EddieOffermann dot com

So this week, the Visual Effects Society (VES) published the first ever set of guidelines for titles in the visual effects industry. They assure us that Many Very Important People have looked over the list and given it the thumbs up.

"Through these collective efforts, a harmonized master list of titles has been created that should be useful as a touchstone for all effects stakeholders," says VES Exec Director, Eric Roth. "We think it represents a major step forward for our craft in standardizing the use of titles in the credits process for effects artists."

Of course, I'll interject here that if the Visual Effects Society actually carried any weight, someone would care. I'll further interject that if they'd actually attached descriptions to these titles it would mean a bit more - but since a good chunk of these are too nonspecific to mean anything (or at least vague enough to get people to fight over them) they've basically left us where we were before. (Except that since my responsibilities shift and sway on a regular basis, I can dig through the list for suggestions of what I should be calling myself - like this weekend, I think I'm calling myself the Visual Effects Photographer)

Questions regarding these guidelines can be addressed by calling the VES at 818-981-7861. Credits/Titles to be submitted in accordance with VES Guidelines follow after the cut:
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but I ended up going in to work today anyway.

I'd agreed without thinking more than "yeah, extra cash would be nice" and forgot what had been looming.

Annoying project. I mean, the spot's going to look cool even if it's a little froufrou. But the details of making it happen are tedious and I agreed to come in and track which I haven't done much of recently and am starting to not miss at all.

So I went in, tracked, found out it wasn't *nearly* as annoying as I'd anticipated... and briefly wandered off into MEL scripting territory to make a button that places arbitrary geometry at the location and orientation of any locators or mesh vertices that you have selected as well as constraining the new geo to the locators in case they were animated. I may change it to orient based on the vertex normal. That might be more handy. It was irrelevant for this purpose though.

That's more interesting and is more helpful for everyone else.

Besides that, I've a thought in my head: My WordPress blog, while inherently "personal" is more along the professional side. Same with my facebook profile... A sizable chunk of my facebook friends are people I know professionally: so glittery graphic "thanks for the add!" and stupid pictures get deleted from my wall. casual banter is fine: but things I wouldn't do or say at work don't happen there either. I've started deleting comments that wouldn't be appropriate to yell out at me at work. If you leave a comment that gets deleted: I'm not mad at you, I'm just not going to embarrass myself on anyone else's behalf.

Myspace is a filthy pit anyway, so I'm not policing it yet. Professional contacts on there are incidental, but I'm probably going to clean that mess up soon as well.

It's much easier to post to multiple blogging sites now with WordPress...

It's also a colossal pain in the ass - because the WordPress editor doesn't like Safari and mangles my posts, especially the crossposts.  The solution I'm finding online is to use Firefox - which is fine, I use it at work all the time, but generally: I prefer Safari.

Maybe that Great Update in the Sky will fix it.