When to ignore an RFP

Sometimes, as a freelancer, you may be approached with a Request for Proposal, or RFP.  It’s not always smart to follow through with these potential clients for a variety of different reasons, and Bonfx.com has recently published an article about why freelancers should ignore RFP’s.

The “request for proposal” or RFP process for many small graphic design and web design firms is fraught with huge time-wasting and dead-end traps. Have you been caught up in the excitement of getting what seems to be great project opportunity from an established company only to find out “while your offer was compelling, for strategic reasons” they chose some other firm?

This doesn’t need to happen to you again. All you need to know is a few of the methods of a dyed-in-the-wool time-wasting information leach. You can identify and avoid them and get back to real work.

To read about all of these potential pit-falls, visit the article at http://bonfx.com/when-to-ignore-an-request-for-proposal-rfp/.

How to price your freelance project

Lunarlog published a rather lengthy post about what to considered when pricing a freelance job back in February, but we thought it was worth it to link to the post 7 months later.

Unless you’re intent on living on the streets, work ing side jobs, or are for tu nate to have the support of wealthy parents and bene factors, most of us at one point or another have to ask ourselves — “what prices should I charge?” Pricing out and valuing your work is a great mystery.  If you look around the Internet and even ask others for advice, the amount of money — especially for artists, ranges a very wide gamut. The price point is very difficult to gauge with so many people out there. Of course to some degree, what you can charge is indicative of your skill level, but for the sake of this article I’m just going to discuss what an average busi ness man, freelancer, artist, and even photographer should be charging at the very minimum.

We hope you enjoy this article – it provides great insight into the considerations freelancers should take when pricing a project.  There are some you may not even thought would be an issue when giving a quote! To read this article, click here.

Update to the Red-Nelb Blender Rig

Pepeland.com has released an updated version of the Red-Nelb Blender rig!  The new release is compatible with Blender 2.53 (Beta) and includes an array of new controls and features.  To download the new rig and view a demo video, visit Pepeland.com, or hop on over to the Blenderartists forum to see the official release thread.  Enjoy!

Paper Model Design eBook for Blender

David Guzmán, known on the CGTalk forums as “PixelOz”, has recently released an eBook on how to create paper models in Blender.

From the CGTalk thread:

I have just finished writing a new completely free e-book about how to design paper models with computer software. It shows a lot of the software programs that can be used to do the job but it is based mainly on Blender 3D and an illustration program.

It is 227 pages long and includes hundreds of color illustrations and images to help people understand the concepts of the e-book better.

…

I found while researching the subject and with my own experience that were many new paper model designers were having a we bit of trouble was not in some complex thing but in the basics of the subject and I decided to write something to shed some light on the subject and this e-book was the result of that.

The zip download contains the eBook PDF file, example blend files, and an unfolding script written by Čestmír Houška that’s used in the book.  To download the book, visit David’s DeviantArt page, where he hosts both low and high resolution versions of the PDF.

Visit the CGTalk thread if you’re interested in seeing how the community responded to the release, or simply curious to learn more.  Enjoy!

Mesh Painting In Blender

Miika Hämäläinen, a dedicated indie Blender developer, has once again released a preview for another cool feature he’s been coding for Blender: mesh painting. Using a particle system, Miika’s mesh painting feature affects the texture of a mesh, giving it the illusion that something is being sprayed on the surface of the object. Here’s an example of his algorithm in action.

He’s also posted numerous other examples of how you can apply this feature in practical situations on his blog at http://www.miikahweb.com/en/blog/2010/08/01/mesh-paint-progress-update and http://www.miikahweb.com/en/blog/2010/07/27/multicolor-painting-on-an-animated-object.  It’ll be interesting to see if any of these features will make it into the SVN trunk – for those interested in trying out his tools, Miika provides optimized Blender builds for download on his blog.

CGShark Tutorial: HDR Rendering in Blender 2.53

Ever wondered if you could render images in Blender with HDR lighting?  Want to see how Blender’s ambient lighting capabilities compare with other computer graphics programs?  Try it out for yourself and see!

CGShark presents it’s first Blender tutorial: HDR Rendering in Blender 2.53.  This tutorial covers:

• an introduction to HDR images
• light probes and why they’re used in computer graphics
• an introduction to Blender’s ambient lighting algorithms
• how to use an image to light a scene with Blender’s Environment Lighting feature
• how to create a World texture to use as the source for lighting a scene

To download this tutorial package, complete with blend file and HDR image, visit http://www.cgshark.com/tutorials/hdri.zip.

PAP Pro Software Released As Free Download

Plastic Animation Paper, or PAP Pro, has recently been released as free software for personal, educational, and professional use for the Windows operating system.  PAP Pro is a 2D cel animation program done “the digital way”, allowing animators to create traditional animations directly on their computer.

Even if you’re only interested in playing around with traditional animation techniques, you should give this program a try – it’s not often good software comes at such a good price.  To download, visit PAP Pro’s website or check out the CGTalk thread to see how the community is responding to the release.

Blender Fur Tutorial

Youtube user ward7299 posted a rather interesting tutorial about creating fur in Blender – although the video is a couple years old, it’s still very applicable to the current version of Blender.  In the tutorial, ward7299 talks about vertex groups, weight painting, and basic particle controls like combing.  He even throws in a couple good rendering tips as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyOXbdvlIqI&feature=youtube_gdata

Enjoy!

Apology

Bart brought to our attention that we unintentionally copied a post from BlenderNation concerning the Sintel pre-premiere.  We sincerely apologize for the mistake – we honestly didn’t realize it at the time.  In the future we will take better care at editing the information we post and give credit where credit is due.  We’ve removed the post in question, and will work to improve our editing process to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

So, to Bart and the BlenderNation team – we’re sorry.  It was unintentional and clumsy of us to post as we did.  Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

CGShark Review: Me, Myself, and Bob

Some of us are familiar with the children’s video series of the 1990′s fondly known as VeggieTales.  But Big Idea Productions, the studio behind the beloved vegetables, no longer exists as we once knew it.  Phil Vischer, the founder of Big Idea, tells about the inspiring story of how he created, built, and eventually caused Big Idea Productions to fall apart in his book, Me, Myself, and Bob.  For those directly associated with Big Idea – or even the Christian community as a whole – this story strikes close to home.  Phil talks about the hardships he faced both within and outside of the company, how he and his small team worked countless nights to finish the first films in the early ’90′s, how his dream of creating a “Christian Disney” came to fruition and fell to pieces.

We recommend this story to anyone, even if you don’t consider yourself a part of Christian culture.  It’s a compelling story of dreams, hard work, and struggles that many of us face in our own lives – both professionally and personally.  If you’re interested in learning more about Phil Vischer and the world he created, Me, Myself, and Bob can be found at any Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore.  We’ve personally found it’s much easier to get online, as many stores choose not to keep it in stock for one reason or another.  Enjoy!