Digital Art Zone

Sometimes…
I hit render over and over again just to stare at the little dancing pixels as they merge together.

On occasion I go out of my way to use 3D language in general public just to watch the expressions around me when I excuse myself to go home and skin my newest actor.

Now and then I resist the temptation to ask a perfect stranger if I can feel their shirt because I think I can duplicate the fabric qualities in Photoshop.

When somebody asks me what I do for a living, I look them straight in the eye and tell them I support the adult entertainment industry.

~Bluebird

I hear you. i used to get funny looks when i talked about rendering, CGI and mesh, but since i now have a DA account, I get different looks when i can point them to actual images, LOL.

Now where is that adult entertainment work you mentioned????

I went out for a drink with my older brother and bumped into an old friend.  The friend and I spent 5 minutes catching up - we were both IBM mainframe programmers.  My brother later told our mum that he spent those 5 minutes in a state of total confusion an acronym overload

I have stopped telling most people I work with computers (mainly as that is now true as I am unemployed) but mainly due to one time in the past I did it was to an aquaintance who ran a restaurant.  I later helped him sort out a problem with his home computer.  A little later he brought over another customer and introduced me as ‘the person who can help fix your computer ...’

I tried explaining what it is that i do once, I was telling someone how I use 3D renders that use ray tracing to create mat paintings to use as digital backgrounds for my films. The next question was “if Ray is tracing and Matt is painting, what is it that YOU do?”

LycanthropeX - 01 December 2012 09:38 PM

I"if Ray is tracing and Matt is painting, what is it that YOU do?”

.
That’s hilarious

LycanthropeX - 01 December 2012 09:38 PM

“if Ray is tracing and Matt is painting, what is it that YOU do?”

LOL!

Its funny, when I explain what Daz studio to someone who is totally uninformed on 3d/cgi, I usually receive a blank expression followed by the question, “I dont quite understand, what do people actually do with it?” or “what is the point exactly?
LMAO.”

I gave up trying to tell people what I do. If they even had a clue what 3D was 90% would go Toy Story or Ice Age, or some other 3D toon movie. I would give up and say yes stuff like that. They never understand that Spiderman , Batman or the Avengers movies were full of 3D. To them that’s all those new Special Effects.

SimonJM - 01 December 2012 09:03 PM

I went out for a drink with my older brother and bumped into an old friend.  The friend and I spent 5 minutes catching up - we were both IBM mainframe programmers.  My brother later told our mum that he spent those 5 minutes in a state of total confusion an acronym overload

I have stopped telling most people I work with computers (mainly as that is now true as I am unemployed) but mainly due to one time in the past I did it was to an aquaintance who ran a restaurant.  I later helped him sort out a problem with his home computer.  A little later he brought over another customer and introduced me as ‘the person who can help fix your computer ...’

I can so relate.  Years ago I was friendly with a girl from Australian that was here on a 6 month Visa, who met and eventually married her husband, who just happened to be in the MIS department in a large midtown law firm at a time I was working with the MIS department of a large downtown law firm.  Whenever we would get together, he and I always drifted to tech talk.  One particular evening we had gone out to eat with her cousin, who was here visiting from OZ, and again her hubby and I were deep in a tech discussion, when all of a sudden she raised her voice so that everyone at the surrounding tables could hear, with the comment “See what I mean? I can’t go anywhere with them that I don’t eventually feel left out and alone!”

Needless to say, we both heard her and apologized though, when I looked at her across the table, I could see she was laughing when she said it.  ~shakes head~

I have never really had a problem explaining my 3D hobby to people I meet, maybe it is because I live in the Los Angeles area and people here have a pretty good grasp of how 3D affects different local industries: design, architecture, animation & film, medical, etc. In fact I have turned on a few to get into the hobby themselves or expose it to their children. I have even had people come up to me when I am out taking photos to create IBL maps for the UberE; most seem very interested in the whole virtual environment when it is explained to them.

I gave up trying to explain ANYTHING I do… people think I’m crazy and I’m mostly fine with that.
My professional job description is model maker… so people think I build plastic model kits all day… I just gave up and tell people “prototype fabricator”, and let them figure that out on their own (prototype fabricator = potato fabric maker)...
The 3D model making that I do, 90% of the people I know… I would not bother explaining it to… so I just say I do “computer graphics”.
Its easier that way.
I’ve found out in reality, most people don’t actually care what anyone else does… their job, their hobby, their sport is the only really hard/important job, interesting hobby or cool sport, so basically you can tell them you are a coyote spanker and 96.8% of the time they will just nod and except whatever it is you just said or they think they heard (coyote spanker= car salesman) and then forget it 30 seconds later… “you said fighter pilot, right”... uh… yeah… that one.
Someone actually said to me “You are the heart surgeon… right?”
Uh… yeah… but we like to call it heart recombobulation expert…

i’m going to add coyote spanker to my resume

It its an old and respectable career.

cipher_X - 02 December 2012 12:12 PM

I have even had people come up to me when I am out taking photos to create IBL maps for the UberE; most seem very interested in the whole virtual environment when it is explained to them.

That is actually the only time I ever really bother to explain what I’m doing, though not for IBL maps, but for textures… I’ll be taking photos of say a walkway or a retaining wall at the park…

————-
Passerby: What are you taking pictures of?

Me: The concrete, I’m going to use it for computer graphics…

Passerby: Ooooh…?... How?

Me: I turn them into something called seamless textures, so that basically you can take one image and lay it next to another and not be able to to tell where that one image ends and the other begins, you can then use them to tile a whole surface or image… you can use them as backgrounds or filler textures in images or as in my case to create surface textures on 3D models…

Passerby: Ooooh… do you have to wear the glasses?

Me: It’s not that kind of 3D, more like video game models…

Passerby: Oh, you use them when you play video games? My nephew plays video games… land of warcrafts or something like that…

Me: No, I don’t play the games, I make things that could be used for them like, well… mostly buildings and props… though I have no idea if anyone has used my models in a game… mostly it’s for illustration, like for example they could use it to make a book cover…

Passerby: So you are an architect or writer?

Me: No, it’s called 3D model making, I make 3D models on a computer…

Passerby: But you said they are not 3D? How do you turn them into 3D…?

Me: They are 3D in the sense that they can be manipulated and viewed on all three axis within a virtual world… like… if I make a table… you could then view that table on a computer as though it were a real object you could look all around it…

Passerby: Oh holograms! Like on my credit card or in the star track wars!

Me: No, those are totally different, holograms are don’t have textures….

Passerby: In star track wars they could talk and kill people…

Me: Those kind don’t exist yet, thats just a science fiction story…

Passerby: So I don’t get it, what are you going to use the pictures for?

Me: Pornography…. it’s for people who are really into concrete. I’m a pornographer for really sick people who LOVE cement and poured stone products… it’s a whole segment of the industry…

Passerby: Ooooh… I see… thanks. Bye!

Passerby: HEY, SHIRLEY!.... HE’S JUST SOME PERVERT TAKING PICTURES OF THE WALL!

Shirley: I told you maurice!
————-

I think L.A. is mostly an exception… I have had that sort of conversation in the heart of NYC, feet from technical collages with people of the age where “oh my freakin’ lord, how have you managed to avoid even accidently learning this by now” is what you want to scream at them…
I’ve even tried explaining it to teen agers who play video games and I’m not sure they quite get it… Every now and then someone does understand, but mostly I get a perplexed look.  The same one you see on a squirrel when they try eating a rock they think is an acorn.

LycanthropeX - 02 December 2012 02:59 PM

i’m going to add coyote spanker to my resume

Hey! OW! Knock it off! OW!

...In Portland I tend to get a slightly better reaction when I mention I work with 3D CGI.  Most will say “Oh like what Pixar does” or “Like the effects they did in [insert name of big blockbuster film here]”.  Part of it has to do the fact that many Portlandites (at least east of the West Hills) tend to have a bit of “film savvy” along with the fact we still are home to several high profile computer tech and software development firms.

Sometimes I get the “games” question to which I respond I don’t even play computer games.

However One day I made the mistake of using one of my pics as the background wallpaper on my computer at work. Then, the explanation pretty much became similar (save for the concrete pr0n reference) to lordvicore’s post above.

Next they thought if I can do this, I should be able to handle prepress work in Acrobat, InDesign, and other production software. That took a bit more explaining to finally let them know that what I work in has little or anything to so with setting up graphics for publishing and high volume digital print production. Besides, I knew that one of the prepress operator’s duties also included using a very frustrating “tear your hair out” piece of software called Printshop Mail as well as having to deal directly with our sales VP (neither of which I would not wish on even my worst enemy).

They were of course aghast that I did this for fun and relaxation rather than money.