Monday, 12 May 2014

Different Work Profiles of an Animator


Most of the people entering the animation industry have the preconceived notion that the industry is all about creating feature films such as Finding Nemo, Shrek, Toy Story, etc and leave quickly when they realize that’s it not so. CG or computer graphics artists therefore land up doing other things rather than making Pixar or Disney blockbusters.

So why do we call them CG artists and not animators then one might ask? An animator is defined as a person whose only job is to animate whereas a CG artists job description entails much more such as texturing, modeling, rigging, lighting or even rendering.

A texturing artist creates the textures or so called ‘skin’ to wrap a 3D model whereas a 3D modeler is someone who creates the 3D models to fill up or populate the scene either with objects such as buildings, people, vehicles, etc. He or she is basically creating a space where he or she can manipulate a mesh to create a coherent structure thereby creating a suitable 3D environment.

An animator does not just have to animate a character. He also has to look into special effects, camera movements, mechanical action, etc; put it simply anything that moves. Whereas a lighting artist, is responsible for setting up the lights for a particular 3D environment for a scene to give it the look and feel to what the animator wants. Lastly, a render wrangler is a person who is in charge or a render farm and makes sure that all frames of the 3D image are generated properly by the computers. These are the various job descriptions of different roles in a typical 3D production house. The most in demand are obviously the animators and are also one of the most competitive jobs to get into.

No comments:

Post a Comment