Hasta La Motion!

How can I bunch up several tool into one custom tool like we do in fusion which is called macro. But I don’t know how can I do that in nuke.. Please help…

Sr Lighting TD

LUMA PICTURES, located in Santa Monica, CA, is on the hunt for an experienced supervisor who has a substantial track record of leading teams technically and artistically through complex visual effects for film. A great eye and stellar problem solving skills are a must. Luma attracts some of the best in the business and many of the talented artists who have worked with us on a project basis have made Luma their home. We pride ourselves on providing a challenging environment with plenty of room to spread your wings and be your best.

Luma is on the hunt for an experienced supervisor who has a substantial track record of leading teams technically and artistically through complex visual effects for film. A great eye and steller problem solving skills are a must.

Extensive production experience in all the following areas: layout, animation, modeling, texturing, rigging, fur/hair, cloth, effects, lighting, and compositing. Must have an exceptional eye for taking shots from conception to final.

Evaluates the creative requirements of a project, determines their technical implications, and makes high-impact operational decisions.

Expected to be attentive to emerging industry technologies and production techniques, and determines practical applications for these advancements in order to improve production.

Strong aesthetic sense; demonstrates ability to make creative and aesthetic judgment calls quickly and under significant pressure..

Ability to manage time and balance priorities, often amidst the pressures of busy, deadline-driven production.

Ability to communicate effectively with a wide variety of personalities, both written and verbal.

– Must understand anatomy and perspective
– Proper modeling and texturing techniques
– Knowledge of rigging
– Complex shader network design and setup
– Lighting, rendering and optimization
– Capable of executing complex multi-layered comps
– General compositing knowledge inside Nuke

Ultimately, the successful candidate has extensive production experience, the ability to identify both current and potential technical challenges, and the ability to command high-level technical strategy across a potentially large (feature-film) production team.

Do not apply if you do not meet all the criteria above.

SUBMISSIONS:
If you think you fit the bill and want a quick response, upload your reel/portfolio and a shot breakdown to www.lumapictures.com. If you prefer to send hard copies, you can submit a resume, reel, shot breakdown and cover letter to:

Attention: Recruiting – Sr Lighting TD
Luma Pictures
1424 2nd St
Santa Monica, CA 90401

Submitted materials will not be returned and no phone calls please.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50….090711Does.asp

DID YOU see Kung Fu Panda 2 and wonder why the best animation we can manage is an unintended horror show in 3D called Bal Ganesh? How is it that in a cultural legacy so vibrant with children’s tales, the only stories we have to tell through animation involve rigid gods without a sense of fun?

Indian animation, which at the start of this decade was predicted to be the next big thing, is facing a crisis. But just as the hype begins to turn sour for Indian animators, comes an interesting experiment in the form of an irascible monkey and a worldly parrot with a penchant for scotch whisky.

To read media reporting on the Indian animation industry is to be buoyed with a sense of rainbow-hued goodtidings, much like the sunny commentary surrounding the country’s GDP. It is reported, for example, that by 2012, the industry is headed for a turnover of $1 billion, comprising a 1 percent share in the global animation industry. Much of it to give way to a home-grown army of animators exercising their (now) matured talent on Indian characters, telling Indian stories to Indian children in an Indian way. The trouble with that narrative is that it’s a decade old and hasn’t come true. Animation is an intense mix of high creativity and hard labour. Behind every frame and every detail is an army of specialists who model, structure, colour, texture, animate, design, imagine and dialogue the characters and the world they inhabit, literally, over years. Given the sheer quantum of labour, it’s no accident that this industry was among the first to open itself to outsourcing.

Related

Suspended Animation
Cutie and the beast
Simple story, simply told

The expected evolution from outsourced labour work for, say, a Walt Disney feature, to the making of a homegrown story, indigenously imagined and told, has not happened.

Neha Shah Pastakhia, 32, has been in the animation industry since 2002. She says, “It’s a factory floor in India with a supervisor foreman who demands how many seconds of finished labour I am going to give him today. There is zero creativity. Forget about original work. Anyone who has tried it has closed down. There is a saturation point to doing someone else’s work and I know many in the field who have been working for more than 10 years and are just waiting to get out.”

The ire lies in the paradoxical nature of the work. Animation, as opposed to other kinds of outsourcing, is an aesthetic art and even in its drudgery requires craft and skill — in fact, the ownership and investment in the creative aspects often fuels the drive to work on all the less creative, but equally important laborious details. So to understand Pastakhia’s position, imagine you are trained as a painter and see yourself in the same profession as Pablo Picasso, but then find that the only job you are allowed to do is to fill in colours on numbered squares belonging to someone else.

Bollywood doesn’t see business sense in animation. The most it does is halve the duration, slash budgets, discount quality and make it mythological

What’s worse is that even the coloured squares are now diminishing. In the aftermath of the economic crisis, animation outsourcing business is not what it once was. The projects have become fewer, the market has become aggressive and India is far behind its competitors.

RAM MOHAN, chairman of Graphite Multimedia and an industry veteran of 54 years, says, “Even in the outsourcing market, we are nowhere close to the competition. Korea and Singapore produce 10-15 seconds of work per day per artist. China produces 13 seconds. The average Indian animator’s output on a high quality work is 0.5 seconds per day.”

This ineptitude is in large part due to training. Says Mohan, “It’s a mercenary approach. Take money and hand out a certificate. Often the guy who’s passed out the year before is your teacher this year. Young people are misguided by the hype surrounding animation. They have been given the impression that all you need is a 6-8 month course in software.”

The training racket churns out an average of above 10,000 animators each year. On an average, the institutes charge up to Rs 3 lakh. In a market environment, where the lowest bids that get an outsourcing project are getting lower still, salaries have fallen (the starting salary of an animator today is around Rs 7,000 as opposed to Rs 11,000 in the early 2000s). Meanwhile, the mid-level animators are losing their jobs to newly minted ones because they will work for less. The result is a stasis four to five years after committing to the profession, living on contracts with no guarantee that others will follow.

Sekhar Mukherjee, head of animation, National Institute of Design, summarises, “The picture is grim. This is a turbulent time for the industry. The hope was for a contentheavy culture. We are once again seeing mythological releases. There is very little original work.”

The way forward for the Indian animation industry is to graduate from a labour camp to original creations. That seems difficult today because Bollywood refuses to see the business sense in backing an animation film that will take three years in the making, cost money, require talent and then fizzle at the box office. The most it’s willing to do is halve the time taken, quarter the budget, discount quality and make it mythological under an ‘also educational’ logic.

Hence the buzz around India’s first indigenously made stereoscopic (you will need glasses) 3D animation feature — Delhi Safari. Slated to be released in India soon, Delhi Safari begins at Mumbai’s Borivili National Park, where a special day turns tragic when human encroachment leads to the death of Sultan — the leader of the leopards. Bajrangi, the militant monkey, is keen on waging war on the humans, but Bagga — a bear who is a pacifist and Bajrangi’s anger management therapist, prevails on the animals to give diplomacy a try. With the aid of the talking parrot Alex — a south Mumbai hedonist — the animals begin their adventure from Mumbai to Delhi, to meet the leader of the humans who sits in a place called Parliament. Made by a small Pune-based animation studio called Krayon Pictures, the film is directed by Nikhil Advani and was four years in the making. Its cost, as a source reveals, is Rs 27 crore. The dubbed English version that’s been made for international release has songs by Vanessa Williams and features Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander.

Given the future facing Indian animation, it would be interesting to see how Delhi Safari, with its original characters and novel script, fares at the box office. Indian animation needs the animals to do well.
Samrat Chakrabarti is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.
samrat@tehelka.com

What are the typical steps needed to take on this? For instance, there are a few studios in Australia, Canada, and the UK that I would love to work at. Do you first apply to the studio and let the studio sponsor you? Or do you apply for a work visa first? Is it easier to apply if you are under 30? I am 33 years old. I have about three years of vfx experience doing administrative/roto/junior comp work.

Thanks.