Only took blackwing pencils and sketchbook this time.
I've decided as a mark maker the pencil is too wimpy for life drawing.
Tom mentioned this news in this thread.
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Mostly sketches. Occasionally a painting. Nothing political other than caricatures reinforcing the truism "Politics is Show Business for Ugly People".
24 comments:
Well, you managed to create beautiful drawings with your wimpy-mark-making pencils.
Yup, these are beauts!
By the way, have you guys heard about SOE being sold? An investment company bought them and renamed them Daybreak Games. Massive layoffs are expected. Sony Online Entertainment is no more.
Holey Moley. That is a big chunk of news there. You , Dok, everyone already out, are the winners.
Just more super talented people flooding the job arena.
I guess these are longer poses. It is interesting how you use the pencil, vertical lines to build in shadow, not outlines. I'd like to see your 2 and 5 minute sketches.
Thanks Ben. The lines are just painting tones that I'd do better painting with a big stroke with the charcoal pencil.
I was going to do several quick studies of the same poses, but then locked into refining a pose vs moving around how to draw the same subject.
This Sony news is pretty big. Sounds like they will keep some people.
Jeff Jonas, Rich Sjoberg, Tom Tobey, Rosie Cosgrove, (of course) Joe Shoopack and Patrick Ho are some of the people I know of who are still there. Probably others I'm not thinking of. Sounds like Tom T. is expecting something in the way of layoffs if I'm reading between the lines of his recent FB post correctly.
All those people you mention can probably go into early retirement mode at this point.
This sort of transition always has lay-offs.
Mia DelCasino is still there too. Unfortunately no, not all of these people can afford to retire. don't even know if any of them can.
Rick Randolph and Tom Tobey still have their jobs. Mia got let go. Will post more when I know more.
Kevin Burns was let go.
I'm glad Randolph made it. He's got mouths to feed, people to insure.
Just got the word that Joe Shoopack, Rob Cuenca, and Dante were all let go. Rich Sjoberg and Jeff Jonas kept their jobs I'm pretty sure. They laid off about 150 people at the San Diego studio alone. That's just a rough estimate based on how many people seemed to be in the big layoff room. Rosie Cosgrove is still there too.
Thanks for the updates Tom. It's morbid stuff but we want to know.
Holy crap! They let go of Shoop? I'm kinda shocked by that.
Dudes!
That's a shocker about Sony Online--hadn't heard anything about that until I clicked over here to see how the good ol' TAG community was faring.
I was gonna post something, too.
Life drawings look terrific, Ellis! How big are they? One of the benefits of the charcoal is the ability to cover a lot of ground.
Glad to see everyone's still kickin'!!
The standing girl in the first drawing has such a forthright look...love it.
She looks like Agent Carter!
Thanks Marty. Glad, really glad, you're back.
Yeah, this Sony deal is big news. I hope the new entity does well so that San Diego still has some company pumping out games.
Question to all of you. Do you suppose you have a target on your back if you make a big salary- when this kind of transition happens?
Glad you're glad. Needed some down time over the holidays, and then I spent all of January sick as a dog...I'm still not 100%. Went to the Dr.'s again yesterday, doing some blood tests. Probably just a real persistent virus.
I'm sure big salaries are a red flag--but it's a lot more of a musical chairs moment--who do they think they can use going forward, y'know? I've heard of lots of good people getting squeezed out when they don't fit the very immediate "next big thing."
I was just thinking about this question and I think Marty is right, although I think having a large salary makes management look even more closely at what you are working on when the ax is making the rounds. I was between projects at SOE when I was let go, and I hadn't demonstrated a lot of skill with 3D at that time. I had been with the company for a while, so my salary was probably larger than most of the artists there at the time.
Another factor can be reorganization... at PopCap the position of Studio Art Director was eliminated. There was no longer an art team, just smaller team for each project, so no need for a Studio AD, so I was let go.
According to Mia DelCasino, the investment company that bought SOE, Columbus Nova, told the employees in a meeting that since Columbus Nova was not a games company, their sole purpose was to make the company profitable. If they could not make them profitable, they would get rid of them.
Maybe this will be good for everybody in the end... BUT the way I would have interpreted that comment was, "We don't necessarily care about the long-term welfare of the company. We just want you profitable on paper so we can re-sell you at a profit at some point."
Is that an unfair perception?
Probably not.
I haven't been seeing much bitterness from the folks who were let go, so I'm guessing that they got pretty handsome severance packages, and perhaps even got some money from the sale of the company.
Since the company was owned by Sony, the employees did not profit directly from the sale. They got the standard Sony severance package, which was generous, as part of the sale deal. The company wanted the remaining employees to respect them going forward I'm told.
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