“Where will the fx artists of tomorrow come from? China. India. VFX is a dead end career for anyone in the west.” @dstripinis

David Stripinis - prophet or great career motivator?

Maybe it’s because I woke up with a cold and I’m feeling punchy but that last sentence is just dumb. Maybe he was joking when he tweeted it, maybe he was drunk, I have no idea and I really don’t care.

Maybe he can declare this because he’s at a point in his career where he’ll never have to worry about work and this is his way of letting the up and comers know there’s no more seats left at the VFX dinner table and even those are going away.

Or maybe he’s the one “realist” in our industry who has the balls to say it.

It is true many of the digital repetitive tasking has moved to China/India. Both of the country’s VFX artists certainly starting to become more creative and innovative. Having worked in China and India, I can tell you that the writing is on the Great Wall. Much of our current workflow is moving away.

But here’s my knee-jerk reaction to his short missive on a Sunday morning. Let me preface that I’m cranky, congested and full of meds.

Harshing my Buzz

I think we have enough people publishing articles/commentary on the doom and demise of our VFX industry recently, all of them asking questions with little or no answers. We don’t need to pile on to it, it’s a waste of bandwidth and time. But it’s more disappointing when it comes from someone established in our industry, with an Internet presence that VFX peers and future VFX artists (who might even look to for advice) follow. I think you’re smart enough to know you were firing a starting pistol for some debate. Well done sir.

I don’t have real data on this but I’m going to guess the production of the Avatar shoot probably saw a higher ratio of VFX crew to non-VFX crew on set to that of a normal film. Jim Cameron’s “little” movie created many jobs for us “Right Here in River City”. And you know this because you were on that project for a great amount of that time, working hard, plying your craft, being paid (well hopefully).

And I’m sure for the rest of your life, on your CV, the Avatar credit will be on there, getting you work, helping your career.

Visual Effects is a large encompassing industry now, it doesn’t just live in Post-Production, it’s expanded well before pre-production. It’s one of the first things studios consider in development, before they can green light.

But you know all this.

Yes, Santa Claus exists, he’s just dying.

I came into visual effects before it was really ever considered a valid career option, before there were established classes, courses, degrees in it. I think when most people are interested in a career in visual effects, I can’t think they’re getting into it to be financially wealthy.  I believe these people are motivated by something more. (Is that such a bad thing?)

They are creative, they are dreamers, they are fools (and I say that as lovingly as possible).

The energy we use to wake up the next day after a 20 hour day I have to believe is partly fueled by the dream. The dream of working with great talent, innovating our craft, creating something beautiful and possibly directing great talent on their own story.

I do agree work is moving away to China/India. But filmmaking is at a very exciting time with digital and stereoscopic, there are #VFX jobs that didn’t exist less than 10 years ago. Innovate, Standardize, Commoditize, Outsource. That cycle will continue to happen in VFX for a very long time.

I do think there’s not enough real opinion/commentary from the VFX trenches. While many might appreciate your candid/blunt observation, I think this broad, very declarative, statement is poorly timed.

The VFX industry (in the west) has enough problems, we don’t need one of our own already declaring it dead.

I’ll ask my two twittered questions again:

1. Will you switch careers when u come back to USA?

UPDATE: David’s answer (via twitter): “I don’t plan on ever doing vfx work in the us, no. I don’t think I’ll actually ever be back for more than a visit.”

2. When are you packing up & moving to China or India? (this question is really for all VFX westerners)

UPDATE: David’s answer (via twitter): “won’t. I plan on leaving the industry when that becomes a neccessity.”

UPDATE: for some reason WriteRoom borked a paragraph. Somewhere in there I wrote:

I have never met you David but have close friends that have worked with and they all say you know your stuff. … You’re in a position to have a megaphone to your constituency, just be mindful of that. (and the i said something else, possibly clever, possibly not)…