That has almost nothing to do with what you have been saying. You said that being highly skilled at AE was more valuable than being able to adapt and use any piece of software you had at your disposal - infact it seems like you're contradicting yourself when you say "flexible employees, not just anyone who has studied whatever they build their company upon, however."

Hang on - are you saying you're a professional VFX producer, and you don't know how to use programs that aren't specifically made just for the sole purpose of creating effects? You don't know how to use Final Cut? Maya? 3DS Max? Photoshop? Soundbooth? Premiere? Avid? Encore? And you get paid?

Edit: can you give a little context to your job? Like, who do you work for, what kind of stuff do you produce, what kind of firms commission work that your company produces? What do you work on specifically? I'm not sure how you could work for a company and only know how to use AE properly, since the only kinds of companies that work in a structure like that are the big production houses that have several people working on a 60 frames of film for a month.

Are you just like freelancing after uni to make a few bucks are you? I'm not sure that would be considered professional to any degree to be honest, that's still in the amatuer area.

Last edited by Riley (June 11, 2011 (10:45am))

No. I meant it with regard to your quote: "no one who I want to work for will give two !@#$ if I can use Photoshop or if I can use After Effects". Maybe you don't need visual production skills in your job itself (at least under normal conditions), but during the job interview of course you'll make a better impression, a more FLEXIBLE impression if, additionally to economics expertise, you are also good at other areas (e.g. Visual Production) that are seemingly unrelated to your job. And, that good impression only fully unfolds itself if you make a PROFESSIONAL impression on the part of the additional skill (the one that makes you appear flexible).

I'm sorry you got a wrong impression about what I intended to say, probably I didn't communicate it properly. My point is that expertise in popular and widely acclaimed programs such as After Effects (which even regular people outside the creative industry know) rather than expertise in open-source programs (which regular people DO NOT know) makes a better impression BECAUSE, among other reasons, it makes you appear professional.

Below are the profiles of two animators, both applying for the same job. In their CVs, they don't forget to include a note on their very special common hobby: stop-motion animation using LEGO minifigures. The human resources manager decides to have a look at their youtube pages:

Paul Newman
I make my animated films using a combination of free programs. I edit and composite my shots in Debugmode WAX and my primary tool of animation is The Helium Frog animator, an ingenious little piece of software developed by Martin Prince. It does tend to break down at times but other than that it gets the job done very efficiently. For the mouth animations, I use MS Paint and a program called GlueFace. Leave my a message if you want to know anything. My camera is the Logitech Quick Cam Pro 9000, a webcam which I find produces great quality.

E. G. Young
All my films are shot in Dragon Stop Motion, edited in Adobe Premiere Pro and then later on imported into Adobe After Effects for special effects and a general final polish. For the occasional lip-syncing, I use Adobe Illustrator and again, After Effects. My camera is a Canon D7000 with Nikon lenses. If you've got any questions on the technical side of things, please don't hesitate to drop me an e-mail at "[email protected]".

After reading only those two pieces of information, written by the animators themselves, who do you think produces better content?

By the way, if it helps you understand my point better: it's the same between Photoshop and GIMP (well almost because GIMP is a phenomenal program and really an out-of-the-box kind of thing in terms of freeware).

Last edited by pacific (June 11, 2011 (11:47am))

The problem is, though, that all the n000000bz are in effect using cheap stuff. And if a person uses more professional equipment there's already some kind of distinction (at least in your mind).

I'm not saying everyone that uses nice equipment also creates nice content. BUT there are far less people using great software they shouldn't even touch than n00bs failing epically at using freeware.

If I went to a major oil & gas company and submitted a CV, applying for the position of market research assistant, there would be only 2-3 jobs open and 50 people applying. You've got a lot of competition and you need to make your CV as appealing as possible. Including miscellaneous skills which have nothing at all to do with being a market reasearcher can only hurt your chances, since the employer will discard CVs that look like essays instantly.

How good are each of their films? If the films are of equal calibre, Paul should be given the job without question. It also seems like you're getting to the point where you're saying "films with access to better resources are intrinsically better than films that have access to limited resources, which is just not true for so many obvious reasons.

Edit: You should also note that there are a lot of brickfilmers and youtubers who have obviously got pirated copies of AE, and they obviously can't use it all that well. AE has some what hurt the quality of a lot of brickfilms, since a lot of people think 'I have After Effects, so my film is obviously going to be visually impressive' and they end up doing all their stuff with greenscreens and it looks terrible because they can't greenscreen properly, even though they think they can because they have this super impressive piece of software. Instead of working creatively to get around their problems, people are going straight to relying on AE, despite being terrible at it. I'd go as far as to say that most of the lego movies and movies on youtube using after effects suck because they're just trying to include cool effects. Very few actually utilise AE fully and appropriately.

Last edited by Riley (June 11, 2011 (08:49pm))