an etiquette guide for animation clients
Posted by dermot on April 14, 2009 at 10:01 pm
OK; you need to hire an animation studio to bring your animated property to life. Before you start, there are some basic suggestions that you may need to consider:
1. If you’re going to design fully realistic detailed human characters for a Flash project, don’t be surprised when the final animation doesn’t look like the Esurance commercials. Adapt your designs for the medium in which you work, or prepare for bitter tears of disappointment.
2. When the animators ask for things - such as backgrounds, character designs, and artwork - it is advisable to deliver them promptly. Waiting two weeks to deliver reference material is not advised. Not delivering the elements at all is even less advised.
3. If you want the characters’ lines to be separate from the characters’ colours and for both to move independently, it is wise to inform the animators of this before they have animated the entire project.
4. When you tell your animators “Don’t change a THING in our crapulent character design” don’t be shocked when the final product looks exactly like your crapulent character design.
5. Sending your wife to the animation studio to critique minute design “defects” that can be seen by nobody else is rarely conducive to productivity. She may be a graphic designer, but a career in static design does not necessarily qualify one to make sweeping critiques of an animated project. Repeated statements by your wife, such as “I don’t know anything about animation, so I’m not qualified to say why I don’t like your work, but…” are to be avoided.
6. When animation scenes are delivered to the client (you), it is the client’s job (that’s still you) to review them and to suggest changes as the scenes arrive. This is called “feedback”. You would be ill-advised to wait until ALL the animation is complete and THEN demand revisions.
7. When you deliver detailed storyboards to the animators, please bear in mind that those storyboards will not be regarded as mere suggestions (especially when the client is an arrogant OCD Narcissistic son-of-a-bitch). We will follow those boards, to the letter. Comments such as “We thought you’d change everything and not follow the boards” only serve to make you appear like a pissant.
8. It is not advisable to make changes to the character designs AFTER final delivery of all the animation. Perhaps this is the custom on your homeworld, but on Planet Earth it tends to complicate affairs.
9. When, in panic mode, you make the animators visit your studio for an emergency meeting, please provide refreshments. If the meeting runs late - until 8pm for example, it is considered good manners to apologise, and ask whether or not anyone needs food. Pizza is an economical option. So is water. Animators are not your slaves - they are human beings, and some even have homes to go to.
10. When talking to the visiting animators, it is advisable to take a stiff drink before speaking; do whatever necessary to steady your nerves. A grown man should not be on the verge of tears when speaking to the crew.
11. When showing the animators six weeks worth of mysteriously withheld revisions, it is considered a social faux-pas to blame said animators for the withholding of said revisions.
12. Suggesting a series of unnecessary revisions to fifteen scenes, to be followed by yet another series of revisions at an unspecified future date, is the mark of an incompetent. Doing so when the drop-dead deadline is two weeks away compounds the sin.
13. When criticising character rigs that you were shown eight weeks previously, attempting to pretend that you haven’t seen them already only makes you look foolish.
14. When the lead animator is watching the screen, it is indefensible for one of your employees to sit in front of him wearing a large hat, preventing him from seeing the screen. This is even moreso when the hat-wearer contributes nothing to the meeting, spending their time surfing the internet on her laptop. Surely she could be better occupied? Perhaps fetching water, snacks or Pizza for the innocent animators?
Please accept my humble suggestions in the spirit in which they are intended.
2 Responses to “an etiquette guide for animation clients”
Very nicely put! It’s sad, but so true. I believe that most clients would benefit a bit from a lesson on our “workflow”, that way, they would understand why we need things when we do. But, alas, that will probably never happen. Keep up the good work!
What’s so hard about changing everything in your animation after it’s already been finished? Theoretically, you should be able to do it much faster the second time around.
Sex Mahoney for President
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