ENDA Episode 10→ The time when the Endless Apprentice met the Artist, the Technician, and the Producer (Part 1)

During my time in both college and the Animation and VFX school, I met and worked with different people who wanted to enter the industry.

The more and more I knew different groups I started to notice that certain profiles were always present in every project group, even when I started working I noticed these profiles would still exist. Particularly three who englobe different areas in a production being a live-action or an animated one. I decided to call them the Artist, the Technician, and the Producer.

→ The Artist: a person with heavy artistic tendencies, most of them will have an innate talent for drawing or design. In some cases, it will even be a talent for crafts or handmade constructions.

Most of the time it will be them who would have the drive to write and tell their own stories, even directing them.

In a live-action production, they would end up in the Art, Photography, or Storyboard department. In an animated feature, they would end up in areas like Concept Art, Modelling, Animation, Lighting, or Compositing.

Their weakness is wanting to reach the moon without having wings or a floor to start jumping. Their idealism is the drive of the project, but they need someone capable of turning their ideas into a reality.

→ The Technician: a person with a talent for the technical aspects. Usually, they would be the first to learn a new software and try to figure out how it works from the inside out.

Some of them might start learning programming and even if they don’t, they would eventually learn in the future.

They will also be the first to grab and experiment with film gear: lights, microphones, sensors, consoles, etc. You name it, they would need a few days to know every aspect of them.

It is most of them that end up inclining towards the VFX world given the heavy technical knowledge required to start.

In a live-action production, they would end up in the Photography, Sound, Editorial, or Postproduction department. In an animated feature, they would be part of departments like Animation, FX, Compositing, etc.

Their weakness is that they are used to working with an existing art reference, rather than creating their own. This does not mean they do not have an artistic side, because they do, just not as big as an Artist. For that reason, they prefer to work on someone else’s stories.

However, until this point, we have someone who has the vision and a person who can turn it into a reality. It would seem that we have the perfect match…. but NO.

Experience would tell you that leaving two people like that alone with a project will mean that either that project never finishes or when it finishes it is already too expensive to recover the budget.

So that’s why for better or for worse the figure of the Producer exists. How is their profile?

Well, that would be for the next episode.