For those who have not read the first part, please click here

Now, there were a few people who did misinterpret the meaning of the article, and I expected that. I did receive comments about “You’re right Allan, this industry sucks, we’re worked too much” which wasn’t really the point of the article. I think that that’s entirely up to you whether you want to put up with OT and bad working conditions.

But the stories that have come in about changes to studios have been really rewarding to hear about.One of my favorites was actually one I witnessed first hand which a studio I was at arranged for a lady in a pink ape suit to come in and sing her own variation of You are my sunshine to everyone in the studio to boost morale, the lyrics I’m not sure if they were specifically customized to us but basically were that we’re appreciated for our hard work and efforts and keep up the great work. Now I thought this was great, as it really takes peoples minds off of work and gets everyone to laugh for 5 minutes, and probably costs $150 to arrange.

Plenty of people have contacted me to say that there has been drastic changes in day to day work, as well as how they handle a lot of their planning and scheduling etc. How to treat their team and reward them to keep morale up etc.

Evaluating your own daily productivity

Although it is easy to blame management for having to stay back to finish up shots, I think what is really important is for everyone to also look at themselves and evaluate how much work they are getting done day to day. What if, a typical day consists of the artist coming in at 10am, checks email, gets a coffee, catches up with buddies, by this stage it’s 11:30am and then they check their renders and do some work, and then head to lunch, after coming back from lunch at 1pm, browse web and email while their food settles. And then resume work til 3pm coffee break, also game or two of ping pong or whatever else work til 5:30 and head home.

This of course isn’t everybody, and every work environment and individual is different, however in this scenario if we look at how much work got done in a 10 hour day it’s really closer to 5 or 6 hours per day of actual work. Of course noone is expected to be glued to their screen, and I honestly think it’s far more healthy to have breaks and be relaxed. I tend to get a lot of my work done when I’m away from the computer sitting on a couch with my eyes closed (I’ll get to this) but it is important to first of all be aware that if you think it is unfair to work late hours, then you must also look at how much time you are actually getting work done throughout the day.There’s an interesting TED talk by Jason Fried on Why work doesn’t happen at work which brings up a lot of valid points on why most of the time while we are at work we aren’t really getting that much done, and it’s more why we end up going home to get work done, and similarly why most of are “ah hah” moments are probably on the toilet or our drive in to work.

This is because we have far too many distractions AT work, in addition to meetings, and various other productivity stoppers.

In 1991 H. Randolph Thomas did a case study on  effects of scheduled overtime on labor periodically. What’s interesting is that for such a common subject as overtime, there really isn’t much data to track what is productive and what is destructive, and therefore there is no major case studies to demonstrate how destructive this can be.

Effects of Scheduled Overtime on Labor Productivity

Calculating Lost Labor Productivity

The more you reflect on yourself day to day the better you’re going to be at being productive. I regularly look at what I did each day and if I could have worked better, and if I did do something right then how to replicate that more often. The same reason we have post mortem meetings to evaluate how a project went, I will regularly look at what I am doing and how I can work faster and more effectively. Also I look at common problems that happen and how I can avoid them. I plan my days quite thoroughly before they begin, and I really focus prioritizing my tasks and communicating with the people around me. All of these things make for more efficient work. If I don’t think for some reason I will deliver on time, I do not wait to the last minute to let people know, I raise my hand right away so we have time to change our plans.

Something to live and die by is Parkinson’s Law. This really applies to your work day to day, but also sadly it can apply to the reviewing process of getting shots approved if clients have all the time in the world! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law

When you need to deliver for a deadline, usually you’re able to pull absolute miracles – knocking out work faster than usual, paying attention to what’s going on, chasing up renders to the compositors as soon as they’re ready, and checking if they need anything else. You’re really on the ball, making sure everything gets done. Most of the time we do not all work like this, however when we do, it’s amazing how much we get done. And this essentially is Parkinson’s Law.

What if you work like this all the time? I try to as often as I can, I usually have one goal in my mind when I walk into work in the morning, and that is to try to get out of work on time. So I am usually working as fast as I can and hard as I can.

It is unfair that artists get asked to work late hours to meet specific deadlines, and usually are not compensated for this. However, at the same time, most CG work places tend to be pretty relaxed most of the time, and sometimes this encourages people to get a little too relaxed with their time.

The reason I wanted to write a second part to this article was because as I previously mentioned, there’s two sides to a coin. Personally one thing that I notice a lot when I look at almost any person, whether they are in the vfx industry, or whether they are in banking or literally any field is what sets the more successful people apart from everyone else, who do great at their job but just do not have that extra “thing” that sets them aside. What I realize, is that those who really accel  at what they do, usually are the ones who have more motivation and hunger to succeed. Not only in their work, but generally day to day in their life. The reason I bring this up, is because I think that everyone really needs this, and that is to look at ways to do things better, faster, more efficiently. I tend to make this a game day to day, looking at ways I can work more efficiently and get my work done, looking at understanding at the end of a project, what worked and what didn’t work on it, and how we or myself can do things better next time. I think this is a positive outlook to have and you begin to look at almost everything a little differently.

If you find issues with your renders, and then go and fix them right away – then its not as bigger deal. Producer asks why your stuff isn’t there yet you can say “I noticed a is take in the renders, I’ve fixed the is take it is now re-rendering it will be done soon” this shows initiative, you’ve gone and fixed the issue without anyone else needing to detect it. This is better than them coming back and saying your renders are wrong. Or like I mentioned, finding out after it is too late.

Usually I will submit a render, and then go and do a test render of a single frame, at least now my render is on the farm so it’s doing it’s thing, but then I can basically render a single frame that might take a few minutes to render, but at least then it will tell me whether I might have rendered with the wrong render layers, or there’s issues with the alphas, or other things that I mightn’t have picked up. If your renders are pretty intense, you can always turn off GI and motion blur, reflections and other things that are likely not going to stop you from viewing noticeable errors in your render.

If I do in fact find a problem, then I can simply kill my render and re-submit it. This is important as it saves time, and also if you are rendering something that is incorrect, it’s better to kill it sooner so the farm isn’t wasting precious cycles that another artist could be using.

I will usually keep an eye on my renders too, that way if they are erroring out, then I can notice ahead of time, rather than waiting for someone to tell me after it has been crashing the farm for a good hour by starting and quiting my jobs. Also when 10-20 frames are rendered, I will try to check those rendered frames as a way to check whether my renders do in fact look correct.

These all might seem like a lot of work, but honestly they’re all background tasks that you can do while you are working just to keep an eye on things and make sure your work is in fact rendering correctly.

This again might seem like a lot of work, but in fact it’s so easy to work this way, and it saves me from having to store too much information in my head, or leave room for making mistakes. Because I update this excel sheet with where my shots are at, and continue to go about my day. Also if compositors or producers need to know the status of my work, they’re able to just load up one of these sheets and look. Compositors will love you for this once they get used to your process, and producers with LOVE you for this, because essentially you’re speaking their language.

I am a victim of this at times, and it’s amazing when you finally sit down with a list and start checking things off, that they actually DO get DONE!

Essentially you want 2 primary goals you need done, and then you will put those that are really crucial for that day on a side list. This might be emails you need to send, chores like going to the post office etc. But group all of these up so that you’re doing them in a more affective manor. Ie. if you have several phone calls to make, and emails to write, errands to run out of the office, group them together. Notice how you’re able to knock emails out faster when you’re writing lots of them? Rather than writing one and then making a phone call and then writing the next, or constantly ducking out of the office all day long when you can get most of it done in one trip. The idea is to group things together, but more importantly get rid of them so you can have a longer period of focus on your main 2 primary tasks.

[ Simple, but effective – yet most people remain unorganized]

The idea here is that you want to be in the zone, you want to be able to focus for a solid 3 hours at least, each day on one or two major tasks, and see them through. So that day you write down the two major things you want to achieve, and you set out to get those done. Everything else is secondary and should be done in your downtime, ie. do not start writing those emails you listed on your list to write, while you are animating or comping your shot. Wait until the shot is submitted for review, and then go do these things. Or better yet, come in earlier and get those things done and out of the way so they’re not your problem anymore.

Now how can you tell if you have written too much on your list of things to do? Here’s an interesting thing to try. Write down a realistic and slightly generous amount of time it will take to do each task. Writing an email is usually a 5-10 minute task, but creating a fireball for a specific shot could be 5-6 hours, phone calls can sometimes go for 30 minutes etc. So if you have 5-10 things on your list, you might soon realize you have 2-3 days worth of work written down here. This is a good way to disqualify things off of your list. It’s also a great practice as you can quickly realize you might have 2-3 peoples workloads on your to do list, and then you might need to notify your producer to ask for tasks to be taken off of your plate. For me learning to estimate time more accurately is very important, but it’s also fun. And the more you do it the better you get at judging how long something takes, you begin to realize things go wrong and you compensate for this.

The hardest part of having a to do list, is actually marking things off of it. I still do this too, pushing items in my calendar forward a few days after I didn’t get to them the day before. It’s better to learn to schedule tasks more realistically so you know you actually can get these done. A brilliant fiend of mine showed me his productive chart he has, which literally is a chart which outlines each day how successful he was at getting things done day to day. His game was to keep it at 100% consistently, in other words, he would never overburden his day with unrealistic expectations, because he knew it would lower his success rate when he wasn’t able to deliver.

It also helps you work with estimating how long your tasks take to do, if you are finding you think a shot is going to take 3 hours to do and it takes 6, then it will help you realize this and better gauge your estimates better, which helps when you agree to do something, how long it actually will take you to do.

It’s been something I’ve done for probably two years now, and it’s changed my life. I’ve been hesitant to really mention it to people as it seems a little odd, however now a lot of colleagues of mine are doing exactly the same thing, and getting more work done.

I’ve also found this works with almost anything, there’s times where I might think I do not have time to write an email, or clean my apartment, because I’m far too busy, but by setting a stop watch to 20 minutes, I know I consciously have 20 minutes to do this task, so I’m more willing to donate time to doing this if I know there’s a set amount of time I’m willing to spend.  And surprisingly all of these tasks I put off, usually take a 5th the amount of time I expect when I stop procrastinating about them and actually do them.

The idea here is not to block you from having fun and literally being tied to a ball and chain. But it is ways to make you more aware of working faster and more efficiently. This way rather than doing OT you can potentially go home early!

The reason this is suggested, is that notice how when you come into work on a weekend, or stay back at night, you seem to get more done? Because work is less busy, there’s less distractions and less chaos in general. So what if you came in at 8am instead of 10am? Now, when you get in, rather than almost instantly having to check your renders and being whipped off to dailies, followed by chasing up shots and fixes before then lunch, and dozens of other distractions, you actually get to come in early, no one else is there, and sit and review your renders. And if there are errors, then you have time to actually fix those renders and resubmit to the farm before dailies, better yet, in most cases the farm is free at this hour because no one else is using it, so you have the entire farm to yourself to fix these things. And that way you’re able to tweak your work further before the review. But more importantly there are far less distractions, no one is buzzing around or stressing you out, you have time to focus and get things done without the chaos that usually pursues in the mornings. Better yet, traffic is usually much lighter earlier in the day and potentially if you are leaving 2 hours earlier, then traffic is lighter on the way home. Leaving early usually isn’t going to be a problem, as most reviews and meetings are done by 3 or 4 that day, and it’s usually the time of day that peoples energy and productivity begin to sink anyway.

However most producers and managers are not going to like this idea, just because there is potential for something to be overlooked if they agree to it. But just sell it to them as something to trial out for 2 weeks and see if you are in fact more productive during that time, and when they see that you are being more productive, push to make it a permanent change.

On Superman Returns, myself and another colleague used to try to beach each other to work each morning, at a fairly insane time of 5 or 6 am, because it meant we were in sync with the other studios in LA and Canada, as well as giving us time to get stuff done before meetings and shooting sessions us away. Plus it meant I would feel less guilty about having extended lunches if I wanted to watch a movie at the theater in the public area of the studio…

This is a huge thing I learned when I was young, was to begin to look at your work from the perspective of the client or producer, rather than as yourself. The more you put yourself in the position of the people who review the final output, and from their perspective whether this is what they would want, rather than what you think is good, the more likely you are able to get an idea as to how it should look.

I’ve witnessed artists get emotional and refuse to change their work after there’s been a rather crazy design change to what they’re doing, because they think it will ruin the shot. The truth is, that you’re hired to deliver a shot specifically to what the client requested. So if they want to make this change that you feel isn’t really suitable, then sadly this should be something you need to do without argument. After all you’re being hired to supply a service, the same reason if you were asked to paint a house pink, you’re not going to refuse because you disapprove of the color choice. It’s better to realize this now, a wise bit of advice I was given 20 years ago was “if they have the money, then I sure as hell have the time!”

Now keep in mind, if you disagree with the direction they’re going, once the shows over you can always re-render out your work how you like it and throw that through the comp, so you have the look you’re after for your reel.

One really interesting thing I noticed when I’m reviewing animation or most peoples work and I want to make sure the motion is correct, is I will tend to review the work either at 6 fps or 60fps. Your eye tends to pick up whether the motion is really real at extremely slow or fast speeds. More so for the higher frame rate, as looking at it too many times at the normal frame rate after a while it becomes impossible to tell the difference, but watching at higher frame rates you tend to pick  up whether the motion is really correct or not.

I pretty much carry my Bose QC15 headphones with me everywhere I go. I sometimes go as far as to sleep with them on, especially on flights. They’re comfortable and noise canceling, the sound quality is great and they’re easily portable and very durable. I find now that I concentrate far better with these on, even if I’m just not listening to anything I can have them on to block out 90% of the sound around me, peoples voices disappear and if you’re in a city like New York or Chicago with heavy traffic and constant road work outside your window, then these puppies really help you focus. In addition to this, I wear them a lot when I don’t want to be disturbed as people are less likely to bother you about minute non work related things when you have your headphones on, so there are times of the day I will put these on as a way to prevent people from interrupting me. Much easier than having a do not disturb sign on the back of your head! Other times I’ll shoot those links and other things I need to follow up to my email, and then I can review them on my laptop or phone on my way home.

There are times that I need to think about how I’m going to approach a shot, or tackle a lot of stuff, or just plain blow off some steam, and depending on your personality type, some people find it easier to think on their feet, others with their eyes closed etc. I’m lucky that most of the time when I’m working with others I’m able to go lie down on a couch or even the floor without anyone getting upset that I’m not working. Most people are aware that you’re obviously lying down because you’re exhausted or you’re thinking about something, or both. On Priest this would be something I would do a lot, with a pretty loud work environment, I would sometimes go lie down on a couch in another room for 5-6 minutes and think about how I’m going to do a shot, and then come back to my desk with a clear plan, which otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to concentrate enough at my desk to do. Other people tend to want to go on a walk, or talk to themselves to help this process, or go into a confined space such as a bathroom stall to think (hey, when you’re under stress we all have our quirky ways of dealing with stress and thought processes!) I’ve spoken to a lot of people about how they tend to concentrate and deal with stress, and these are the most common. Others are listening to classic music and similarly, metal. Talking to yourself oddly can work very positively as you’re able to basically have a discussion about how you want to do something, and essentially trick your brain into giving you some sort of solution. You’re just going to look really weird while you do this of course!

The element, is a great book written by Ken Robinson, Ph.D. which describes a lot of really successful artists and individuals and their paths to success, but more importantly the different ways to which we think and learn and apply our individual skill sets.

The Element by Ken Robinson, Ph.D.

This is one of my favorites, because everyone else seems to adapt to this approach almost instantly after they see it. I tend not to work with high contrast colors. Initially this came from years ago reading that green tends to help you concentrate more, same as with most libraries lamps are green as it’s easier on the eyes and causes less strain. Cooler colors tend to be easier to read and focus with. So whether I’m working on writing a book, or working in 3D, I always change my colors to be easier to work with. So as I previously mentioned, it seems almost viral, people comment my colors are weird, and then I explain to them why, and then within a day most peoples color schemes seem to change as well.

Because it makes so much sense, reading black and white just plain hurts the eyes, high contrast colors tend to make it harder to read, which is why people prefer a book lover reading their monitor (I conformed to black and white for this article against my better judgement).

I could take a step back and review my work, think about it,figure out solutions. I could also lean back and close my eyes and think about how I’m going to do a task, or take a break at will. It gave me an opportunity to step back and look at the big picture, and when I come back to my desk I would have a solution. This is something I wanted to try, and it’s been a positive solution to giving me a chance to take a break without going far from my desk, and get out of my work posture, and my locked train of thought.

Some interesting articles related to concentration, productivity and rest are listed below, primarily one from a sleep researcher at Harvard has written an article on sleeping on your thoughts etc. cna help your brain boost productivity by making connections and processing those thoughts more effectively while you sleep.

Prototype

Sleep on it’: Scientific American

But this is no news, as to why Google employees amongst many other more successful and radical companies are essentially forming new age siestas

Read about – Google Sleep Pods

One of the key things that can get in the way at times is too many reviews. If every day you’re trying to get stuff out for a review, it’s harder to really make much progress. And it’s up to you to politely approach your producer and supervisor and let them know that you are busy trying to get everything done and lets organize an official review later in the week at X time. Until then I want to keep my head down and get everything done. This way you’ve basically freed yourself up to work focused without any distraction however you’ve locked yourself into delivering stuff for that day. By showing people schedules and what you plan to have done by certain dates it will give the more comfort as they know what to expect. At the same time talking in the same language as producers and supervisors is good too – spreadsheets, schedules and shared documents they can keep track of makes you favorable over other artists and shows you can work the same way they are used to. “Speak the producer language”

What if you are given requests that you think are a little silly, and from your experience on that project you are pretty confident that they aren’t necessary. Speaking your mind about this is not going to do you any good, however the best way to approach requests that aren’t high priority or are just outright insane, is to just agree to them, but say that you have a lot on your plate to get done first, however once all of these other tasks are done, you’ll look at what is left for the bonus round, and start focusing on getting these additional changes done if time permits. It makes sense to deliver what you’ve originally been asked to do, before you go and spend all this extra time on something that probably isn’t going to be too important, rather than spend all the time on that one task and then not deliver anything at all.

Set a cap on peoples changes : When you initially submit something for review, I always urge artists to show variations rather than just one example. This way we can pin point which one might be too much or too little. I always tend to apply the formula of <what they asked for, what you think looks best, and then absolutely too much>. This is a good formula, because if someone says “I want that explosion 10% bigger” and you go and make it 10% bigger, they might say I want it another 10% bigger, and then another, and then another, and then later they realize it’s far too big when they see what originally was. So usually it’s better to show what they asked for, then what you think is good, then one absolutely insanely wrong. So they can see how much is too much, and then you have a set limit of how far you can go with this. Rather than infinitely changing it. Plus the one you show them and the one they designed, they’re most likely going to like one or the other more. So it’s the fastest formula for getting work approved on the first or second take.

At the same time, check your renders before you submit them to your compositor. As I just mentioned, in some situations your compositor might be too busy or just not get around to comping your stuff. So if you assume that you’ve sent your renders to them and your job is done, think again. It takes 5 minutes to check your renders to make sure they work, but if you don’t, and they assume your passes are fine, and then when they go to comp them on the last day of a job, and your alphas are all wrong, or you just plain rendered your shot from the wrong camera, then you’re to blame for this and you’ll have no time to fix it. So check your renders before sending them to the compositor. And then you have time to fix these errors before anyone else gets to see them!

Part of my process is usually I try to finish my day at 5:30 instead of 6, and I spend the last 30 minutes writing emails I need to, to producers and others. I also plan my day for tomorrow while it’s all fresh in my head. And I also send an email to the compositor, producer, supervisor about where my passes are, and the status of my work. This is good because it covers your ass by showing people what you’ve done that day, and also might save you getting called into work at 3 in the morning because they can’t find your render passes. The better you communicate with everyone the easier life will be. I also will usually mention what I’m planning to do the next day. This way if there are some higher priorities, they can let me know before I start in the morning. It also shows initiative, so again people will appreciate how you work. No one is ever going to complain about getting an email from you with important information like this, if they don’t want to read it, they can delete it, but they’ll definitely appreciate it!

All of this will be appreciated and show a lot of incentive, it also means that in the rare situations that you do work with people who aren’t doing their job, and want to lay the blame on you then your ass is covered. There’s nothing negative that comes out of this, and usually takes up just a few extra minutes of your time.

During rounds, or dailies, if you get feedback on something, usually there’s a production assistant or vfx coordinator around taking notes, otherwise ask the vfx sup or whoever is giving these changes to email you directly with what they just said. “Cool, can you email me what you just said?” It’s important to do this, as then if they tell you to make drastic changes to your work, if they then have to email you – it will give them a second chance to really think about what they’re saying while translating it into an email, because sometimes comments are made on the fly and later they just plain don’t make sense. But also it gives you a second chance to interpret what they are saying, in case you actually had a completely different idea in your head of what they wanted based on your discussion. So this is a good chance to double check that you are both on the same page. Lastly it covers your ass if you are going to go make drastic changes and they say it’s not what they actually asked for, then you can refer to the email as to what you were asked to do.

Some of these things might seem like a lot of extra work, but try them out, honestly they will take a few extra minutes of your time and become second nature after a while, however they will help you to incorporate them into your process without thinking, so you become more and more responsible, organized and productive without much thought or effort.

I’ve gone as far as to say I do not have time to do my time sheets or go to the post office or to lunch etc. and had other people take care of these tasks for me, because in the greater picture, those small distractions are less important than me delivering a shot. Now of course I’ve approached these issues in the correct way, but if you are doing a high priority task, it isn’t necessarily a bad idea to see whether other things that might get in the way can be handled by someone else so you can keep productivity up.

Same goes if you are under resourced, you might need more computers to deliver your work – it’s better to let people know this so they can accommodate it. Or if you have minor tasks that other artists can take on, such as exporting your stuff to FBX for the compositor, and converting your passes or transferring files etc. If you have more important things to do, evaluate whether you’re the best person to be taking on the smaller tasks, it’s not being lazy it’s being efficient. And as I mentioned before, communication is key here, keep everyone in the loop.

In Closing

Writing the second half of this article has been a lot more difficult than the first, part 1 was aimed purely at the way we work and what works and what doesn’t. Party 2 is much more focused on ourselves and really taking responsibility for getting work done, and looking at ways to expand and at least motivate people to go out there and find ways they work more effectively. I originally collected most of these notes over the past two years, as I’ve become quite OCD about monitoring successfully and destructive patterns with pretty much every type of way I work, but recently I started to put this together and realize there’s literally too much to fit into one article without it become too big to bare. So I’ve just put in here a select few approaches to day to day work that I think are applicable and that yield the most positive results. Most of what I’ve covered here are the approaches that I’ve shared with others and seen others be able to practice time and time again, and not everything in here will be useful for everyone, however hopefully you will be able to select some practices that will apply to what you do and help improve your productivity overall!

-Allan McKay

Los Angeles, CA

January 2011