Umm...I don't know about you but this backhoe project has been pretty huge in my book 😅 Huge in the sense of manhours but not so huge in terms of project scope. But lets say every year CGC hosts a collaborative project (or twice a year depending on scope). The goal is always the same: Realworld collaboration to accomplish a big project together. Sometimes the focus is a super complex model, like the backhoe, the next one is a 5-minute stylized cartoony animation, then its a playable video game production...on an on it goes.
Contributors get realworld experience, something really cool to show for it in the end (usable on a demo reel), and CGC also benefits from the cool thing we create (promotion, our own creative itches scratched). If a bunch of contributors committed we could even separate into teams with one led by me, one by Lampel, one by Wayne. Introduce some friendly competition perhaps. Or as you say, each team focuses on a certain aspect of the production like pipeline departments. The beauty is the details of each collaboration could be flexible an interesting.
Internally we've always emphasized a desire to foster passion projects. A few times we've started them with the idea to generate tutorials but most of them fizzle out due to us being such a small team. The latest example is an FPS project from a few years ago. I kinda see this collaborative concpet with members being an evolution of that idea.
You could all even ask for a pay rise.
I don't quite understand what you mean here..unless you mean this "CGC Online Studio" is a for-hire professional studio of sorts, doing paid work. That's not what I mean but rather the collaborations would be a value-add to the membership.
The issue with such huge projects is commitment, it would be hard for CGC members to be 100% committed. We have seen with the Backhoe people have real life issues to contend with. If not for these issues I would of expected the DOG done by now, or at least in the hands of @waylow for animating.
I think most people dream of making a game or animated movie when they begin learning 3D, including me, and then the reality kicks in and you realise how much work is involved and you will unlikely get very far on your own.
Wouldn't it be great if dreams came true....
Seeing the DOG evolve and turn into a thing of beauty with everyone's hard work is motivation enough for me, but I don't need to go to work at the moment and have the time. If I did then money wins the motivational battle. I will have to go back to work at some point next year, then a project like the DOG would be hard to commit to.
@theluthier ,What I meant by "you could all ask for a pay rise" was the cookie crew getting paid more for their efforts.
Thanks for taking the time to write a great answer Kent. You are right of course, it's myths and bloated perceptions all around. I've only worked as a graphic designer in a single place for 13 years, and that place isn't even art related, it's a bank, but in this country if you have an ok job you better not complain, because you are luckier than most. So I only have that place to draw an image in my head of what a workplace is like and as workplaces go, that hasn't always been good.
When people that think in terms of excel spreadsheets and quarterly numbers, suits, ties and briefcases are the ones who call the shots on art, well, you go through all the cliches: making something that works and looks good only to have it subverted over and over again, changes and changes and endless changes that don't makes sense and yet you end up at the beginning after all the wasted time and energy; trying to move approvals up the chain of command only to have things returned for more senseless requests, awesome things get rejected, ugly things get approved, vague descriptions of what they want, why bother making something cool if it's going to get morphed beyond recognition into something worst every single time and oh so many etc's etc's. After many many years it takes a huge toll and you think, dude is it possible to work on something devoted of opinions? where when it's done it's done the first time and no one has to toss their perception into the mix that cause it to be reset from square one?
So you figure well, this is the only thing I have ever known, I can't be like this in places where everyone is art competent can it? and yeah based on what I have seen here in advert agencies it is actually better, but most of the same predicaments are ever present, from what I can tell it's the nature of the beast when you work in the creative fields. You see it all over the internet, no matter the country. Things are never finished, only abandoned, and to try and get them at a place where they work, many and many iterations are unavoidable. I think where I'm trying to get at is that... that natural process inherent in creativity, I personally now associate it to pain, discomfort, weariness, exhaustion and relate it to the worst and never ending practices of my workplace. I've now realized as I write this, it must be some sort of PTSD... holy hell, this is amazing, sitting here typing I think I've unlocked where that unease comes from. I think I'm gonna go eat pineapple now, I think I've figured it out.
This definitely is a charged topic. That's why I come to CGCookie to get my PTSD some much needed nurture time. Your words are similar in most industries of big business.
Umm...I don't know about you but this backhoe project has been pretty huge in my book 😅 Huge in the sense of manhours but not so huge in terms of project scope. But lets say every year CGC hosts a collaborative project (or twice a year depending on scope). The goal is always the same: Realworld collaboration to accomplish a big project together. Sometimes the focus is a super complex model, like the backhoe, the next one is a 5-minute stylized cartoony animation, then its a playable video game production...on an on it goes.
This sounds first-rate to me, if it can be done while still leaving you guys headroom for continuing to make your awesome courses and other lessons - those are the bread and butter of CGC after all! But I really enjoyed working on the DOG and I'd love to do another project when it's finished.
One unfortunate aspect of the DOG project is that it did seem to lock out some of the more beginner-level and even some intermediate-level members. I'm pretty sure you mentioned at the beginning when announcing the project that it was going to be for more-advanced members; but that didn't stop some less-advanced users from trying, and it was unfun to watch them struggle and end up going silent. It seems to me though that it would be a serious challenge trying to find a project as complex as the DOG in which beginners can meaningfully participate. Perhaps along with the super-complex stuff, it would be good to come up with some simpler projects as well for newer artists. Or the "live classes" you guys have been doing can fill this need, as many of those seemed to fill it quite well so far.
Speaking of courses though - yeah I am SERIOUSLY looking forward to the one you're working on now, @theluthier. If I have to steal a new computer, I am going to be ready when that thing drops!
I can't be like this in places where everyone is art competent can it?
dostovel In my experience, no, it's not all suit-and-tie-soul-sucking-business throughout the creative field. Though I think every place needs some of that in order to sustain itself as a business, art-based entities are usually filled with art-loving people with passions similar to yours. This has been true of all my full-time jobs (small animation studio, large animation studio, CGC) and about half of my freelance jobs. It makes a big difference when you can geek out over a render or technique or new animation / game trailer with coworkers.
It only makes sense that a bank wouldn't care about such things. The grass is greener elsewhere in this respect 👍
if it can be done while still leaving you guys headroom for continuing to make your awesome courses and other lessons - those are the bread and butter of CGC after all!
jakeblended No doubt, pre-recorded courses are our bread and butter here. I doubt that will ever change. So yes these collaborations would have to fit within our course production regimen. In theory instructors could leap frog tasks. Lets say Lampel and Wayne record a course while I run a collaborative project and when finished we switch.
One unfortunate aspect of the DOG project is that it did seem to lock out some of the more beginner-level and even some intermediate-level members
This is true, unfortunately. One absolute truth about teaching Blender is how impossible it is to teach every skill level. We've beaten our brains to a pulp over the years trying to figure out the best way to teach both. I suppose the best way to accommodate all levels is to vary our aim with each collaboration, same as our courses. Sometimes it'll be advanced, like the DOG, and sometimes it'll be beginner-friendly.
Regardless I always want to maintain an open door to all levels for all project. It'll take courage for beginners to participate in an advanced project and patience / empathy for an advanced member to participate in a beginner project. It'd be important to make that clear somehow.
Speaking of courses though - yeah I am SERIOUSLY looking forward to the one you're working on now. If I have to steal a new computer, I am going to be ready when that thing drops!
I'm so glad to hear this! It's still a long ways off so you have plenty of time.
Apologies for commandeering your thread
No need for apologies....
It is all helpful information. 👍