This has been bothering me for a while, but I don't really have anyone else to talk to about it, so I figured I may as well get it off my chest here.
As some of you may know, I'm a student, studying computer animation. My class of about 35 people is split into two teams, each team working separately from the other to each produce a short animated film by the time we graduate. Throughout production of the film, different people get to take on different roles, such as modeling, animation, camera layout, etc.
Of the entire class, there are only about two people who know much of anything about rigging (putting skeletons/joints into 3D models to make them able to move). The two people are me, and this one guy (we'll call him "Steve"). I rigged both of the characters for my team's film, and Steve rigged the two characters for the film the other team is working on.
Now... Steve knows a lot more about 3D art as a whole, more so than anyone in the class, because he's had more experience with it in the past than everyone else. As a result, people in the class, regardless of what team they're on, have gotten into this habit of taking all of their technical issues and stuff to Steve for help. He doesn't usually mind, and I've had to ask him about a few things here and there over the years too.
Now, I'm not an expert in rigging by any means. I'm just learning, and there's still a ton of stuff I need to practice - but I'm still one of the only two people in my class who really understands rigging. My problem is, that because everyone has this habit of taking all of their problems to Steve... people tend to forget that I actually DO know quite a bit, and I CAN solve some of the same problems Steve can. Just because I don't know quite as much as Steve doesn't mean I'm stupid. And there have been a few things in particular that really made me feel this way...
For one, Steve is on the other production team. If his teammates want to bring their problems to him, fine. My issue is when my teammates are going to him instead of me. It makes me feel like they're just assuming I don't know anything. Like there was this one time, someone on my team was talking about needing to make a control so that the hands on the clocks in our scene could be easily moved, and the guy talking about it was like "Yeah, I'll have to talk to Steve about making that." And I was like, "...You don't have to ask Steve. I know how to do that, it's actually very simple. I'm a rigger too, remember."
Another time, Steve was helping someone else on my team rig a vacuum hose so that it could be moved around. The system Steve came up with for rigging it was entirely more complicated than it needed to be, and it didn't even really work at all in the end. I ended up having to re-rig it myself so that the people animating it wouldn't want to kill themselves trying to get the thing to move. But when Steve had rigged it, he was all happy with it, and was telling everyone that the guy he was working with on it (from my team) was a "rigging genius" even though the other guy didn't even do much on it... And Steve's always acted toward me like I don't know what the hell I'm doing, even though I've done the majority of the rigging for our film.
I suppose, in summary, I'm quite fed up with how when anyone says "rigger", they think "Steve", and completely forget about me. I try to do my best, but I guess it isn't enough for anyone else to care.
Topic: Taken for granted (Read 1090 times)