 Welcome back to NF&A and today I want to talk about how to not be a jerk. Because imagine you are an artist that changed the industry, that did something revolutionary and really cool and really awesome inspired a bunch of artists generation after generation to get into that field and to aspire to be that good and that inspiring to other people and imagine that you can choose between as you get older as an artist to maybe teach and inspire more people and explain things and just kind of inspire again a new generation with your own knowledge and guide them into their future or you just become bitter and spend your time commenting on LinkedIn how crappy those artists are whenever they animate the same thing that you did years ago. So these are the two paths you could take there are many other paths you could take but some people do that and yeah that's not very nice and understand as you get older you might get bitter you might get irrelevant you might see people do other things that you wish you could do but you still have a choice to just not comment just be quiet and just let people be and let people enjoy things but anyway what am I really talking about I'm talking about the invisible resume now in his case it's fairly visible resume but clearly also doesn't care bonus points if you know who I mean but the invisible resume is something that starts very early on even as a student I teach a bunch of students and I have for you know years now and I've seen quite the range of student behavior how to take boutiques how they interact with other students or with the teacher in class and this goes from very appreciative and positive and inspired and hardworking to not saying anything being super lazy and then even complaining to upper management and stuff like that I've seen it all same thing at work you have sometimes co-workers that go behind your back to talk crap about you to their supervisor on the same show so that your review looks bad you have people that just behave in a not so nice way during work you have people that claim things that they didn't really do and then they prop themselves up they're people who don't animate at work they just online gamble and then when it's time for dailies they grab someone else's work copy paste tweak a little bit and pretend that it's their own trust me I've seen it all I've experienced a lot and the main thing is that you could offset it with being a really good animator and I know cases where they're really good and they're really big jerks and that can compensate and balance out for a little bit until it doesn't it might get you far but at the end it still falls apart people will not want to work with you people don't want to crew you on the shows people don't want to hire you when you want to switch companies and like I said this starts early even as a student and it doesn't mean that you have to be fake nice we're like everything is great and just pretend and be nice to everybody even though you hate them and you can see it in the comments you can always kind of tell the thing is it's a very small industry and chances are you're gonna meet your fellow students at work either the same company or you work with them where maybe they are your boss later on or you are their boss it's just it's a small industry everybody knows everybody we're travels and it's not like oh this person I don't like them just because maybe you're threatened by their skills and then you remember the name and you make a list and you try to ruin their careers that I have never experienced and I've never heard I'm sure it happens too because trust me there are jerks everywhere and they're all shapes and sizes but generally it's about your behavior within a team within one-on-one interactions it's just you got to make sure that it's not just your technical skills your animation skills your demo reel that's good but also how you behave within a team to other people with production staff and there's a difference between a show that goes well and a show that's on the crunch and heavy stress tempers flare you got to be able to navigate that and still be professional be polite and just be respectful while you do your work and it's not like this is an fna with a tutorial of do this this and this to not be a jerk like this should be normal but clearly sometimes it's not but at least the advice I can give you is that if you get into a situation where something is stressful or you did everything right but then the person may be critiquing you your supervisor your teacher or a co-worker or something and you you're feeling that their butting head something is going on it's just not going to be a good thing when you just fight back because ultimately it's just going to harm you because you did everything okay let them dig their own grave don't get to a shouting match don't write back angry emails while your you know while your emotions are high just let it roll off your back take a minute reevaluate the situation and just move forward and this is within a student-student relationship a student teacher a professional at work towards co-workers towards productions towards supervisors and you're gonna get into those situations because you know you're also dealing with creative people bigger egos and something's gonna happen but ultimately what people are going to remember is that you were great to work with and it's better that your level is okay in terms of animation quality and this is across all the industries but again i'm speaking terms of animation like animation is good not awesome but good but you're awesome you're easy to work with you're just friendly you take feedback you know in a positive way you incorporate your own notes just you're just you're just just a big difference between someone you want to work with and someone with that you just god i don't want to interact with that person and you might be really really good animator but your attitude is crap that's just not going to get you far it will get you to a certain level but like i said before the house of cards is going to fall apart at one point and if you really have something to say say it in private it's always better than anything happens it's a year in dailies right or you're in a classroom take some notes like why why did this person say this to me like that why did that and that happen take some notes wait and then email or contact them privately afterwards this could be one-on-one at work separately in private this could be an email to the teacher anything because you never know what the other person is going through either right you might feel something like that guy's a jerk why do they say that but maybe that person just got really really bad news today and it's just in a really bad space we're generally are okay but today's a bad day and unfortunately they took it out on you that's not great don't do that either but it can happen but if you take this privately and you go through a discussion you realize oh this is why it happens and everybody's in it clear again it's going to be okay don't go behind that person's back to management complain like there are other ways you can do things before you escalate this to management and hr and so on not saying you should excuse bad behavior but you got to look at the context and where this person is coming from what's going on and also pick your battle obviously there are levels to this there's certain level of harassment and horrible behavior that needs to be reported of course i'm talking about the lower level like the one-on-one stuff the creative disputes and some of the ego stuff or if you see someone commenting online on LinkedIn being a jerk all the time but there is a level of difference in terms of you know how jerky a person is and how far you need to go in terms of escalating and and dealing with this problem and after almost 20 years and i'm including being a student so it's like almost 20 years i've been animating you know dealing with students and fellow classmates basically right getting into the first job well i only have two jobs by now but you know seeing a lot of people coming out of companies dealing with a lot of people it's just you immediately can tell when someone's a jerk or not and there's a huge difference when you are in a team with multiple jerks versus in a team where just everybody's awesome it's just the flow is different the level of enthusiasm for the project is different it's just everything flows differently and again not that it's like you know specific tutorial but you know you always have a choice and if you feel like i didn't have a choice i was just i was angry just at least practice to just breathe take a step back wait examine the situation and then deal with it the next day just really see is that really this important but this is why i'm saying pick your battles kind of validate the situation and the context and see what you can do just as a as a whole just don't be a jerk it's not worth it this industry is small people talk we know who you are where it travels it's just that invisible resume is really important and at one point it is going to be a deciding factor for people's hiring decisions despite your reel again your reel can be top-notch but if you're a jerk versus you're awesome like that can be the deciding thing like this airplane flying close by so just take that take that gem and something happens let it fly by wait a minute and reevaluate trust me the invisible resume is super important and it follows you everywhere this again like i said this could be a student this could be a work this could be online how you interact with people on twitter on my instagram wherever you are like you know if you trash other people's work publicly your co-workers it's not it not a good look because usually there's a reason why something doesn't look good if you've been in the industry you know why your shot doesn't look good it's not because people suck and everybody wanted to do bad work there are always so many factors that come together into something that makes a shot not look as good as you want it to be and other people will see that but there's always a reason and for me at this point if i see a movie and i don't like it i used to be like this i even perched bunch of comments on my twitter were like ah man i didn't like that movie and after all this time like i don't know do i need to say this people work really hard even if the movie sucks at the end people still worked hard so then they're right me i didn't like that movie i don't know especially if it's co-workers it's just it's just not it's not the right thing to do maybe that's just me i don't know so for me it's like if i see something i don't like i just don't say anything i prefer to take the five minutes instead of bashing someone to find something that i like and then amplify that retweet that person look at that awesome work that to me is a better usage of time than going on to all the way back to what is at the beginning trolling linkedin and finding people who do what you used to do and just constantly saying this sucks who are you this is irrelevant blah blah blah blah why why why be that bitter i don't know but that's that person's problem and i'm gonna leave it at that so different kind of fna not a tutorial and a demo in my just basically it's an attitude thing don't be a jerk think about your invisible resume and it's on the human level why why be a jerk that's not needed the the world it's not gonna be a better place if you do that but anyway i'm gonna leave it at that short and sweet it's not that short i mean it wasn't that sweet but it's a little reality check again for students you know but i have a semester starting in a week and that's something i'm gonna talk to them as well like you have to start being a professional from the very beginning even in class how you take critiques how you submit something how you interact it's just you want to make sure that you're professional not just on your real but as a human being interacting with other artists it's just that's the bottom line i'm sure other people have other thoughts about that or maybe they've experienced some of those same things i would well i don't say leave comments i know people want to you know comment and get all angry and do stuff but anyway i'll leave it that that's it for the clip it's it's a maybe a different kind of clip but i think it's something important to know and you're going to deal with people like that and hopefully that interaction is going to be okay with you and hopefully you're not going to become one of those bitter jerks and that's it that's for the clip if you're still watching and uh you've been listening to this advice slash rant then thank you till the very end and hopefully i'll see you in my next clip