Tip of the Week: September 2006 Archives

Layer organization. Channel management. These two (or four) words represent quite a bit to compositors these days, as comps get bigger and bigger, and supervisors and directors want more and more. There must be a way to organize your scripts and trees into organized bits of information that can be readily adjusted days, weeks, or months down the line. Today I'll explain my methodology of organization, which you may have seen on sites like VFXTalk. If you've delved a bit into my gallery, you'll notice that most of the scripts I present are organized, or at least start off that way, and then they blossom into some kind of freak, mangled tree. Once in a while the tree gets trimmed, and it gets back into some semblance of order. Follow the link below to read how I organize my mind, and how I can get through some of the more difficult comps I've been tasked with.

It's been a while, and I want to get back into talking about Tips of the Week for both professionals and beginners. Some of these tips are focused on one or the other, but today marks another return to Tips of the Week for both. Today I'll be going into networking. This isn't your computer networking via LAN or WAN, this is social networking with actual people. One of the things about this industry, and almost any other industry as well, is your networking and peer group. Visual effects, and filmmaking as a whole, involves a huge number of people. Depending on your interaction with these people and your professionalism towards the job will make people want to work with you and respect you. This is advantageous as you move up the ladder, from either a comper to supervisor, or a runner to manager.