Frame Runners

I've had a chance to interview a couple guys recently for the open position we have for a 3D Animator. We've been looking for someone to help us mainly in the cut-scene animations. During all the interview sessions, I was shocked with the same question from the animators, they asked me:"What level of quality are you looking for in the animations?" ... hmm... good question... what level am I looking for?? Well... lets put it this way ... I WANT your whole SOUL and BODY transformed into moving characters ... I WANT to see your BLOOD drained totally to create ANIMATIONS that BLOW any living thing into outer SPACE... I WANT YOU to do something so high in quality you will never ever be able to re-create in your whole LIFE... I want all the MAGIC and META Physics in the world to help you CREATE un-believably COOL animations ... I want those DAMN animations to LIVE eternally after you fade ... that's how I want them to be, yes that's the kind of quality we are looking for my dear.

Of course I didn't quite answer them this way, there aren't much talented skills around unfortunately so the words have to be chosen rather carefully, but thinking about the questions, I have come up with some guesses. The animation business around is quite ill unfortunately and the basic mechanism works this way, National TV needs some programs, the Government Agencies in charge with lots of money define projects for smaller companies, since good quality is usually the last focus in these layers and there has to be a measure for project pricing and contracts, the deals are made based on the minutes of produced animations so the smaller studios sign contracts to make x minutes of animations for the price of y per minute. Then its production time, as fast as possible, animators are hired and are paid based on the minutes, or frames, they can produce. The race begins, managers walk all day with their sticks and measure the frames animated at the end of the day by each animator and the grin on their face is proportionate to the size of the output files. The above question completely makes sense in this scenario and the usual answer is probably something to keep the prestige a little but deep down the money chasing manager knows he wants the highest production speed with the lowest quality which will be acceptable by the usually mis-positioned major clients which again will accept the final product based on what they see on their stop watches. Everybody seems to be happy, junk in, junk out, no value generated, ill formed industry, just watch TV to find out.

Now this is not the concept here at Fanafzar dear Frame Runners, we've been on a journey for more than two years now on a boat carried on the waves of love and dedication of every one of the guys, it will remain this way or we'll just let it sink ourselves so please save your questions for the time wasting, useless, cheating jobs with the Frame Runner Seeking managers.

Plane

Bungie Studio has a nice presentation about production for Halo 3 names, "Building Your Airplane While Flying: production and Bungie".

The title very much suits our current situation in the development process for Garshasp also. We are working on features daily which are necessary for the production phase which we are at right away. Of course this is not an ideal situation for a smooth production stage but hey, I guess when there is loads of uncertainty, building the plane while on the air would be the best you can do, if you want to fly anyway.

Business Intelligence

BISolutions which is a Fanafzar partner is holding a Seminar on Business Intelligence. More information can be found here:

http://bisolutions.ir/%D8%B3%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7/tabid/59/Default.aspx

Rolling on

These are exciting days for our Garshasp project. On one end after more than two years, we feel a bit more comfortable with the whole development process and the work pipelines which should exist between different members of the disciplines such as art, design and coding. On the other end the level of art assets developed have risen and on the technical end, interesting features are being added to the game engine, Zorvan and the level editor, Iranvij.

All that would be necessary for this team right now is to be able to continue this progress for a few more months. This progress which includes learning new stuff daily for everyone and whole hearted dedication to hard work and focus with the aim of reaching high quality standards which exist on the triple peaks of passion, talent and professional attitude.

On fire for fire

Firing a football team coach has only one good use, "food for the media", that's it. Its really strange, or maybe not strange at all, that it happens so often lately. A coach for the national team, having so little time to prepare the team, not having most of the players who play abroad most of the time which mostly happen to be ignorant regarding coaches decisions whenever they are present anyway, can't do any magic and changing these coaches with high frequency won't fix anything, well again, except for satisfying the tiny little systems known as the sports media.

Critical Path

Plans have been laid out for the rest of the task for developing Garshasp. There are a few departments which need linear time for their tasks and it would be hard to cut down the time, animation being one. The animation tasks seem to have become the critical path for our project currently and cutting down the ambitious animations we have dreamed for Garshasp or his enemies would be harder than getting bit by a Cobra for us, we can only hope for the arrival of a talented passionate animator showing up at office one day on a beautiful Spring morning, or a recently found clone of our existing animator would be good too.

The teacher again

Lessons I learn from my 9 months old kid.

1. How to put up 100 percent effort.
2. How to focus.
3. How Happiness is always "Right Here", "Right Now".