CompuServe Messages

Hello Ara, First, congrats on such a nicely composed message! The punctuation and seperate paragraphs certainly get your points across in a more readable fashion, I think. 🙂 Although I have no way to characterize the animation community at large, I can say that specialist-specific animation groups are certainly not unusual. Back when things were ALWAYS slow, cumbersome, and expensive, it wouldn't be unusual to see many folks involved in a single, relatively short project. Look at some of the credit rolls in some of the early animation-specific reels! And now, I'm quite sure that many houses still have folks who specialize at certain things like direction, modeling, scene set-ups, shading, and animation to name a few. This works, I'm sure, extremely well for many people. Working as a team for a common goal can be a wonderful thing. I must say, however, that for myself, working on only one part of the project all the time would be very sad. I love modeling, and I love animating, and I love setting up the lighting…you know what I mean. Thank God that 3DS allows little guys like me the opportunity to actually deliver finished pieces that have the potential of being professional in every way without spending gobs of money that I haven't even come close to earning yet! The only thing keeping me from exellence is me, and with some hard work and a little luck, I'll keep improving, especially knowing that 3DS will always deliver. As I (hopefully) get more proficient in each of the diciplines, it amazes and excites me to witness the depth of each one, how different they can be, and how each contributes so much to the finished piece. So maybe we should think of 3D animation as a complex, modular entity (much like 3DS itself), that has component parts that can be approached by one person — or a whole team of them. It's all up to the folks' personal conceptual vision of what their animation service should be, and that's a great freedom, I feel, in an industry that is growing seemingly by leaps and bounds! Just my 0.02$. <g> -Alan