The Titan, finally done.

It seems each character goes through 3 steps of completion once I hit the modeling aspect of creating it. the first version is usually pretty simplistic and really needs a lot more work, the 2nd is pretty much done and even the texturing and whatnot is pretty good and then I manage to finally get everything as close to perfect as I realistically can on the 3rd pass.

I posted yesterday an almost final version of the Titan, and now I think I've managed to complete it as well as I can. As with most things, I could tweak it forever, but I'd be at this for several forevers with the amount of work ahead of me to finish this movie. There's a small chance I'll make some minor adjustments, but nothing that requires as much work as going from the 2nd pass to the 3rd.

It's not too bad, I wasn't trying for ultra realistic though.

This actually brings to mind, in an odd way, something I was going to write a whole post about, and that is people's general misconception about doing 3D work. Now of course I can't accuse everyone of thinking this, I'd be being just as narrow minded as the folks I'm about to insult.

I've had several instances over the past couple years, where I encountered some pretty blatant ignorance about how much work this sort of thing is - whether it be creating a CG character or animating something. And it's that some folks truly believe this stuff is simple and easy because the computer does all the work.

That's like saying your car drives itself or your fridge does your grocery shopping.

The average person making this statement I can easily forgive, not everyone knows exactly what goes into this sort of work - nor is there any reason why they should. The folks I'm talking about are the ones involved in the arts, and some very specifically in charge of arts grants.

I'll even go so far as to say I don't care if you know anything about doing CG work, but if you're in a position that hands out money to various artistic mediums - how can you be so ignorant about it? And if you don't know, admit you don't know, it's not like it's a crime to not understand something. But don't make a statement so obviously wrong and ignorant to show off what little you really know - you could at least ask before deciding your lack of knowledge on a subject must be the truth.

It's not even so much the money aspect, or ignorance of 3D computer animation, but they would make a decision based on personal opinion. By that I mean, you can't honestly tell someone the moon is made of cheese for a fact when it so obviously isn't. There's a difference between fact and opinion. If you're about to hit someone with your car, your opinion might be they'll bounce off and be perfectly fine, but the fact is you'll probably kill them.

Same holds true here, and I'll even spell it out in case you're still foggy. You might have the opinion that 3D animation is easy, but the truth is it isn't. So where's the justification in passing it off as something simple? If that's what you think, then it's your opinion, but you're wrong - the computer does not do all the work, it's just a tool like any other, without a person with some amount of skill using it, it's just a lump in the corner used for internet porn.

I've even once had a guy who was involved in animation (2D however, and so bad it made those 70's Spiderman cartoons look like a freakin' Miyazaki movie) actually say to me that "it's not really animation". Yeah, tell that to Pixar, but make sure you've got a clear path to the exit.

If you've watched the movie Wall-E and saw the extras, one of them states that if one person were able to do that entire movie, it would take them 462 years. Doesn't seem to me like it's that easy. and I really hope Malice doesn't take that long, if so, I've got 458 years left to go.

Anyway, I've ranted enough - I assume all that made sense. I'm going to sleep.