Originally Posted by Chock
Anything and everything. I originally studied art and design at college, with the intention of going into going into graphic design as a career (or commercial art as it used to be called back then, which is something of a tradition in my family, being in the days of drawing boards rather than computers). I did do that for quite a long time, but then went off on a weird tangent and ended up as writer for a newspaper for about ten years, via being a sub editor (which if you don't know, is kind of halfway between being a designer and a writer). Funny how you can make odd career twists.
Somewhere in amongst that, I also used to work doing oil painting commissions too, so I do understand the commercial and time pressures one is under when taking painting commissions, and the temptation to 'cut corners' shall we say, although I personally never resorted to plagiarism. Many people do in the professional world though, that I do know from personal experience. For example, I used to see journalists shamelessly sat at their keyboards typing stuff in verbatim from other people's work propped up on their desks and not even batting an eyelid or attempting to conceal the fact that they were doing so, which I thought disgraceful, so that probably puts me at odds with many of the sad realities in the commercial world.
It was in fact the poor standards of writing which abounded and acceptance and approval of those lazy practices that was a major spur to me leaving the newspaper industry in disgust, although I did actually come across an old colleague from that world the other day when training, and she too had left, telling me that it was on its ass as an industry (which I had said at the time I left would happen if they continued being lazy and refusing to innovate), so that's quite pleasingly righteous.
When I left that newspaper job about five years ago, I went into training people, mostly on things such as Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and that sort of thing, which you are probably familiar with, so I have to have all the proper certifications for all that malarkey, but I also train people in copywriting and graphic design too; one week I might be showing some novice how to design brochures with Quark or how to write a press release, and the next week I might be training police photofit artists on how to use Photoshop! It's worth noting that I always try and teach people the correct way to do things too, so if I step back and head shrink myself for a second, maybe that is my own personal crusade against practices I don't approve of!
That's a real mixed bag - needless to say - so that means I end up getting involved in all kinds of creative work professionally, both traditional and computer-based, as well as stuff probably more like what you do, such as video editing 3D modeling and CGI special effects. But when it comes to traditional painting, that's more of a hobby these days, and I tend to like watercolours and acrylics, with the occasional foray into gouache. However, when I make models, I'm invariably too in love with airbrushing acrylics to pick up a paintbrush! I do love my airbrush, although ironically enough, I did buy a lot of fancy paintbrushes yesterday, so the computers and airbrushes haven't won yet.
Currently all that combination of interests and abilities is coming together with a project I'm working on to make a WW1 short film (this being for personal enjoyment rather than as a commercial venture, although it may end up being an example I use for training), and that will include a new offshoot for me personally, in that I'm attempting to write a classical music score for it too, using digital samples of traditional orchestral instruments (film and orchestral music being another thing I am into - sort of 'painting for the ears' if you like).
That means I will literally be doing every job on making that film. All a bit 'gesamtkunstwerk' as the Germans would say, and I'll be the first to admit that with no classical music training, other than on the guitar when I was a schoolkid, I will certainly be looking at what has gone before and using it to learn (which puts us nicely back on the subject at hand), but hopefully there will not be huge sections of Mahler's symphonies snipped and pasted into what I come up with! I wouldn't want to incur the amusing wrath of your investigative comparisons Tim, which incidentally, do look like pretty conclusive - not to mention professionally embarrassing - evidence of some shady practices.
Al
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