Demoscene people are the guys I'm most jealous of. Not some linux kernel maintainer of some fancy filesystem. Nah, but the things that can transport you into an entire new universe in your head.
Keep in mind that the Blender Open Movies are made by professionals who've been doing what they been doing for a long time, and there is a whole team making those, with roles specific to the area.
I don't think you could single-handedly create something like that at the same timescale as they created it. They basically have made a proper studio at this point and they're fine-tuning the workflows and processes of Blender by doing these movies.
So don't feel bad if you never would be able to create this alone, it is a team effort after all.
I can be a 5x when I really love what I'm doing and I'm surrounded by fantastic people that I love being around. But I think I need another 10 years of experience to get to 10x, then maybe another 20 years to get to 20x.
That said, the market is evaporating. Almost everything has moved ~to India~ [e: abroad] and there are barely any jobs left in USA, and those that do exist are being fought for by the many folks who have been recently laid off stateside. Sounds familiar...
Sounds like a nice field to work in! I didn't realise it used maths to that extent.
Would you have any recommendations for someone of a linear algebra / programming background if they were interested in this field?
With that out of the way, I think there are several avenues to get involved. Picking up a graphics engineering book, or learning OpenGL/Metal/DirectX will make you valuable as a realtime engineer.
But otherwise I would recommend finding an open source project and contributing to it as a way to build up the repertoire that you can use to apply for jobs with. Blender is an excellent place to start, but so are any of the projects under the academy software foundation at https://www.aswf.io
Getting more into the character animation side, you can look into Rigging, which is the process of setting up the armatures that move the characters. There are also things like simulation for cloth/hair etc...
Blender is a good place for a lot of them.
Interesting that you say that technical art roles don’t need a reel always assumed otherwise.
But film/games will still pay well. Just not as well.
As for needing a role, well it depends. Tech art is a very wide role with very little definition. But also those skills apply to engineering instead of tech art as well.
Engineers don’t need reels. Tech artists would if they’re more on the art side (shaders, characters) but less so on the tools side.
Canada is a larger competitor to the US market than anything else, and very few companies have Indian outsourcing for feature/TV animation. Its more prevalent for VFX jobs, but even then many studios still have a large presence in North America/Europe.
Studios like wild brain, titmouse etc are all North American based, while most feature animation is a mix of North America (Pixar, Dreamworks, Disney, Sony) and Europe (Illumination, Skydance)
I know for a fact that several of the studios you list as "North American" have recently laid off almost all their animation staff in favor of Indian vendor studios. Not feature, perhaps. But TV people do work too. Or did, rather.
You made two claims, that the jobs have been laid off (correct) and moved to India (incorrect). The layoffs are parts of market changes due to the strikes and production cuts before then. The implication that it was caused and will lead to outsourcing is not borne in reality for feature/tv animation.
But yes several studios are hiring still. The job fair at the recent Spark conference in Vancouver had several studios open. Feature and Tv animation hasn’t seen the slowdown that other areas of the market have and will bounce back faster.
It would appear you have taken your own experience, which I'm sure is vast, and made the mistake of assuming it applies to every studio. I can tell you that it does not.
I can also tell you that the job market is quite dry indeed, and that studios that were attempting to headhunt just months ago will now no longer even reply to applications.
It appears you're taking your own internal biases about India outsourcing and applying it more expansively.
I didn't say the job market isn't dry. Again, I'm pushing back on the conflation of layoffs and jobs being offshored to India. Canada and Europe are much bigger source of offshoring for the US. However that isn't to say studios aren't hiring which was what you asked about, and I answered. It's definitely a lot lower, but it's not due to outsourcing. There's so many other factors that I already mentioned (lowered production, strikes) that play in first. Animation is affected to a much smaller degree and several studios in Canada are hiring in reasonable numbers at the moment.
You can do with that info what you will, but it sounds like you don't actually want to hear an answer that contradicts your own and are doubling down on something that is not borne out of the reality of where the work is being done right now. It's especially exasperating because you're not even involved in said industry, outside of your partner, whereas I am actively every day.
Largely, the main jobs that get outsourced to India is stuff like match move and rotoscoping. There's very little Core Animation, lighting or rendering work for most of the major studios done there, with the exception of MPC
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/breaking-dreamworks-ani...
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2011-oct-29-la-fi-ct...
They set up their Indian studios in 2008 and have had portions of their work done there and in China (now Pearl) for years now. They haven't increased that outsourcing within the last few years, and as I mentioned have been reducing it so your points regarding the current state of things isn't very valid. It also never resulted in job reductions in North America, but rather more films per year.
In fact, Dreamworks is a key example of a studio that is outsourcing their work to Canada, which is what spurred their most recent layoffs: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/studios/dreamworks-shifting-away...
And so what if I don't work directly in the industry anymore? I'm very involved in it still, and my partner is still in the industry. And we did work in the US for several years, so your point is moot.
Is it possible that your girlfriend is not a reliable source of information here? Because I have multiple friends who are fairly senior at both DWA Glendale and Bangalore, and coupled with the news, you're clearly not lining up with anything they're saying. And if she's laid off, then she's no longer in the industry either, so you can't really claim that as a statement piece either.
I would really examine your own biases here as to why you're so hellbent on focusing on India here, and not any of the other countries that are actually taking the jobs away from them. Again, Canada is a MUCH bigger source of job diversion for the industry than India is.
I don't know why I'm debating this with someone who is so far removed from anything actually going on.
This is what's happening. These are the facts. If you refuse to accept them, that's your own internal biases, not mine.
Anyway, agreed there's no point arguing with someone who has no actual roots in this industry. Have a good day, I hope your partner finds work soon, but maybe don't place the blame where it doesn't belong.
We took all their work, the whole experience was bittersweet, some of the folks there took it well others less so. But I can say that the project itself was reaching a stagnating phase where not much new work needed to be done, and we were mostly doing maintenance/bug fixing. The company itself wasn't doing anything innovative either and there wasn't leadership to put the Canadian guys skills to good use.
Eventually most of those guys were hired by Intel and all got to work on exciting new technology that none of us were qualified to do.
I think this is more or less okay when it happens, if a company does massive layoffs I take it more as a sign that they are not producing much anymore. And when many companies fire tens of thousands of people all at once I basically take it as a sign that the tech sector as a whole is taking a big downturn. Maybe things will improve when we finally stumble upon some tech that needs developing that has a great potential to be profitable and takes a lot of people to develop.
This is simply wrong, and if anything the reverse is true: the jobs that had been outsourced to India are being brought back to the U.S. after several years of subpar work. See, for example, the most recent Marvel movies and TV shows. The abysmal VFX work was the product of outsourced VFX shops. You can bet your rear that Disney won't be repeating that mistake in the future.
I guess shadertoy and similar are where the Demoscene spirit lives on.