The Subtle Art of Not Making VFX

[Music] hey everyone uh my name is mandy morland and thank you for coming to my gdc talk the subtle art of not making the effects um you know during your time here at this virtual gdc there will be plenty of presentations you can go to about you know new techniques or new hardware new software that will push the industry forward but um during my presentation we're going to talk a little bit about skills that you can develop specifically as vfx artists um that will you know last you for years to come they'll be just as useful 10 years from now as they are today um before we dive into that a little bit about myself as i said my name is mandy moreland i use she her pronouns and for those that don't see me or can't see me i'm a white woman with dark brown hair brown eyes and i'm wearing a green sweater today i was born and raised in orlando florida i got my bachelor's in physics from florida state university

and uh continued my education and got my masters of fine arts in digital production arts from clemson university i began my career as a vfx artist in animated films before transitioning in 2015 to games where i've been working since at the coalition uh during my tenure here i've worked on gears of war 4 gears 5 gears tactics in our recent released hive busters dlc and across all these i've primarily worked on level vfx but i've also dabbled in multiplayer in and in cinematic vfx as well uh yeah so what are we going to talk about today as i sort of preface this talk will dig into what some people call soft skills but skills that you can kind of take with you as a fact service that won't you know ever be outdated or overwritten they are skills that you can you know continue to grow and that will make you as an artist and a developer you know a better person as

well so we're going to talk about this in two sort of categories and the first is going to be this idea of building intention in the workplace uh and this is sometimes called mindfulness building mindfulness in the workplace but i prefer the word intention and we're gonna we'll discuss a little bit why and then we're going to talk about how to own and embrace failure uh so first we're when we talk about building intention in the workplace what i mean by this is being conscious of the actions you make and doing so intentionally you know the decisions you make doing so with intention and primarily this idea of working with empathy um and what i mean when i say this is seeing your fellow co-worker as a valuable human being also in this cycle with you and being cognizant of how your actions can affect them and their actions can affect you and having empathy for them we're going to do this by talking about how to build communication within your team and across other disciplines and

also how to foster collaboration between you know your team and other disciplines and then second we're going to dig into this idea of failure and specifically how to unembrace it we're going to talk about vitamin e why we might be afraid of failure and then we're going to learn how we can kind of change our mindset about it to use it to our advantage instead now you might be asking yourself why does any of this even matter you know i'm a vfx artist or i'm a game developer all that matters is i do my job you know and at the end of the day the game gets shipped but i think the the clearest example is why of why this matters is if we look at you know what a production pipeline actually looks like so in an ideal world your production might look something like this you start out in the ideation or concept phase um these sort of bounce back and forth you have an idea for a game it goes into concept you know it gets flushed out a little bit and shaken out and then when it feels like that idea has strong enough legs to stand on then

it moves into this block in and design phase this is where you where you will design like your animation your mechanics your systems your you know combat or your gameplay maybe you block in your levels at this point in time but eventually you feel like okay this is good we have an idea that's working it feels great feels like it has a lot of potential and then you move into sort of the fleshing out phase you send it to level art and environment starts building you know your sets and modeling either characters or you know the the set pieces and the the worlds that you're going to be playing in and then when you know that's all done and people love it and you know because this is perfect in an ideal world you've hit all your deadlines it goes into sort of the the art phase the meat and potatoes phase of lighting vfx and audio you know you you light your levels and they're beautiful you add vfx to the weapons or the characters the monsters you add audio in and everything's great everybody's happy

it's a perfect game everything's shaping up right on time it goes into qa and because you did everything perfectly after this point qa tells you there's no bugs you know there or maybe there's just a few bugs but they're super easy to fix and eventually you pass your game off to cert and then you ship now if there's anybody if there's any producers in the audience or really anybody who's worked on a production ever you know that this isn't even remotely close to what happens uh this is the ideal this is what everybody wants it to be but it's not even close because you know in reality it probably looks a little bit more like this you still started the ideation concept phase you know i mean idea for a game feels strong it feels like it has some merit um and you start digging into it and concepting it and fleshing out maybe what characters are going to be or what the story is going to be then at some point in time you just decide nope that idea is not the one we want to go with maybe it doesn't align with you know your studio's um

culture or the ip that you're trying to flesh out or maybe it just doesn't really like feel strong you know maybe it doesn't feel like it's the type of story that needs to be told right now so you scrap that idea start all over with idea number two go through concept now you've sort of learned from the first idea you've learned how to build on this and um you feel like okay this idea has has some strength behind it i think we can really make a game for it so you move into the build-in or the block-in and the design phase start building everything out your character your animation your mechanics all that sort of stuff and maybe halfway through that or some part way through that you realize it's still not working you know this idea looks great on paper or in concept but once it actually starts being realized in mechanics it just isn't really working so you scrap it and you go back to idea number three all over again uh it goes back into concept it starts you know floating back and forth it starts being really built up and goes into the design phase and the blocking phase and you really feel like

you know we've learned from the last couple ideas we know what's going to work and what doesn't this feels like the market will really enjoy this this feels good for the type of studio we want to be and the type of games we want to make so let's start fleshing this out let's approve this we'll greenlight it and start moving it forward so you've blocked in levels you've designed characters you've started working on maybe vehicles and guns and or weaponry and you start moving into the level art and environment phase and then the rest of the art phases like lighting vfx and audio but again if anybody's been in the production cycle before you know that this doesn't happen in one chunk what's more likely is you'll have multiple passes you'll have a first pass where they block in all the level art and you design the levels and you start flushing it out with lighting and audio and then it starts back over and level art does a second pass on it you know builds up and builds up until you know you get through maybe first second third pass maybe more um and you know this can take years but

eventually you do get to a point where you get to qa um and maybe qa then tells you all the things you've done wrong and all the bugs you still have to fix and so you some things might have to be started like started all over all over again because it's just isn't working how it was designed and has to go all the way back to the beginning but after many years after many many nights and days working on this preferably not nights but many days working on this you get to a point where your um your game is finished it's functional it runs it's as bug free as you're going to get it and you pass it off to cert insert certifies it says it's good to be produced and to ship out and you finally ship that game now [Music] why does the skills we're going to talk about these sort of empathy skills or these communication skills why does it matter for all of this and at the bare like bones of it is that

flexibility is necessary it's not just so nice to have you know we saw that production cycle and it's super complicated and vfx comes at a certain like a fairly late portion of that very complicated cycle and so it's likely that things are going to change frequently before they ever get to you and so being flexible and being agile and being able to kind of pivot when something changes is a necessary tool it's not just so nice to have and then specifically for vfx artists i think this is even more important because vfx department and vfx artists are frequently what i consider catch-all artists or catch-all departments um we come from very different backgrounds most of the time you know from ui or environments or programming or like me where you come from film and so more often than not you'll probably be asked to do things that are a little bit outside of your area of expertise you know or you'll be challenged with something that you know because you have a variety of background experience um isn't what you would normally work on

you know it's not an effect that you would normally ask or you're being requested to make a system that you wouldn't have normally done and so i think perhaps more than other departments vfx has to be extra flexible we have to be extra agile um to be able to handle all the different requests that might come down to us through the pipe and there are so many pitfalls in that complicated production that to be efficient and to make sure that we release the game on time and that it's a good game that you release you have to be able to work together and so when we talk about these ideas of communication collaboration you know the end goal of all that is that you just work better with your your fellow peers your other colleagues um and so to be efficient you have to be able to do that and then as i said that process is complicated enough that your goal should be to make yourself left less difficult in that process this is the idea of having empathy for the people that you're working with you know you want their lives to be

good when they're making the game and you want their job to be easier because you want your job to easier too and the more you can kind of help other people and work with other people well and efficiently the more happy you're going to be in this job and the more happy other people are going to be as well so that's the why all this matters so let's dig a little bit into how we're going to start you know figuring this out so uh there are going to be three main points that i discussed three main sections the first is communication we're going to talk about communication um within the vfx team with other departments and then a very specific example of communication which is this idea of giving and receiving feedback we're going to talk about collaboration um primarily with understanding when to push and when to step aside and as well as examining what you as a developer bring to the table that makes you unique and finally we're going to talk about this idea of embracing failure

we're going to look at what it teaches us why we might be afraid of it and how we can embrace it instead all with the goal of making us a more you know empathetic and efficient artist in that crazy complicated production cycle so communication um for all three of these categories communication collaboration and failure i've grabbed definitions and so for communication i grabbed noun a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols signs or behaviors now i picked this specific definition because of this word behaviors i think most people when they hear communication they think of you know talking with someone or written communication like an email or a letter um but i want to dig into this idea of communication through behaviors and the behaviors that we model as you know colleagues and vfx artists and as i said we're going to talk about it in terms of

communication within your vfx team communication within other departments around you and specifically with regards to giving and receiving feedback so let's dig into communication within the vfx team now i acknowledge that this is probably the easier of the three sections we're going to talk about with regards to communication um mostly because you you talk to these people the most you know these are the colleagues that you're you should be working the closest with is your fellow vfx artist so some of these skills might be some that you already have mastered or that you are already on the way to mastering um or they just might be they might come easier to you than things that we will talk about in the you know cross-disciplinary one but there's still very value in talking about so first and foremost we'll talk a little bit about this idea of learning how to yes and others ideas now if you've ever taken an improv course this might be familiar to you and the concept of this is acknowledging

someone else's idea and recognizing it and building on top of it um the more common habit that people have is to yes but and ideas or yes but ideas um and an example of this is saying like oh yeah that's a good idea but how about we do this you know and what that does is that invalidates the person's idea that you are responding to and it sort of shuts down that line of communication and then diverts it into whatever you're about to say when you yes and ideas that is a collaborative building of ideas you know you're saying like oh yeah that's great and we could do this as well and it's this exercise of taking someone else's idea and collaborating on it and bringing them along into that conversation and building up of their ideas this is not necessarily the easiest of the skills that we're going to talk about in this section

i don't think it comes naturally to people most of the time and it's something that you have to be intentional with when you do but the next uh four tips that we're going to talk about will build on this that hopefully yes ending comes more second nature to people next is echoing thoughts instead of stealing them um this for the most part i found that this is not done intentionally this idea of stealing others ideas but if you can be cognizant and empathetic to the people around you and make strides to acknowledge other people's ideas when you hear them instead of just repeating them um then you can form a better like bond between you and that person and what i mean when i say this is if you hear an idea in a room then you echo that idea by acknowledging the person that says it um and then perhaps yes andy and after that as an example if say

hey karen had this great idea you know and i think we could do this with it as well that gives that person you know acknowledgement for their idea but it also still allows the communication to move forward and still allows you to collaborate with that person and work with them um most people have probably had the experience where you know you've been in a room and you've set an idea and maybe you didn't say it loud enough and it wasn't heard or it was acknowledged and 10 minutes later someone else in the room says your same idea and suddenly they get the acknowledgement for it or they get the recognition for it and that can be really frustrating and really demoralizing because you know did that person steal your idea you know are they trying to undermine you it's not likely that they are it's probably unintentional but if you as a vfx artist or just as a game developer can model this exercise of recognizing who said the idea and then echoing it it'll really show that one you're invested in the people you know you're

listening to and two that you see the people and recognize them for the work that they're doing and not just sort of taking their ideas and you can also do this even if you're not in the same room as that person so and this might be more frequently how it's done is you'll hear an idea or you'll work through an idea with someone at their desk and then you go off to a meeting that they're not in and when you then present that idea add them you know give them credit for that idea say like hey i was working with jacob and we had this idea of doing this you know or you know frank had this idea and i thought it was really good and i was thinking we could do this with it as well and that gives them recognition for the work that they're doing for the idea that they had and shows that you care enough to acknowledge them and still want to build on that idea so echoing thoughts really kind of goes hand in hand with this yes and idea as well next this is my favorite one um is this idea of saying the silly idea saying the dumb idea um i'm a huge proponent of

this i don't think shame is a a feeling that anybody should really have all that often and uh more often than not whatever you think is a dumb idea probably isn't as dumb as you think it is there's probably something some nugget of value in there that makes your idea worthwhile you know to to say out loud and to to kind of put yourself out there um and then hand in hand of that is to make sure you're listening to those silly ideas um often as i said it's probably not as silly as you know you think it is um maybe it's just that it's not communicated super well or it's set in a way that doesn't really make a lot of sense or that it feels sort of silly but if you open yourself up to listening to those ideas and stretching those yes and muscles and being willing to sort of have a conversation and communicate with your teammates then they'll be more comfortable saying the silly ideas and you're more likely to get like tons and tons of sort of diamonds in the rough you know when

people are nervous about saying these you know either a technique that they want to try or some feedback that they want to give you know then you're never going to hear it and there's there's you don't know whether something is a good idea until it's been said out loud and so if you are comfortable and you um model this behavior of being open to listening to the silly ideas then more people will be comfortable saying those silly ideas and if you are more comfortable saying those ideas and model that behavior then more people around you would also be um comfortable mirroring that behavior and so these two ideas of saying a silly idea and listening to the silly idea really go hand in hand and then finally learn how to celebrate successes and failures um i think people are much more inclined to celebrate successes they're much more comfortable doing that and it feels sort of second nature to do that but if you can start intentionally seeking out and

celebrating um where people have failed then they'll be more comfortable owning failure you know um and what i mean by this is it really opens up this sort of safe space that's what you're going to be trying to build when you do this is you want your team members to feel safe communicating ideas that maybe they didn't see to come to full realization or they weren't able to work through entirely or maybe they tried it and failed at it you know and if you don't celebrate those sort of things you won't ever learn from them and what this does is if you're more comfortable kind of celebrating when someone doesn't do something successfully you're building this communication channel and opening it up so that they're more likely to ask for help or collaboration on something you know if if they know their team has their back and if they know that their team is gonna support them regardless of whether they succeed or they fail then they're more likely to try things that

they might not have tried before and to ask for help when doing that especially if you can do things such as like listening to silly ideas if you're open and you're you're good on collaborating and you're open to yes anding ideas people will feel more and more comfortable on the team you know making themselves uncomfortable or making themselves vulnerable by saying silly ideas or trying things they might not succeed at and that's what the goal of all this is is that at the end of the day if you can start you know building on some of these skills all the rest of them will come easier and ultimately you'll be a stronger team for it you know and you don't have to do it from the top down you know yes andy might be the last thing you get good at maybe the first thing you do is just being open about saying silly ideas you know maybe you're comfortable with that sort of stuff or you're really good at acknowledging who said a thing and so echoing thoughts is what you get stronger at um and at the end of the day what you'll have built is this very strong team that has a really

strong bond between them because they trust each other and they feel safe with each other um safe to try things that they might not do well or safe to say silly ideas all those sorts of things now that was talking or communicating within your vfx department um but now let's talk about communication outside of your vex room with other disciplines i do want to acknowledge that this might be difficult to do especially in this environment that we're in now where most people are working from home um it's difficult to do this with if you're in a different building or if you have a small you know team that's spread out very wide but all the things i'm going to talk about still hold value regardless of your sort of team distribution some of these things might just take a little extra effort than they would otherwise if we were all in our studios working together like normal first and foremost i recommend always recommend people to actually just talk

to each other you know ask questions clarify things before you start working on something and when i say talk to people i literally mean talk to them if you're able to go and see them at their desk call them up on zoom or on teams um literally have a human to human conversation with that person because you will have a much faster communication channel built when you can have an actual you know human conversation with someone um we're in an environment right now this digital age that we're in where everybody's working from home where it's often easier just to send a team's message or you know an email because it's just faster to do that but there's a lot that can be lost via you know text communication there's a lot of new ones that can be lost there's a lot of room for misinterpretation or miscommunication and there's really nothing that quite beats having a human conversation you know that you as a person are talking with another person

um and so if you can and if the person that you were talking to is able to as well meaning they have the time or the energy or the focus to do it then i always encourage you to actually talk to the person that you need to talk to rather than just sending them an email next check in with the teams coming before you and after you in the pipeline um this sounds sort of like a yeah of course i'm going to do that but the more intentional you can be in this exercise and the more effort you actually put in doing this you'll see kind of you'll reap rewards very quickly from this what i mean when i say this is um just talk to other departments that are coming before and after you and sort of check in with them of where you are in the pipeline you know do they need anything from you do you need anything from them and opening up this channel will really it shows empathy for them because you want to you know

give them the time to work on something or to show that you actually care about what they're working on and that you're thinking ahead um and it it allows you to get to know these people that you're that will be influencing your work or whose work you will be influencing so for example if you're gonna need you know animation tags to apply your footsteps to or you know muzzle flashes or something like that um check in with the animation department before they get working on that character animation and say hey you know when that when your foot hits the ground can you add me to tag so that when it gets to me i can just easily hook them up and so not only does this open up communication just by like you know getting to know the people that you're going to be working with but it also shows empathy because you're giving them time to work on that request you know you're you're showing respect for their time by giving them ample time to give you what you need and so they'll be much more

open to the idea of helping you get what you need but because they can then factor it into their you know their schedule and they can prioritize it against their other tasks so that by the time their work gets to you you'll have everything you need and this goes in the other direction as well you know check in with like audio for example which frequently comes last in most apartments and say hey do you need anything from us like we have this moment there's gonna be explosions there's gonna be dust falling there's gonna be rocks collapsing what do you need from us and they might be they might say like oh i just need to know what's gonna be in it i don't really need anything else you know or yeah can you make me event tags because i really need to be able to trigger some audio off of your rock that slams against the ground um and then that will then show them that you you know you're thinking of them before your work gets them and then also allows you to have ample time to accommodate their requests um so this idea of just taking a little extra time before you know work begins

to really check in with the departments coming around you will like have an immediate result of communication between you and other disciplines um be flexible we've talked about this when we were looking at the example of that you know the crazy typical production pipeline but this is especially true when talking with and communicating i should say with other departments there will always come times when things change around you both before and after in the in the production pipeline and maybe somebody in a different department has to change how they've done something or there's somebody new that's on the team and they don't communicate the same way with you and so being flexible in your approaches and how you maybe decide how to request things or how you approach people or how you talk to people all these things will make you a better artist to work around you know if you have empathy for the people around you then you can be flexible to accommodate last-minute requests or accommodate um you know feedback that you weren't expecting or to accommodate changes that

other people weren't expecting either but then suddenly have a trickle-down effect um this idea being flexible like we've said before is a necessity and if the more you can kind of model this behavior being agile and being patient the more people will really come to appreciate it and on that point the more of these skills that you can build the more your colleagues will trust and rely on you um for example i'm really comfortable asking people questions it's not something that i've ever really struggled with um i don't mind talking to people i've never met before i don't mind you know asking for names and introducing myself to people and so i've made it really clear that if someone has an issue and they bring it to me i'm happy to help them find an answer for it either i might know where that answer is or that solution is or i'll know the person that i need to talk to to get that and so by modeling these skills and modeling these behaviors your colleagues will remember that and they'll come to trust on you and likely they'll model them in

turn you know they'll mirror the empathy you show to them for you um and ultimately all of this is just to make sure that you know your time making this game as a game dev artist is as enjoyable as it can be and that you are making other people's jobs as you know easy and efficient as you can so last section we're going to talk about is feedback um and this is a very specific example of you know communication um and a great way to think about feedback and this is how it was explained to me by one of my art directors is if you think about feedback as a conversation between two people or multiple people it isn't just someone giving you a bulleted list and then walking away you know it should be a conversation between you and the person you are either giving feedback to or receiving feedback from so let's talk a little bit about skills that you can build to make that

better let's look first at giving feedback now everybody has probably met someone who is not very good at either of these giving or receiving feedback um but if you want to make yourself a better feedback giver one of the first things that you can do is being mindful of where people are coming from now this includes things such as their background their native language their experience and their culture and what this means is taking a step back before you start giving someone feedback and thinking about them as a person and having empathy for them and and putting yourself in their shoes you know is their background different than yours you know do they come from a programming or technically technical background while you're more art focused background you know is their native language different than yours is their culture different than yours you know being mindful of where a person comes from and their experience can really dictate you know your approaches to how you might choose to give them feedback

and simultaneously once you're mindful of where people are coming from this will really inform you know your approaches it'll make you be more flexible in your approaches to giving feedback so primarily you'll probably be given verbal feta more often than not you'll be having a conversation at someone's desk or you know over a video call or something where you're just talking with the other person and this can be a very useful means of feedback because as we've talked about the i recommend always talking to a person as much as you can but if you think about it from the person that you're giving feedback to some things might come to mind so they are presenting work to you that they are trying to get feedback on while simultaneously trying to listen to the feedback you are giving them um memorize that feedback maybe prioritize that feedback and still converse and you know collaborate

within that conversation that you're having about feedback and so and then if you think you know maybe if they have a different uh native language than you then they're also trying to translate the feedback that you're giving them and still trying to remember it and all this different stuff and so verbal feedback can be very very important to have that conversation but it might not be the only type of feedback that you give to a person you might have to then follow it up with written feedback either maybe someone is there taking notes for the group or you send an email afterwards just saying like hey these were the main pieces that i think needed to be worked on um you know everything else was pretty good but this is like prioritized list of what i want um worked on uh and that really helps the person you know for one just know what is important to then clarify maybe you know if there was some misunderstanding between the communication that was given or the feedback that was given um and also sort

of like a hard receipt of feedback so that they can always go back as they're working on something and you know go through the list and check off things that were completed and then you might also have to then follow that up with supporting visuals so this might be something like taking a screen grab of a video that you're you know looking at or if you're trying to give feedback on color or you know lighting in a scene then you might need to do a paint over where you just grab a snip and pull it into photoshop and then paint over it really quickly to give more direct feedback because there's certain information that doesn't communicate super well or that some people have trouble understanding just any verbal or written feedback and so having a visual feedback to help support that or having a visual element to help support that can really go a long way to making your feedback understandable and then finally uh if all else fails then go back and think about why they might be struggling you know this go back to step one and be mindful of where those people are coming from

for example i was giving feedback to someone one time and we were at their desk and i could just sort of tell they weren't you know getting it um there was they would nod along and they would say that yes they were understanding but it just was clear that it wasn't really you know translating or getting through super well and i realized it was a translation thing it was that their native language is french mine is english and i was using words and turn of phrases that just didn't really compute for them you know it didn't translate well for them and on top of that they were trying to translate my english feedback my quick speaking english feedback into understandable french feedback and there was just a disconnect there and so i had to make sure to follow up with written feedback and i went ahead and did just a quick bulleted list it took me about five minutes after the you know after the talk or we would just confirm it there in person and i would give them time to sort of write notes after the fact but just making sure that they had a secondary mode of feedback really helped them understand what we were

talking about um and these can be all different things you know you could you could talk to people and come to find that they have cognitive differences or maybe there's a cultural difference in communication you know people talk differently all over the world and so or they have you know different experience level than you maybe they're really junior or maybe they're very senior and so that might change how you talk to another person um and so if all this fails if this verbal written or supporting feedback visuals to be back it doesn't seem to be clicking then just take a moment to you know have empathy for that person that you're working with and go back and think about where they are and put yourself in their shoes and think about how they might be getting your feedback then on that point some tips for receiving feedback um at any one time in your career you'll probably be on both ends of the spectrum of the you'll be giving feedback and you know at different times receiving feedback um and the one piece of advice that i i kind of

try and hammer and it's a difficult one is just to not take feedback personally if you can remove yourself and your value for yourself from the feedback that you're being given it'll really go a long way to sort of your career and your happiness in that career um and you as an artist have been hired to do a job and you are valuable and when you're giving feedback on someone on something that you've done it's not because you as a person have failed or that there is something wrong with you as an artist it's just that because it's just because the work that you have created doesn't align with the expectation or the desires of the person that you're getting feedback from so there's nothing really personal there it's just a mismatched of expectations and so if you can remove yourself from it you know it's better in the long run and this is especially important because sometimes it will be personal you know sometimes the thing that that person says will feel like a personal slight or personal dig um it'll feel maybe rude or

offensive and when you can remove yourself from you know you remove your value from the feedback that you're being given you can take a moment and it's a little bit easier to step back and try and understand why that feedback was given to you the way it was so maybe the person is just having a bad day you know that's usually what the issue is um because more than not most people aren't trying to put you down or belittle you or anything like that um so maybe that person is having a bad day maybe there's someone sick in their family or they're having trouble at home or they just you know haven't slept well they're not feeling well um or maybe um they have a cultural difference than you you know something that seems rude to you or sounds rude to you might not seem rude to them or some habit of conversation might not be rude to them and so having empathy for the other person and trying to put yourself in their shoes and understand where they might be coming from can really help understand why a feedback was given you know why feedback was giving you to you the way it was and it could help you not take us personally

and sometimes just c'est la vie that's just life um you know sometimes people just want what they want and it's just your job to give it to them um you have a finite amount of energy we have a finite amount of time in the day and time to work on a game and so there's not not every piece of feedback has to be you know a long drawn out discussion or it doesn't have to be something you even have to agree with sometimes you just have to do the job and give someone what they want um occasionally it might prove to them that what they are saying isn't actually gonna work like if you believe that their bit of feedback isn't really gonna look as good as they think it is then sometimes you just have to give it to them and they'll see it and it doesn't work um and sometimes it just kind of doesn't matter like in the grand scheme of things there's probably bigger battles to fight and so sometimes that's just life and you just have to give the people what they want next definitely ask for clarity um as you've said before feedback is a conversation you know it shouldn't just be a one-way

sort of thing um and if you're unsure about some sort of feedback that you're given in the long run it's better if you ask for clarity um at a very basics you shouldn't be afraid to get what you need from someone you know they want you to do something and you want to do that something and so if you're left unsure of the feedback or unclear on the feedback then you're just wasting both your time and theirs um and at the end of the day it might just help that other person build their skills as well their feedback giving skills um for example if they're giving you feedback that's too vague or doesn't make a lot of sense and you tell them that and you say hey you know i don't understand what you mean when you say that this you know explosion is too whimsical then they might realize that they have to change how they're giving feedback as well or you know if you say like hey you use this terminology that i've never heard before or that i don't think translates correctly can you you know elaborate or go over it again and it'll help them understand that there are you know that there's a divide between their feedback and what you are receiving and it'll

help them be better feedback givers and then finally don't be afraid to yes and ideas you know we talked about this when we were talking about communication within the vfx team and uh this is the idea of building on other people's ideas and their feedback obviously this is dependent on where you are in the project you know if you're you know super late in the production pipeline or um you know people are behind it might not be the best idea to start yes anding ideas um but the more you can build off of others ideas and the feedback that you're being given the more it shows investment and it shows initiatives you know it shows that you care about what you're working on and that you care to give this other person what they want to see and it like you said before it opens up these channels of communication and collaboration so that was feedback and that was communication as a whole so now let's dig into collaboration and we've seen a lot of these sort of overlap with each other you know we've seen communication build collaboration

and we've talked about how collaboration can build communication but let's dig into collaboration specifically a little bit as before i have a definition for it uh collaborate which is a verb and i pick this one sort of to be cheeky but it's uh to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country especially an occupying force now i picked this one because as anybody who's been in a full production pipeline there will always come a time where your co-workers feel like the enemy where either you're behind on your work or they're behind on theirs or something is changing higher up in the pipeline and people are stressed and when someone comes and asks you for something or requests something or is looking for help they feel like the enemy and they feel like they're just using up your time your the time that is already short because of you know being late in the production pipeline or whatever and so this idea of building skills to collaborate means that you'll be able to cooperate with these people even when

frustrations are high when stress is high and everyone feels like the end of me so how are we going to do this what are some things that we can start thinking about to do intentionally to build collaboration first we're going to talk a little bit about knowing when to push and when to step aside and then we're going to talk about looking at yourself and figuring out what you as a unique individual bring to the table beyond your ability to like complete your vfx task so let's look first at knowing when to push and when to step aside um and primarily if you truly believe in something you should make your voice heard you know if you have an idea and you believe in it or you feel strongly in a piece of feedback or you know you you think you have a solution to a problem that's really important make yours make your voice heard make yourself heard when the things i talk about now especially in the section of when to step aside it isn't just an exercise and being a pushover you know that's not what i'm encouraging

but and so if you do truly believe in something you should make that voice heard and you should stand behind it what this does mean is that if you do have that strong idea you might need to prove it first you might have to do a little extra work to get people on board or to prove that your idea has merit or that it can stand up and it's viable um and this might just require like a little extra work to do that and put behind it um but again if you do if you do feel strongly about something then that might require that and you might be okay and have the energy to do that and finally if you do see a problem come with a solution there's really nothing more frustrating than being in a meeting where someone comes and just drops a whole bunch of problems that they've seen on the table and kind of like wipes their hands of it and walks out if you do see a problem don't be that person definitely try and come with a solution you know this might mean that you have to go and talk to people that you might not know you know and see if maybe they know about the problem or if they have a solution in mind for it

it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be the one to solve that problem or that you have to be the one to come up with the solution but if you see a problem you should come with the mindset that you want to solve it together that you want to collaborate with people to solve that problem as opposed to just shunting that problem onto somebody else and letting someone else deal with it that's not collaboration that's just an errand for someone else to do um and so if you do see a problem try and come with a solution this also can mean encouraging or being open to solutions you know like um that means if you bring a problem to someone then you can ask them like hey do you have an idea for this or you know i think this is this might work you know i think i have a solution to this but you're more knowledgeable in this what do you think you know it's it's encouraging other people to collaborate with you as well not just a one-way sort of directional thing

now you can't always be pushing you know you can't always be you know forcing your ideas or defending them or you know fighting for them there will be times when you have to learn how to step aside and first one is this idea of knowing when you when you're fighting a losing battle um this is also known as this idea of um is this the hill i'm gonna die on uh meaning is this the fight that i want to use my energy for is this the thing i really want to defend and as we saw before if you do truly believe in it then yeah maybe the answer is yes i do really need to stand up for this and i do stand behind it and want to push for it but there's probably more likely most of the time it's not you're like willing to let something go you know and willing to kind of like all right i don't really have the energy for this you know and and recognizing when you have a finite amount of energy and recognizing when other people might not need you to be the one that's always pushing for something then you get more comfortable kind of letting things go this is in line with that c'est la vie

thing that we talked about with feedback of like sometimes people just want something how they want it and you're just there to give it to them and that's this idea is like you know not every piece of feedback needs to be something you have to defend or fight against or push against sometimes you can just be like okay and move on from it because you're gonna have bigger battles to fight later on understand that your voice isn't always the most important in the room um this could be that you're in a big meeting room where you know other people are discussing things and your idea or your voice might just derail that conversation or maybe you do have an idea and it is important but it's better saved for a smaller group or a more private conversation maybe with your lead or a colleague you don't always need to be the one that's talking in the room you know sometimes you just need to be there to listen and absorb information that's being passed around or ideas that are being passed around and then simultaneously sometimes you're not there to speak for yourself maybe

you're there to lift others up instead this is this goes back to what we were talking about with echoing ideas instead of stealing them you know you might be in a room where there's underrepresented people or new people or people that are being talked over and so sometimes it's your job to listen and to uplift other voices in the room and give them a sort of platform and a chance to talk and to say their ideas and then finally and this is this is the hillel dion is you can't always reinvent the wheel even if that wheel is broken um more often than not you'll probably come across a system or a technique or an effect that was built a certain way that wasn't terribly efficient or that there is a better way of doing it and you just can't always fix it sometimes you just have to accept a thing as it is and work with it as it is because maybe there's not time to fix it or by fixing it you're going to introduce

other issues you know there's there's lots and lots of reasons as to why you might just have to accept a thing as it is and continue to like grow with it and learn how to work with it in the production pipeline and this is a test to ego for sure you know there's even if you do know how to make something more efficient and better it just maybe isn't the place for that idea or that or there isn't time for that and so even if you do know how to make it better it might not be worth you know the energy to do it or the possible knock-on side effects of doing it so this is talking about when to push myself aside um let's talk a little bit now about what you as an artist bring to the table you know what makes you unique and what do you bring that other people might not be able to essentially what makes you you at its core you and your experiences hold value and no one is going to be exactly like you you know no one is

going to have the exact same life that you've lived no one's going to have the same exact skills that you have and all these skills that have nothing to do with your ability to make a vf via effect or a visual effect or to work in your industry still hold value in your job so think about what you can do that other people either can't do or might not be as skilled at doing for example are you a great explainer do you stay calm under pressure are you good at making people laugh do you have strong empathy skills you know all these sort of things if you can sort of look at yourself and what you are good at as a person that you know outside of your job role um when you build on those strengths you broaden your opportunities for collaboration so for example if you're really good at making people laugh you know this has nothing to do with making a v effect you know that this is nothing to do with making explosion or making rain drip or anything like that but if you get into a room that's super tense because multiple departments are at heads with each other and you're really good at kind of adding levity to a tent situation you

can then open doors that maybe have been previously closed because of frustrations you know you've made collaboration easier if you're really good at explaining ideas maybe you're the voice if you know if you collaborate with somebody on something and you're the one that explains that idea you know obviously giving credit where credit is due but if you can concisely explain what you're thinking and can convince people and get buy-in from people you know that's a skill that has nothing really to do with making any visual effects but it is it does make you a better artist and a really good dev to work with and the same goes for all the others you know it's like if you're good at staying calm under pressure or if you're good at having empathy skills or kind of any sort of thing that you're good at you know if you're a good listener or if you're really awesome at puzzles you know all these things can really feed into building opportunities for collaboration and allow you to work with not just your vfx artists or your fellow vfx artists but people in all other departments all around you

okay failure so we're going to pivot just a little bit from communication collaboration and we're going to talk about failure and like the others i grabbed definitions for it and for this one i did failure as a noun a state of inability to perform a normal function a fracturing or giving way under stress now i grabbed this one specifically like i did the others because i think more often than not people take failure as a sense of identity as a like a slight on their identity as a label for themselves aka i am a failure instead of um seeing it as a noun like i have experienced failure or i am in a state of failure um and and when you can kind of invert your sort of understanding of failure in your relationship to it becomes a lot easier to embrace it and to be okay with it so we're going to talk a little bit about how to do that this idea of kind of changing your perspective on failure

and we're going to do that through three different techniques first we're going to look at what failure teaches us then we're going to look about why we might be afraid of it and then we'll look at how we can embrace it instead so first things first what do we learn from failure now this is a character sheet from monster of the week um i'm not going to go too much into all the other stuff on it but there's a section down at the bottom called experience that i want to dig into a little bit um and this experience box is the same on multiple different character types in this role-playing game but if we zoom in um what it says is whenever you roll and get a total of six or less or when a move tells you to mark an experience box now in monster week the mechanic is you roll two d6s and you add those numbers up and uh depending on the value you either succeed or you fail you know if you're above a certain value you succeed if you even hire you succeed with you know like some special addition to it but in

this if you roll six or less that is considered a failure what's really cool about this though is in this section when you roll six or less aka when you fail at something you mark an experience box here and then after you mark all five experience boxes that's when you level up so one of this this cool mechanic basically shows you that to level up the only way to level up is to fail now this is different than most kind of games tabletop or you know video games or anything like that where you defeat a monster or you fight an enemy and you gain xp from winning that fight and after a certain amount of wins then you level up this one says you don't level up until you fail you know and i think that's actually much more um similar to what real life is like is you learn a lot more from failing first and foremost you learn what not to do and what to do but more likely you're going

to learn about you know five different things you're not supposed to do or you shouldn't do and then maybe five other ways that you can succeed at what you're trying to do depending on you know the path that you've taken and then again even though you have failed it doesn't mean you are a failure you know you are just experiencing failure you are experiencing a you know a state of failure but that doesn't actually mean that you as a person are a failure now that's all well and good failure is still really flipping scary sometimes and so let's talk a little bit about why we might be afraid of this and why we might be kind of against this idea of failing so imagine this is you down at the bottom you know you're very very small and at this moment you're very stressed so what is it that you are scared of with regards to failing maybe you're about to start something and you're scared you're not going to be able to do it or you're in the act of failing you know you're actively trying something and it's not working out and you start to panic

so first and foremost you probably are just scared that you're going to feel like an idiot or that other people are going to think of you as an idiot you know this is a universal fear i think everybody feels this way this is empathy that we're talking about is that everybody feels like this but on top of that you might also be scared that you're going to be punished for failing you know are you going to get fired are you going to get demoted are you going to get missed opportunities you know are they not going to give you tasks because they don't think you can handle it and then hand in hand of that are you scared of our industry you know if you're scared of being punished or that you're going to look like an idiot you might be scared because that means if you get fired you have to go back into the job pool you know we're in a fairly cut throat industry where people perceive themselves as very replaceable and so if you're scared that you're gonna feel like an idiot that you might get fired that might be because you're really scared of having to get back into your industry and find a new job and on top of all that you might be scared because it if you fail it might prove that you're actually a fraud that's what imposter

syndrome is if you've you know you feel as if that you're an imposter in the role that you're playing and that at any point in time someone's going to realize that you know they're going to find out that you're a fake and so all these things can add up to being to making you feel like oh my gosh if i don't do this if i don't succeed at this they're going to see them not cut out for this that i'm a fake that i got this job by mistake and then they're going to fire me and then i have to go back in their job pool you know and this sort of stuff really weighs on you and it becomes a sort of cycle of anxiety and at the end of the day you just burn yourself out by kind of being crushed under all this fear of failure so how can we learn to kind of be okay with not being okay you know how do we switch our mentality on this and think of it differently um and be able to exist in a world where those fears still ex where they still happen and they still are there but we don't let them stop us for trying to do something so first just remember what fear teaches

you you know we looked at this uh experience marker that's in monster of the week and this is actually much more you know aligned with what life is like what real life is like and it shows you that sometimes the only way to level up is to fail you know think of failure as a necessity not just an option you know you're never going to be perfectly successful at everything you have to fail and you have to fail to learn and to grow and you learn more from failing than you would just from success as we said you learn what not to do and what to do so that's already twice as much as you would have just from learn from being successful but more likely than not you're gonna learn a whole bunch of things you shouldn't have done and a whole bunch of other ways you could succeed in the future and then finally just remember that just because you have failed doesn't mean you are a failure like in this experience example like by failing you level up you become a better character you know you grow and so you aren't a failure by failing you are

experiencing it but you as a person are not a failure and then challenge yourself to fail you know really push yourself and out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to try and fail like there's that story on the internet of that uh woman who challenged yourself to get a 100 rejections in a year or something like that um and she actually found she had more trouble doing that than she thought she applied to a whole bunch of jobs that she didn't really think she was fully qualified for and she expected to get a hundred rejections easily but it was actually more work trying to get rejected from these jobs than it was to get interviews for them and kind of the moral of that is you're probably more qualified than you think you are then you give you credits than you give yourself credit for and so you won't ever know that until you actually challenge yourself and try to fail now if you've modeled behavior that we talked about before where you embrace uh or you celebrate successes and failures and when you listen to silly

ideas and support them and yes and them then you'll be in an environment you'll have built an environment where challenging yourself to fail isn't nearly as scary as it might have been otherwise you know if you know you have your team behind you that's going to support you and celebrate you even if you don't succeed then this is becomes a lot less terrifying to do and then understand that everyone else feels this way as well you know we've talked about this before is this idea that you know other people are also scared of this other people are also really nervous and that you aren't alone in this that you aren't the only one afraid of our industry you're the only one afraid of feeling like an idiot this is what empathy is you know everybody feels this way and then finally if all else fails just fake it till you make it as we said before you're probably not faking it as much as you think you are but the more you tell yourself that you can succeed at something that you can do something the more likely you are to convince yourself that you can do it you know it's that like psychology experiment or exercise where if you're standing in

front of your pantry and you're looking for peanut butter and all you do is tell yourself that the peanut butter isn't there that you don't see it it must be misplaced your brain will actually stop seeing it because you've convinced yourself that it isn't actually there and so if you can do the same in reverse and tell so tell yourself yes i am qualified for this yes i can do this you know yes i have the skills to do this then your brain will start to believe it after a while and it's more likely that you're more qualified for it than you think and that you can handle whatever you're about to try to do and then you know at the very very end of this is just this fact that you've got this you know it's okay to mess up it's okay to fail if you have a good environment around you then it's probably safe to fail you know it's safe you'll get help if you need it and again at the end of the day you aren't defined by what you can't succeed at you know you are still valuable as a person and you know you've got this now we've talked a whole lot about a whole bunch of different things um and as we are wrapping up pretty quickly on

this talk um let's just go over kind of what we've talked about already and close things out so what did we talk about first we talked about this idea of building intention in the workplace working intentionally and specifically working with empathy for the other people around you we did this through discussing communication both within your team and with other disciplines and we talked about um how to build intention and work with empathy via collaboration with other people and then we just talked about how to own and embrace failure we discussed why we might be afraid of failure and what we can learn from it to use it to our advantage instead now if you have any other questions please feel free to pop them in the chat if i have answered them already i'd be happy to answer them after the fact and feel free to hit me up on linkedin if you have anything else afterwards um i'm more than happy to talk about this stuff i'm really passionate about it so um would love to hear them

and then finally if you are in the industry or the job market or are looking to change um the coalition is hiring we have plenty of jobs available um they change possibly every day so uh just pop on to our website or hit up this coalition careers at microsoft.com and people get back to you and we'd love to hear from you and what you did thank you for your attention and thank you for your time and i hope you have a wonderful rest of your gdc bye [Music] you