 Welcome back to NF&A and today I want to talk about how you can equip yourself for success in the animation industry and has nothing to do with workflows or animation tips or anything like that. It's actually physical things like a chair. That's right. It's going to be about a chair, a tablet, the table, that type of stuff. Why? Because there was a question by Ross here. He was asking what purchase is more important than a tablet as a 3D artist trying to put together a list of items and if feedback is much appreciated. And my answer was the right chair. That's right. So today I want to talk about my chair and other things. But before I do, and if you're new to this channel, I want to say hi. Hi, my name is JD and I do lectures like these or tips and tricks and I do reviews about things. I do analyses about acting and animation, a bunch of stuff. You can see the thumbnails flashing in. In the beginning, it's the pitch. It's the pitch for my channel. Browse around if you like it, subscribe. And if you don't like it, maybe I'll convince you later in this clip to follow me and subscribe. Well, yeah, it's the YouTube pitch. But let's get back to this because one of the things you might think that, well, I want to have a prolonged career. I want to succeed in this industry is clearly if you're an animator, it's your animation skills, right? You got to go with the basics, the mechanics, the performances and creatures and all kind of stuff for your demo reel. It's kind of longevity in terms of the animation variety of your skill set. And so you can expand your portfolio and so on. At the same time, you can't just animate because it is a physical activity. By that, I mean, you got to take care of yourself so that you can animate for a longer period of time. And that's why I was saying the right chair because I have a bunch of stuff here at my desk and I'll film it and I'll put it in as some b-roll or something. But I use a tablet. I got a tablet on my desk. I got a Cintiq on the side here. I got multiple monitors. I'm going to switch this up here. I'm going to get another monitor and switch my Cintiq setup a little bit. I'm still constantly refining and tweaking. And this has been going on forever, especially now the last couple of years because of working from home. But, you know, I also have a standing desk as a memory setting. There you go. And not just, you know, physical equipment. There's also my trusty water bottle. Here, hold on. I'll do some branding thing here. It's my lark bottle that constantly filters the water. I have a bunch of stuff around me that kind of just helps be comfortable as I work. And the thing that I feel is overlooked is actually the chair. And even though I have a standing desk and I can sit and stand, it's just, I sit a lot and you will be surprised how important a really good chair is at work or where I used to be at ILM. We had Herman Miller chairs. They're really expensive, like a thousand bucks. You can get some used ones. They give me sometimes a bit lower on the website. They can also go really higher, like $14 or whatever. And you might think, I'm not going to spend $1,000 on a chair. And you know what? I think I will. So let me explain. I had my office downstairs in a different room over there. Then we switched the office to being here. And I had a fairly cheap chair. I thought, you know what? First, I bought one that was more kind of design. Like that would kind of look cool and quickly realized it just doesn't work. It was hot to sit on during the summer and it was just not comfortable. But I also didn't want to spend $1,000. So I started like 50 bucks. And then that chair didn't survive very long. And then 100 bucks and then higher and higher and higher. I will blend in what this chair is. Now this one and then I'll do some b-roll, but it has a mesh on the back here. So that when it gets hot, there's breathability. But where I'm sitting on, it's solid. There's no mesh there. And we'll see. You have adjustments for the arms. It can go up and down. It can lean back if you want. It's actually pretty comfortable. But it doesn't compare at all to the Herma military. Now why do I keep bringing this one up? Because I had the same chair at ILM for over 10 years, I would say 12. Because as you move desks around, you take your belongings with you, including your chair. There's equipment that's assigned to you. And then when we work from home, I went to ILM and you can pick up your ergonomic stuff that you need and I picked up the chair. So then I had the chair here. I had to return it now because I don't work there anymore. I work at Borners. But that chair has been there forever. And I'm tall and heavy and I plop down and now from home, my kid jumps on top of me, we wrestle. But I mean, those arm rests on that chair, that chair is indestructible. And even though I just got this one, which is a lot cheaper, I am very curious how long it's going to survive. Because every time I get a chair, either like the the pump, the mechanics drops of up and down doesn't quite work or the side here because I lean a lot. I constantly shift posture was like, I want to sit like this for health reasons, but then I start slouching when I realized I got a change. So I want to make sure I'm not stuck in one pose. So I move around a lot and eventually the chair will just, it just breaks down just depending on the materials. It's just not, you know, it just won't last that long. Over the period of time that I have now, I need to track how much I spent on different chairs, I probably will end up spending as much as a Herman Miller chair. And again, I'm to this day still hesitant in personally buying a chair. I had a Herman Miller, but it was one without all the bells and whistles was much, much cheaper, used one. And then I sold it when we moved here from San Francisco, we moved over here. And that was, that was not good. I was a mistake. So I'm still thinking that I will probably get one in the future, but it's a ton of money. But every time I sit down and I think about the one that I had, it's just so much more comfortable. This is a really long rant about a chair. But the whole point is that you need to be able to work for a long period of time. So you need to set up your environment to support that because you can't just go, I want to do animation, I'm going to go to school, who's in from home, take some classes, get a job, it's going to be great. If you don't take care of your body because your body needs to be comfortable to the sitting, the pen, maybe a standing desk, a good monitor and a flight, all that stuff will help you continue in your career for years and years and years. I only had one injury, quote unquote injury. It was actually my first year at work at ILM long time ago. This was what not, like almost 18 years ago. And I think it was just, I think I had a mouse back then. I can't even remember what I used, but it was just, no, actually it was this hand. So it was probably from typing or something. I really can't remember, but there was like a weird bumpy, really hurt my finger. And I did some physical therapy with some finger stuff and it was healed and it's fine. And since then I have zero problems. I don't have back problems. I don't have any RSI in the fingers. I got nothing in my wrist. I got nothing in my elbow. I mean, I just, I try to exercise whenever I can standing, sitting, drinking a lot of water and just again, the equipment, like whatever I need, I have a mouse here just in case this doesn't work for whatever reason, you know, like you reboot and then the driver's not there or something. But I, I just, not a fan of using mice. That being said, someone sent me a new ergonomic mouse to review. I'm very interested in that. This is a different way of holding it. That should hurt your finger. So I'm about to unbox this and review this. So check out the channel for a future review. But generally I feel like I'm really well set up for tasks that will take some time, which is kind of the definition of animation. You're working on something for quite some time. I mean, it's hours and hours and hours. And what you don't want to do is just be hunched over or be in a position that is really uncomfortable because of your chair. So again, this might be a really weird FNA clip or lecture about something, but do not underestimate a comfy chair. It's something that even just mentally, like I'm, I'm looking forward to sitting in this. It sounds really weird, but I do because it is comfortable and it works. And I know that it's after a couple hours, I'm not going to feel like, oh man, I got to stand up because this chair hurts. It's just I'm trying to prepare myself for the best way to animate for a long period of time. So there are no distractions. There's no physical, you know, problems after a couple hours. So I can just concentrate on the task. Even then, though, I take a ton of breaks. I stand up, I go out, drink, there's always something where I don't really stay within that one pose and like cramped up so that it hurts. So I definitely take breaks and I stretch into a bunch of stuff. But over the period of, you know, 10, 20 years now, I have noticed that whenever I spend not enough money on the chair, it buys me in the box because if the chair will break and then I have to spend more money and I do a ton of research and I feel like that's going to be okay and ultimately it just goes up and up and up because it's the constant physical abuse of this chair and using this all day. So again, I have my eye on the more expensive chair. If this one breaks down so far, I'm pretty happy about it. But it's those arm rests, I'm not sure. Again, the back's not too bad. The bottom is not a mesh so it's sometimes because it's hot right now and the summer's really hot right now. That's a bit tricky but I've got a fan here, a ceiling fan. So again, we'll see how this will work out long term. But check out Ross's tweet. Maybe you can reply with your list. You can see maybe some other replies or maybe comment. I'm curious, what is your go-to or the best physical equipment that you spent money on where you felt like, you know what, that was really cool and that has helped me survive for a longer period of time in this industry. Again, a bit of a different clip. It's not about workflow and tips and arcs and pops like that. It's just something that I feel is really important and you should not underestimate. Having, and I know this is what goes into territory of, yeah, but I don't have the financial means to get like a thousand dollar army military. Absolutely needed to lie. Well, my argument for myself, if I would spend that much as well, but it is a tank. This chair is a beast. It's just, the one from work just never broke. It really, it didn't over so many years and it's super comfortable. This is my reason for probably in the future investing into that chair because I know it's gonna last forever and if you buy cheap things, they're gonna break and you buy something else and over a period of 10 years, you will probably have spent the same amount. But the upfront cost is just going to be a lot. And again, that's obviously for you, very subjective. You have to weigh the options of, can I pay this much at once or is it better to buy cheaper things and then replace that over a period of time. That's obviously something that you have to decide for yourself and I will probably do clips about other stuff that I have. I may have my stream deck here. I have a bunch of stuff that I always wanted to review, but then I change things and I don't know, but maybe I'll do a whole series about just physical, ergonomic, objects and equipment and just things that will help you in your day-to-day workflow. I guess maybe it is kind of a workflow clip. But yeah, there you have it, my two cents. I'm curious what you have. It's always cool to see people set up in the home offices. Somebody just recently asked me about an office tour. I'm still changing. I think the moment I get my other monitor, I think I'm pretty set with your office. I say this now, probably changing it and I'll do a little tour in terms of how this office looks like and what I have and my review clause about just some people have asked about a tour. I'll do a tour clip in the future and future means time and when I say time, I mean thank you for taking the time to watch the script till the end. I know it's a bit of a different clip. Hope it was helpful and that is that. So I will see you in my next clip and if you like this and you want to subscribe and you feel like that clip was interesting and you want to know more, feel free to do so and hit that bell button. And that's that from my pitch as always and that's it for the clip. So thank you for watching and I will see you in my next upload.